“It’s hard to ken what to say,” said the Mistress, going to the window for the hundredth time, and looking out wistfully upon the sky which shone dazzling over the Holy Loch with the excessive pathetic brightness of exceptional sunshine. “I canna make out for my part if he’s broken-hearted or no, and a word wrong just at a moment like this would be hard on the callant. It’s a wonderful mercy it’s such a bonnie day. That’s aye a blessing both to the body and the mind.”

“Well, it’s you that Colin takes after,” said the farmer of Ramore, with an undertone of dissatisfaction; “so there’s no saying but what the weather may count for something. I’ve lost understanding for my part of a lad that gangs abroad for his health, and gets himself engaged to be married. In my days, when marriage came into a man’s head, he went through with it, and there was an end of the subject. For my part, I dinna pretend to understand your newfangled ways.”

“Eh, Colin, dinna be so unfeeling,” said the Mistress, roused to remonstrance. “You were like to gang out of your mind about the marriage when you thought it was to be; and now you’re ready to sneer at the poor laddie, as if he could help it. It’s hard when his ain friends turn against him after the ingratitude he’s met wi’, and the disappointment he’s had to bear.”

“You may trust a woman for uphaudin’ her son in such like nonsense,” said big Colin. “The only man o’ sense among them that I can see was yon Mr. Meredith that took the lassie away. What the deevil had Colin to do with a wife, and him no a penny in his pouch? But in the meantime yonder’s the steamboat, and’ I’m gaun down to meet them. If I were you I would stop still here. You’re no that strong,” said the farmer, looking upon his wife with a certain secret tenderness. “I would stop still at hame if I were you. It’s aye the best welcome for a callant to see his mother at her ain door.”

With which big Colin of Ramore strode down to the beach, where his sons were launching their own boat to meet the little steamer by which Colin was coming home. His wife looked after him with mingled feelings as he went down the brae. He had been a little hard upon Colin for these six months past, and had directed many a covert sarcasm at the young man who had gone so far out of the ordinary course as to seek health in Italy. The farmer did not believe in any son of his needing such an expedient; and, in proportion as it seemed unnecessary to his own vigorous strength, and ignorance of weakness, he took opportunity for jeers and jests which were to the mother’s keen ears much less good-natured than they seemed to be. And then he had been very angry on the receipt of Colin’s letter announcing his intended marriage, and it was with difficulty Mrs. Campbell had prevented her husband from sending in return such an answer as might have banished Colin for ever from his father’s house. Now all these clouds had blown past, and no harm had come of them, and he was coming home as of old. His brothers were launching the boat on the beach, and his father had gone down to meet the stranger. The Mistress stood at her door, restraining her eagerness and anxiety as best she could, and obeying her husband’s suggestion, as women do so often, by way of propitiating him, and bespeaking tenderness and forbearance for her boy. For indeed the old times had passed away, with all their natural family gladness, and union clouded by no sense of difference. Now it was a man of independent thoughts, with projects and pursuits of his own differing from theirs, and with a mind no doubt altered and matured by those advantages of travel which the Mistress regarded in her ignorance with a certain awe, who was coming back to Ramore. Colin had made so many changes, while so few had occurred at home; and even a bystander, less anxious than his mother, might have had reason to inquire and wonder how the matured and travelled son would look upon his unprogressive home.

