“Come away into the fire; it’s bonnie weather, but it’s sharp on the hillside,” said the mistress of Ramore. “I never wearied for you, Colin, so much as I’ve done this year. No that there was ony particular occasion, for we’ve a’ been real weel, and a good season, and baith bairns and beasts keeping their health; but the heart’s awfu’ capricious, and canna hear reason. Come in bye to the fire.”

“There’s been three days of east wind,” said the farmer, who had gone across the loch to meet his son, and bring him home in triumph, “which accounts for your mother’s anxiety, Colin. When there’s plenty of blue sky, and the sun shining, there’s naething she hasna courage for. What’s doing in Glasgow? or rather what’s doing at the college? or maybe, if you insist upon it, what are you doing? for that’s the most important to us.”

To which Colin, who was almost as shy of talking of his own achievements as of old, gave for answer some bald account of the winding up of the session, and of his own honours. “I told you all about it in my last letter,” he said, hurrying over the narrative; “there was nothing out of the common. Tell me rather all the news of the parish. Who is at home and who is away, and if any of the visitors have come yet?” said the lad, with a conscious tremor in his voice. Most likely his mother understood what he meant.

“It’s ower early for visitors yet,” she said, “though I think for my part there’s nothing like the spring, with the days lengthening, and the light aye eking and eking itself out. To be sure, there’s the east winds, which are a sore drawback, but they have nae great effect on the west coast. The castle woods are wonderful bonnie, Colin; near as bonnie as they were last year, when a’ thae bright English bairnies made the place look cheerful. I wonder the Earl bides there so seldom himself. He’s no rich, to be sure, but it’s a moderate kind of a place. If I had enough money I would rather live there than in the Queen’s palace, and so the minister says. You’ll have to go down to the manse the morn, and tell him a’ about your prizes, Colin,” said his proud mother, looking at him with beaming eyes. She put her hand upon her boy’s shoulder, and patted him softly as he stood beside her. “He takes a great interest in what you’re doing at the college,” she continued; “he says you’re a credit to the parish, and so I hope you’ll aye be,” said Mrs. Campbell. She had not any doubt on the subject so far as her own convictions went.

“He does not know me,” said the impatient Colin; “but I’ll go to the manse to-morrow if you like. It’s halfway to the castle,” he said, under his breath, and then felt himself colour, much to his annoyance, under his mother’s eyes.

“There’s plenty folk to visit,” said the farmer. “As for the castle, it’s out of our way, no to say it looked awfu’ doleful the last time I was by. The factor would get it but for the name of the thing. We’ve had a wonderful year, take it a’thegither, and the weather is promising for the season. If you’re no over-grand with all your honours, I would be glad of your advice, as soon as you’ve rested, about the Easter fields. I’m thinking of some changes, and there’s nae time to lose.”

“If you would but let the laddie take breath!” said the farmer’s wife. “New out of all his toils and his troubles, and you canna refrain from the Easter fields. It’s my belief,” said the mistress, with a little solemnity, “that prosperity is awfu’ trying to the soul. I dinna think you ever cared for siller, Colin, till now; but instead of rejoicing in your heart over the Almighty’s blessing, I hear nothing, from morning to night, but about mair profit. It’s no what I’ve been used to,” said Colin’s mother, “and there’s mony a thing mair important that I want to hear about. Eh! Colin, it’s my hope you’ll no get to be over-fond of this world!”

“If this world meant no more than a fifty pound or so in the bank,” said big Colin, with a smile; “but there’s no denying it’s a wonderful comfort to have a bit margin, and no be aye from hand to mouth. As soon as your mother’s satisfied with looking at you, you can come out to me, Colin, and have a look at the beasts. It’s a pleasure to see them. Apart from profit, Jeanie,” said the farmer, with his humorous look, “if you object to that, it’s grand to see such an improvement in a breed of living creatures that you and me spend so much of our time among. Next to bonnie bairns, bonnie cattle’s a reasonable pride for a farmer, no to say but that making siller in any honest way is as laudable an occupation as I ken for a man with a family like me.”

