coal burned in the
dingy grate in Alec's room. He had slept for several hours, had
finished reading his last library book, and now, as he clasped his
hands behind his head, yawning lazily, he remembered that he had not
written home for two weeks. Letter-writing had become a dreaded task
now. What was there to tell them of himself that he cared for them to
know? Only that he worked from seven until six, ate, slept, and rose
to work again with the dreary monotony of a machine.

For seven months he had not been inside a church door. The only
people he met now were the workmen at the factory and the boys with
whom he spent his evenings. He could not mention them. Long ago he
had exhausted his descriptions of the city. There was nothing for him
to write but that he was well and busy, and to fill up the pages with
questions about the people at home. It taxed his ingenuity sometimes
to evade Flip's straightforward questions, and he often thought that
his letters had an insincere ring.

"I wonder what they are doing at home now!" he exclaimed, looking
thoughtfully into the coals. "It's just a year ago to-day that I
left. I can't imagine them living in the new house. It's always the
old sitting-room I see when I think of them. Mack is probably down on
the hearth-rug, popping corn or roasting apples, and Flip's curled up
in the chimney-seat, telling him stories. And Aunt Eunice--I know
what she's doing; what she always does Sunday evening just at this
time, when the twilight begins to fall. She has gone into her room
and shut the door and knelt down by the big red rocking-chair that we
used to be rocked to sleep in. And she's praying for us this very
minute, and doesn't know that the dust is half an inch thick on my
Bible, and that a prayer hasn't passed my lips since last February.
Dear old Aunt Eunice!"

An ache clutched his throat as he thought of her, and a tender mood,
such as he had not known for weeks, rushed warm across him. One after
another the old scenes rose up before him, until an overwhelming
longing to see the well-known faces made the homesick tears start to
his eyes.

The twilight shadows deepened in the room, but, lost in the rush of
tender memories, he forgot everything save the pictures that seemed
to rise before him out of the glowing embers in the grate. In the
midst of his reverie, there was a noise on the stairs--a familiar
noise, although he had not heard it for months, a tread and a double
tap, as