It was now the end of September, though Colin had left Rome in May; but then his Scholarship was intended to give him the advantage of travel, and specially that peculiar advantage of attendance at a German University which is so much prized in Scotland. He had accordingly passed the intervening months in a little German town, getting up the language and listening to lectures made doubly misty by imperfect understanding of the tongue. The process left Colin’s theological ideas very much where it found them—which is to say, in a state of general vagueness and uncertainty; but then he had always the advantage of being able to say that he studied at Dickofptenberg. Lauderdale had left his friend, after spending, not without satisfaction, his hundred pounds, and was happily re-established in the “honourable situation” which he had quitted on Colin’s account; and the young man was now returning home alone, to spend a little time with his family before he returned to his studies. The Mistress watched him land from the boat, with her heart beating so loudly in her ears that no other sound was audible; and Colin did not lose much time in ascending the brae where she stood awaiting him. “But you should not have left your father,” Mrs. Campbell said, even in the height of her happiness. “He’s awfu’ proud to see you home, Colin, my man!” Big Colin, however, was no way displeased in his own person by his son’s desertion. He came up leisurely after him, not without a thrill of conscious satisfaction. The farmer was sufficiently disposed to scoff aloud at his son’s improved looks, at his beard, and his dress, and all the little particulars which made a visible difference between the present Colin and the awkward country lad of two years ago; but in his heart he made involuntary comparisons, and privately concluded that the minister’s son was far from being Colin’s equal, and that even the heir and pride of the Duke would have little to boast of in presence of the farmer’s son of Ramore. This—though big Colin would not for any earthly inducement have owned the sentiment—made him regard his son’s actions and intentions unawares with eyes more lenient and gracious. No contemptible weakness of health or delicacy of appearance appeared in the sunburnt countenance, so unexpectedly garnished by a light-brown, crisp, abundant beard—a beard of which, to tell the truth, Colin himself was rather proud, all the more as it had by rare fortune escaped that intensification of colour which is common to men of his complexion. The golden glitter which lighted up the great waves of brown hair over his forehead had not deepened into red on his chin, as it had done in Archie’s young but vigorous whiskers. His complexion, though not so ruddy as his brother’s, had the tone of perfect health and vigour, untouched by any shade of fatigue, or weakness. He was not going to be the “delicate” member of the family, as the farmer, with a certain contempt, had foreboded; for, naturally, to be delicate included a certain weakness of mind as well as of body to the healthful dwellers in Ramore.

“You’ll find but little to amuse you here after a’ your travels,” the farmer said. “We’re aye busy about the beasts, Archie and me. I’ll no say it’s an elevating study, like yours; but it’s awfu’ necessary in our occupation. For my part, I’m no above a kind o’ pride in my cattle; and there’s your mother, she’s set her shoulder to the wheel and won a prize.”

“Ay, Colin,” said the Mistress, hastening to take up her part in the conversation, “it’s aye grand to be doing something. And it’s no’ me but Gowan that’s won the prize. She was aye a weel-conditioned creature, that it was a pleasure to have onything to do with; but there’s plenty of time to speak about the beasts. You’re sure you’re weel and strong yourself, Colin, my man? for that’s the first thing now we’ve got you hame.”

“There doesna look much amiss with him,” said the farmer, with an articulate growl. “Your mother’s awfu’ keen for somebody to pet and play wi’; but there’s a time for a’ thing; and a callant, even, though he’s brought up for a minister, maun find out when he’s a man.”

“I should hope there was no doubt of that,” said Colin. “I’m getting on for two-and-twenty, mother, and strong enough for anything. Thanks to Harry Frankland for a splendid holiday; and now I mean to settle down to work.”

Here big Colin again interjected an inarticulate exclamation. “I ken little about your kind of work,” said the discontented father; “but, if I were you, when I wanted a bit exercise I would take a hand at the plough, or some wise-like occupation, instead of picking fools out of canals—or even out of lochs, for that matter,” he added, with a subdued thrill of pride. “Sir Thomas is aye awfu’ civil when he comes here; and, as for that bonnie little creature that’s aye with him, she comes chirping about the place with her fine English, as if she belonged to it. I never can make out what she and your mother have such long cracks about.”

“Miss Frankland?” said Colin, with a bright look of interest. The Mistress had been so much startled by this unexpected speech of her husband, that she turned round upon Colin with an anxious face, eager to know what effect an intimation so sudden might have upon him. For the farmer’s wife believed in true love and in first love with all her heart, and had never been able to divest herself of the idea that it was partly pique and disappointment in respect to Miss Matty which had driven her son into so hasty an engagement. “Is she still Miss Frankland?” continued the unsuspicious Colin. “I thought she would have been married by this time. She is a little witch,” the young man said with a conscious smile—“but I owe her a great many pleasant hours. She was always the life of Wodensbourne. Were they here this year?” he asked; and then another thought struck him. “Hollo! it’s only September,” said Colin; “I ought to ask, Are they here now?”

