r apron, Hogmanay having come too late for
her.

Everything was to be done exactly as they were doing it in Thrums
Street, and so presently Tommy made a speech; it was the speech of old
Petey, who had rehearsed it several times before him. "Here's a toast,"
said Tommy, standing up and waving his arms, "here's a toast that we'll
drink in silence, one that maun have sad thoughts at the back o't to
some of us, but one, my friends, that keeps the hearts of Thrums folk
green and ties us all thegither, like as it were wi' twine. It's to all
them, wherever they may be the night, wha' have sat as lads and lasses
at the Cuttle Well."

To one of the listeners it was such an unexpected ending that a faint
cry broke from her, which startled the children, and they sat in silence
looking at her. She had turned her face from them, but her arm was
extended as if entreating Tommy to stop.

"That was the end," he said, at length, in a tone of expostulation;
"it's auld Petey's speech."

"Are you sure," his mother asked wistfully, "that Petey was to say _all_
them as have sat at the Cuttle Well? He made no exception, did he?"

Tommy did not know what exception was, but he assured her that he had
repeated the speech, word for word. For the remainder of the evening she
sat apart by the fire, while her children gambled for crack-nuts, young
Petey having made a teetotum for Tommy and taught him what the letters
on it meant. Their mirth rang faintly in her ear, and they scarcely
heard her fits of coughing; she was as much engrossed in her own
thoughts as they in theirs, but hers were sad and theirs were
jocund--Hogmanay, like all festivals, being but a bank from which we
can only draw what we put in. So an hour or more passed, after which
Tommy whispered to Elspeth: "Now's the time; they're at it now," and
each took a hand of their mother, and she woke from her reverie to find
that they had pulled her from her chair and were jumping up and down,
shouting, excitedly, "For Auld Lang Syne, my dear, for Auld Lang Syne,
Auld Lang Syne, my dear, Auld Lang Syne." She tried to sing the words
with her children, tried to dance round with them, tried to smile, but--

It was Tommy who dropped her hand first. "Mother," he cried, "your face
is wet, you're greeting sair, and you said you had forgot the way."

"I mind it now, man, I mind it now," she said, standing helplessly in
the middle of the room.

Elspeth nestled against her, crying, "My mother