“If it doesna take up your heart,” said the mistress. “But it’s awfu’ to hear folk how they crave siller for siller’s sake; especially in a place like this, where there’s aye strangers coming and going, and a’ body’s aye trying how much is to be got for everything. I promised the laddies a holiday the morn to hear a’ Colin’s news, and you’re no to take him off to byres and ploughed land the very first day;—though I dinna say but I would like him to see Gowan’s calf,” said the farmer’s wife, yielding a little in her superior virtue. As for Colin, he sat very impatiently through this conversation, vainly attempting to bring in the question which he longed, yet did not like, to ask.

“I suppose the visitors will come early, as the weather is so fine?” he ventured to say as soon as there was a pause.

“Oh, ay, the Glasgow folk,” said Mrs. Campbell; and she gave a curious inquiring glance at her son, who was looking out of the window with every appearance of abstraction. “Do you know anybody that’s coming, Colin?” said the anxious mother; “some of your new friends?” And Colin was so sensible of her look, though his eyes were turned in exactly the opposite direction, that his face grew crimson up to the great waves of brown hair which were always tumbling about his forehead. He thrust his heavy lovelocks off his temples with an impatient hand, and got up and went to the window that his confusion might not be visible. Big Colin of Ramore was at the window too, darkening the apartment with his great bulk, and the farmer laid his hand on his son’s shoulder with a homely roughness, partly assumed to conceal his real feeling.

“How tall are you, laddie? no much short of me now,” he said. “Look here, Jeanie, at your son.” Then the mistress put down her work, and came up to them, defeating all Colin’s attempts to escape her look; but in the meantime she, too, forgot the blushes of her boy in the pleasant sight before her. She was but a little woman herself, considered in the countryside rather too soft and delicate for a farmer’s wife; and with all the delicious confidence of love and weakness, the tender woman looked up at her husband and her son.

“Young Mr. Frankland’s no half so tall as Colin,” said the proud mother; “no that height is anything to brag about unless a’ things else is conformable. He’s weel enough, and a strong-built callant, but there’s a great difference; though, to be sure, his mother is just as proud,” said the mistress, bearing her conscious superiority with meekness; “it’s a grand thing that we’re a’ best pleased with our ain.”

“When did you see young Frankland?” said Colin, hastily. The two boys had scarcely met since the encounter which had made a link between the families without awaking very friendly sentiments in the bosoms of the two persons principally concerned.

“That’s a thing to be discussed hereafter,” said the farmer of Ramore. “I didna mean to say onything about it till I saw what your inclinations were, but women-folk are aye hasty Sir Thomas has made me a proposition, Colin. He would like to send you to Oxford with his own son if you and me were to consent. We’re to gie him an answer when we’ve made up our minds. Nae doubt he has heard that you were like enough to be a creditable protejee,” said Big Colin, with natural complacency. “A lad of genius gies distinction to his patron—if ye can put up with a patron, Colin.”

“Can you?” cried his son. The lad was greatly agitated by the question. Ambitious Scotch youths of Colin’s type, in the state of discontent which was common to the race, had come to look upon the English universities as the goal of all possible hopes. Not that Colin would have confessed as much had his fate depended on it—but such was the fact notwithstanding. Oxford, to his mind, meant any or every possibility under heaven, without any limit to the splendour of the hopes involved. A different kind of flush, the glow of eagerness and ambition, suddenly covered his face. But joined with this came a tumult of vague but burning offence and contradiction. While he recognised the glorious chance thus opened to him, pride started up to bolt and bar those gates of hope. He turned upon his father with something like anger in his voice, with a tantalizing sense of all the advantages thus flourished wantonly, as he thought, before his eyes. “Could you put up with a patron?” he repeated, looking almost fiercely in the farmer’s face; “and if not, why do you ask me such a question?” When he came to think of it, Colin felt injured by the suggestion. To be offered the thing of all others he most desired in the world, by means which made it impossible to accept the offer would have been galling enough under any circumstances; but just now, at this crisis of his youthful ambition and excitement, such a tantalizing glimpse of the possible and the impossible was beyond bearing. “Are we his dependents that he makes such an offer to me?” said the exasperated youth; and Big Colin himself looked on with a little surprise at his son’s excitement, comprehending only partially what it meant.

