The stranger was moved, and ate his meal in meditative silence. In an hour afterwards, Alice returned to the house, and, as she entered, started as her eye met that of him who had, by his questions, stirred to greater activity the feelings that were already too busy with her heart; but her fears were removed, by his avoidance of the subject which had pained her; and a few hours seemed to have rendered him as indifferent to her as seemed the other objects around her. Some days passed, and the widow would have been as well satisfied with her lodger as he was with her, had it not been that he enjoined secrecy as to his residence in the house--retiring to the spence when any one entered; and if at any time he went along the Lyne in the morning, he avoided those whom he met; and betook himself to private acts in the inner apartment during the day. At times he left the cottage in the evening, and did not return for two days; but whither he went, the inmates knew not. The dame conjectured he had been as far as Peebles; but her reason was merely that he brought newspapers with him, and intelligence of matters transacting there. The secrecy was not suited to the open and simple manners to which she had been accustomed; but she recollected his words, that on the 29th of September, she would know all concerning him. Now these words were connected by a chain of associations that startled her. The 29th of September had been set apart by her deceased husband as a day of prayer. He had never allowed it to pass without an offering of the contrite heart to God; this practice he had continued till his death, and she had witnessed the act repeated for fifteen years. She was no more superstitious than the rest of her class; she was, indeed, probably less so; and her theories, formed for an adequate explanation of the startling coincidence, were probably as philosophical as if they had been formed by reason acting under the astute direction of scepticism. Yet where is the mind, untutored or learned, that can throw away at all times, at all hours--when the heart is in the sunshine of the cheerful day of worldly intercourse, or in the deep shadow of the wing of eternity--all thoughts of all powers save those of natural causes, which are themselves a mystery? We may sport with the subject; but it comes again back on the heart, and we sigh in whispering words of fear, that in the hands of God we are nothing. One day Mr. Wallace was seated at breakfast; he had been away for two nights; Alice was sitting by the side of the fire, looking into the heart of the red embers, and the mother was superintending the breakfast; he took out a newspaper from his pocket, and, without a word of premonition, read a paragraph in a deep, solemn voice. "Died at ---- Street, London, Maria Knight, wife of Hector Hayston, Esq., of Whitecraigs, in the county of Peebles, in Scotland."