“Oh, ay, Colin, they’re here now,” said the Mistress, “and couldna be more your friends if you were one of the family. I’m no clear in my mind that thae two will ever be married. No that I ken of any obstacle—but, so far as I can see, a bright bonny creature like that, aye full of life and spirit, is nae match for the like of him.”

“I do not see that,” said the young man who once was Matty Frankland’s worshipper. “She is very bright, as you say; but he is the more honest of the two. I used to be jealous of Harry Frankland,” said Colin, laughing; “he seemed to have everything that was lacking to me; but I have changed my mind since then. One gets to believe in compensations,” said the young man; and he shut his hand softly where it rested on the table, as if he felt in it the tools which a dozen Harry Franklands could have made no use of. But this thought was but dimly intelligible to his hearers, to one of whom, at least, the word “jealous” was limited in its meaning; and, viewed in this light, the sentiment just expressed by Colin was hard to understand.

“I’m no fond of what folk call compensations,” said the Mistress. “A loss is aye a loss, whatever onybody can say. Siller that’s lost may be made up for, but naething more precious. It’s aye an awful marvel to me that chapter about Job getting other bairns to fill the place o’ the first. I would rather have the dead loss and the vacant place,” said the tender woman, with tears in her eyes, “than a’ your compensations. One can never stand for another—it’s awfu’ infidelity to think it. If I canna have happiness, I’ll be content with sorrow; but you’re no to speak of compensations to me.”

“No,” said Colin, laying his hand caressingly on his mother’s; “but I was not speaking of either love or loss. I meant only that for Harry Frankland’s advantages over me, I might, perhaps, have a little balance on my side. For example, I picked him out of the canal, as my father says,” the young man went on laughing; “but never mind the Franklands; I suppose I shall have to see them, as they are here.”

“Weel, Colin, you can please yourself,” said his father. “I’m no a man to court the great, but an English baronet, like Sir Thomas, is aye a creditable acquaintance for a callant like you; and he’s aye awfu’ civil as I was saying; but the first thing to be sure of is what you mean to do. You have had the play for near a year, and it doesna appear to me that tutorships, and that kind of thing, are the right training for a minister. You’ll go back to your studies, and go through with them without more interruptions, if you’ll be guided by me.”

But at this point Colin paused, and had a good many explanations to give. His heart was set on the Balliol scholarship, which he had once given up for Matty’s sake; and now there was another chance for him, which had arisen unexpectedly. This it was which had hastened his return home. As for his father, the farmer yielded with but little demur to this proposal. A clear Scotch head, even when it begins to lose its sense of the ideal, and to become absorbed in “the beasts,” seldom deceives itself as to the benefits of education; and big Colin had an intense secret confidence in the powers of his son. Honours at Oxford, in the imagination of the Scotch farmer, were a visionary avenue leading to any impossible altitude. He made a little resistance for appearance sake, but he was in reality more excited by the idea of the conflict—first, for the scholarship itself; then for all possible prizes and honours to the glory of Scotland and Ramore—than was Colin himself.

“But after a year’s play you’re no qualified,” he said, with a sense of speaking ironically, which was very pleasant to his humour. “A competition’s an awfu’ business; your rivals that have aye been keeping at it will be better qualified than you.”

At which Colin smiled, as his father meant him to smile, and answered, “I am not afraid,” more modestly a great deal than the farmer in his heart was answering for him; but then an unexpected antagonist arose.