“I’ll no say I’m fond of patronage,” said the farmer, slowly; “neither in the kirk nor out of the kirk. It’s my opinion a man does aye best that fights his own way; but there’s aye exceptions, Colin. I wouldna have you make up your mind in any arbitrary way. As for Sir Thomas, he has aye been real civil and friendly—no one of your condescending fine gentlemen—and the son—”

“What right have I to any favour from Sir Thomas?” cried Colin. “He is nothing to me. I did no more for young Frankland than I would have done for any dog on the hillside,” he continued, with a contemptuous tone; and then his conscience reproved him. “I don’t mean to say anything against him. He behaved like a man, and saved himself,” said Colin, with haughty candour. “As for all this pretence of rewarding me, it feels like an insult. I want nothing at their hands.”

“There’s no occasion to be violent,” said the farmer. “I dinna expect that he’ll use force to make you accept his offer, which is weel meant and kind, whatever else it may be. I canna say I understand a’ this fury on your part; and there’s no good that I can see in deciding this very moment and no other. I would like you to sleep upon it and turn it over in your mind. Such an offer doesna come every day to the Holy Loch. I’m no the man to seek help,” said Big Colin, “but there’s times when it’s more generous to receive than to give.”

The mistress had followed her son wistfully with her eyes through all his changes of countenance and gesture. She was not simply surprised like her husband, but looked at him with unconscious insight, discovering by intuition what was in his heart—something, at least, of what was in his heart—for the anxious mother too was mistaken, and rushed at conclusions which Colin himself was far from having reached.

“There’s plenty of time to decide,” said the farmer’s wife; “and I’ve that confidence in my laddie that I ken he’ll do nothing from a poor motive, nor out of a jealous heart. There never were ony sulky ways, that ever I saw, in ony bairn of mine,” said Mrs. Campbell; “and if there was one in the world that was mair fortunate than me, I wouldna show a poor spirit towards him, because he had won. Whiles it’s mair generous to receive than to give, as the maister says; and whiles it’s mair noble to lose than to win,” said the mistress, with a momentary faltering of emotion in her voice. She thought the bitterness of hopeless love was in her boy’s heart, and that he was tempted to turn fiercely from the friendship of his successful rival. And she lifted her soft eyes, which were beaming with all the magnanimous impulses of nature, to Colin’s face, who did not comprehend the tenderness of pity with which his mother regarded him. But, at least, he perceived that something much higher and profounder than anything he was thinking of was in the mistress’s thoughts; and he turned away somewhat abashed from her anxious look.

“I am not jealous that I am aware of,” said Colin; “but I have never done anything to deserve this, and I should prefer not to accept any favours from—any man,” he concluded abruptly. That was how they left the discussion for that time at least. When the farmer went out to look after his necessary business, his wife remained with Colin, looking at him often, as she glanced up from her knitting, with eyes of wistful wonder. Had she been right in her guess, or was it merely a vague sentiment of repulsion which kept him apart from young Frankland? But all the mother’s anxiety could not break through the veil which separates one mysterious individuality from another. She read his looks with eager attention, half right and half wrong, as people make out an unfamiliar language. He had drifted off somehow from the plain vernacular of his boyish thoughts, and she had not the key to the new complications. So it was with a mixed and doubtful joy that the mistress of Ramore, on the first night of his return, regarded her son.

“And I suppose,” said Colin, with a smile dancing about his lips, “that I am to answer this proposal when they come to the castle? And they are coming soon as they expected last year? or, perhaps, they are there now?” he said, getting up from his chair again and walking away towards the door that his mother might not see the gleam of expectation in his face.

“But, Colin, my man,” said the mistress, who did not perceive the blow she was about to administer, “they’re no coming to the castle this year. The young lady that was delicate has got well, and they’re a’ in London and in an awfu’ whirl o’ gaiety like the rest of their kind; and Lady Mary, the earl’s sister, is to have the castle with her bairns; and that’s the way Sir Thomas wants our answer in a letter, for there’s none of the family to be here this year.”

