"Let her follow her fancy," said Wallace. Then relapsing into a fit of musing, he added--"the 29th of September of this year will soon be of the time that is. For twenty years I have looked forward to that day--under a burning sun, far from my native land, I have sighed for it--in the midnight hour I have counted the years and days that were between. Every anniversary was devoted to the God who has chastened the heart of the sinner; and there was need, when that heart was full of the thoughts inspired by that day, and penitence came on the wings of terror. Now it approaches; and I have not miscalculated the benefits it may pour on other heads than mine." "Alas!" said the widow, as she cast her eye through the window after her daughter, "there is no appointed day for the termination of the sorrows of that poor creature. To the broken-hearted, one day as another, sunshine or shower, is the same. But what hand shall bear Alice Scott from Whitecraigs?" "Perhaps none," replied Wallace, as, taking up the newspaper, he retired to an inner apartment, where he usually spent the day. Some hours passed; and, in the afternoon, Mr. Pringle, while passing, took occasion to call at Homestead, and informed the widow that it would be her duty to look out for another habitation, as Whitecraigs was to be sold by the creditor, Mr. Colville, whose object in granting the loan was, if possible, to take advantage of the difficulties into which extravagance had plunged the young proprietor, and to bring the property into the market, that he might purchase it as an appanage of the old estate of Haughton, from which it had been disjoined. He represented it as a cruel proceeding, and that its cruelty was enhanced by the circumstance of the sale being advertised in the same paper which contained the intelligence of the death of Hector's young wife. Another listener might have replied that God's ways are just; but Dame Scott, if she thought at the time of her daughter, considered also that Hayston had supported her for many years. "Good dame," added the agent, "it might have been well for my young friend if he had remained at Whitecraigs. I never saw the wife he married, and has just lost in the bloom of youth; but she must have been fair indeed, if she was fairer than she whom he left. Yet Hector's better principles did not, I am satisfied, entirely forsake him. The disinclination he has shown to visit his paternal property, was the result of a clinging remembrance of her he left mourning in the midst of its glens; nor do I wonder at it, for even I have turned aside to avoid the sight of Alice Scott. Misfortunes, however, are sometimes mercies; and the change of residence you will be now driven to, may aid in the cure of a disease that is only fed by these scenes of Whitecraigs." He here paused, and, putting his hand in his pocket, took out some money.