ing her distress vanished
like snow in the sunshine. For she took for her own the character of
the elder brother, prayed for forgiveness, and came away loving Alec
Forbes more than ever she had loved him before. If God could love the
Prodigal, might she not, ought she not to love him too?--The deepest
source of her misery, though she did not know that it was, had been the
fading of her love to him.

And as she walked home through the dark, the story grew into other
comfort. A prodigal might see the face of God, then! He was no grand
monarch, but a homely father. He would receive her one day, and let her
look in his face.

Nor did the trouble return any more. From that one moment, no feeling
of repugnance ever mingled with her thought of Alec. For such a one as
he could not help repenting, she said. He would be sure to rise and go
back to his Father. She would not have found it hard to believe even,
that, come early, or linger late, no swine-keeping son of the Father
will be able to help repenting at last; that no God-born soul will be
able to go on trying to satisfy himself with the husks that the swine
eat, or to refrain from thinking of his Father's house, and wishing
himself within its walls even in the meanest place; or that such a wish
is prelude to the best robe and the ring and the fatted calf, when the
Father would spend himself in joyous obliteration of his son's past and
its misery--having got him back his very own, and better than when he
went, because more humble and more loving.

When Mrs Forbes came home, she entered into no detail, and was
disinclined to talk about the matter at all, probably as much from
dissatisfaction with herself as with her son, But Annie's heart
blossomed into a quiet delight when she learned that the facts were not
so bad as the reports, and that there was no doubt he would yet live
them all down.

The evil time was drawing nigh, ushered by gentler gales and snowdrops,
when she must be turned out for the spring and summer. She would feel
it more than ever, but less than if her aunt had not explained to her
that she had a right to the shelter afforded her by the Bruces.

Meantime arrived a letter from Mr Cupples.

"Dear Madam,--After all the efforts of Mr Alec, aided by my best
endeavours, but counteracted by the grief of knowing that his cousin,
Miss Fraser, entertained a devoted regard for a worthless class-fellow
of his--after all our united efforts, Mr Alec has not been a