It did not strike the mistress as strange that Colin made no answer. He was standing at the door looking out, and she could not see his face. And when he went out of doors presently, she was not surprised—it was natural he should want to see everything about the familiar place; and she called after him to say that, if he would wait a moment, she would go herself and show him Gowan’s calf. But he either did not hear her, or, at least, did not wait the necessary moment; and when she had glanced out in her turn, and had perceived with delight that the wind had changed, and that the sun was going down in glorious crimson and gold behind the hills, the mistress returned with a relieved heart to prepare the family tea. “It’ll be a fine day to-morrow,” she said to herself, rejoicing over it for Colin’s sake; and so went in to her domestic duties with a lightened heart.

At that moment Colin had just pushed forth into the loch, flinging himself into the boat anyhow, disgusted with the world and himself and everything that surrounded him. In a moment, in the drawing of a breath, an utter blank and darkness had replaced all the lovely summer landscape that was glowing by anticipation in his heart. In the sudden pang of disappointment, the lad’s first impulse was to fling himself forth into the solitude, and escape the voices and looks which were hateful to him at that moment. Nor was it simple disappointment that moved him; his feelings were complicated by many additional shades of aggravation. It had seemed so natural that everything should happen this year as last year, and now it seemed such blind folly to imagine that it could have been possible. Not only were his dreams all frustrated and turned to nothing, but he fell ever so many degrees in his own esteem, and felt so foolish and vain and blind, as he turned upon himself with the acute mortification and sudden disgust of youth. What an idiot he had been! To think she would again leave all the brilliant world for the loch and the primroses, and those other childish delights on which he had been dwelling like a fool! Very bitter were Colin’s thoughts, as he dashed out into the middle of the loch, and there laid up his oars and abandoned himself to the buffetings of excited fancy. What right had he to imagine that she had ever thought of him again, or to hope that such a thread of gold could be woven into his rustic and homely web of fate? He scoffed at himself, as he remembered, with acute pangs of self-contempt, the joyous rose-coloured dreams that had occupied him only a few hours ago. What a fool he was to entertain such vain, complacent fancies! He, a farmer’s son, whose highest hope must be, after countless aggravations and exasperations, to get “placed” in a country church in some rural corner of Scotland. And then Colin recalled Sir Thomas Frankland’s proposal, and took to his oars again in a kind of fury, feeling it impossible to keep still. The baronet’s kind offer looked like an intentional insult to the excited lad. He thought to himself that they wanted to reward him somehow by rude, tangible means, as if he were a servant, for what Colin proudly and indignantly declared to himself was no service—certainly no intentional service. On the whole, he had never been so wretched, so downcast, so fierce and angry and miserable, in all his life. If he could but, by any means, by any toil, or self-denial, or sacrifice, get to Oxford, on his own account, and show the rich man and his son how little the Campbells of Ramore stood in need of patronage! All the glory had faded off the hills before Colin bethought himself of the necessity of returning to the homely house which he had greeted with so much natural pleasure a few hours before. His mother was standing at the door looking out for him as he drew towards the beach, looking at him with eyes full of startled and anxious half-comprehension. She knew he was disturbed somehow, and made guesses, right in the main, but all wrong in the particulars, which were, though he tried hard to repress all signs of it, another exasperation to Colin. This was how the first evening of his return closed upon the student of Ramore. He could not take any pleasure just then in the fact of being at home, nor in the homely love and respect and admiration that surrounded him. Like all the rest of the world, he neglected the true gold lying close at hand for the longing he had after the false diamonds that glittered at a distance. It was hard work for him to preserve an ordinary appearance of affection and interest in all that was going on, as he sat, absent and preoccupied, at his father’s table. “Colin’s no like you idle laddies; he has ower much to think of to laugh and make a noise, like you,” the mistress said with dignity, as she consoled the younger brothers, who were disappointed in Colin. And she half believed what she said, though she spoke with the base intention of deluding “the laddies,” who knew no better. The house, on the whole, was rather disturbed than brightened by the return of the firstborn, who had thus brought a foreign element into the household life. Such was the inauspicious beginning of the holidays, which had been to Colin, for months back, the subject of so many dreams.