“I dinna pretend to ken a great deal about Oxford,” said the Mistress, whose brow was clouded; “but it’s an awfu’ put-off of time as far as I can see. I’m no fond of spending the best of life in idle learning. Weel, weel, maybe its no idle learning for them that can spare the time; but for a lad that’s no out of the thought of settling for himself and doing his duty to his fellow-creatures—I was reading in a book no that long ago,” said Colin’s mother, “about thae fellowships and things; and of men so misguided as to stay on and live to be poor bachelor bodies, with their Greek and their Latin, and no mortal use in this world. Eh, Colin, laddie, if that was a’ that was to come of you!—”

“You’re keen to see your son in a pulpit, like the rest of the silly women,” said the farmer; “for my part, I’m no that bigoted to the kirk; if he could do better for himsel’——”

But at this juncture the Mistress got up with a severe countenance, laying aside the stocking she was knitting. “Oh, Colin, if you wouldn’t be so worldly!” cried the anxious mother. “I’m no one that’s aye thinking of a callant bettering himself. If he’s taken arles in one service, would you have him desert and gang over to another? I canna bear for my part to see broken threads; be one thing or be another, but dinna melt away and be nothing at a’,” the indignant woman concluded abruptly, moving away to set things in order in the room before they all retired for the night. It was the faint, far-off, and impossible idea of her son settling down into one of the Fellowships of which Mrs. Campbell had been reading which moved her to this little outburst. Her authority probably was some disrespectful novel or magazine article, and this was all the respect she had, in her ignorance, for the nurseries of learning.

Her husband got up in his turn with mingled complacency and derision, as came natural to him. “Leave the callant to himself, Jeanie. He kens what he’s doing; that’s to say, he has an awfu’ ambition considering that he’s only your son, and mine,” said big Colin of Ramore; and he went out to take a last look at his beasts with a thrill of secret pride which he would not for any reward have expressed in words. He was only a humble Westland farmer looking after his beasts, and she was but his true wife, a helpmeet no way above her natural occupations; but there was no telling what the boy might be, though he was only “your son and mine.” As for Colin the younger, he went up to his room half an hour later, after the family had made their homely thanksgiving for his return, smiling in himself at the unaccountable contraction of that little chamber, which he had once shared with Archie without finding it too small. Many changes and many thoughts had come and gone since he last lay down under its shelving roof. Miss Matty who had danced away like a will-o’-the-wisp, leaving no trace behind her; and Alice who had won no such devotion, yet whose soft shadow lay upon him still; and then there was the death-bed of Meredith, and his own almost death-bed at Wodensbourne, and all the thoughts that belonged to these. Such influences and imaginations mature a man unawares. While he sat recalling all that had passed since he left this nest of his childhood, the Mistress tapped softly at his door, and came in upon him with wistful eyes. She would have given all she had in the world for the power of reading her son’s heart at that moment, and, indeed, there was little in it which Colin would have objected to reveal to his mother. But the two human creatures were constrained to stand apart from each in the bonds of their individual nature—to question timidly and answer vaguely, and make guesses which were all astray from the truth. The Mistress came behind her son and laid one hand on his shoulder, and with the other caressed and smoothed back the waves of brown hair of which she had always been so proud. “Your hair is just as long as ever, Colin,” said the admiring mother; “but it’s no a’ your mother’s now,” she said with a soft, little sigh. She was standing behind him that her eyes might not disconcert her boy, meaning to woo him into confidence and the opening of his heart.

“I don’t know who else cares for it,” said Colin; and then he too was glad to respond to the unasked question. “My poor Alice,” he said; “if I could but have brought her to you, mother—She would have been a daughter to you.”

Mrs. Campbell sighed. “Eh, Colin, I’m awfu’ hard-hearted,” she said; “I canna believe in ony woman ever taking that place; I’m awfu’ bigoted to my ain. But she would have been dearly welcome for my laddie’s sake; and I’m real anxious to hear how it a’ was. It was but little you said in your letters; and a’ this night I’ve been wanting to have you to mysel’, and to hear all that there was to say.”

“I don’t know what there is to say,” said Colin; “I must have written all about it. Her position, of course, made no difference to my feelings,” he went on, rather hotly, like a man who in his own consciousness stands somewhat on his defence; “but it made us hasten matters. I thought if I could only have brought her home to you——”

“It was aye you for a kind thought,” said the Mistress; “but she would have had little need of the auld mother when she had the son; and Colin, my man, is it a’ ended now?”

“Heaven knows!” said Colin with a little impatience. “I have written to her through her father, and I have written to her direct, and all that I have had from her is one little letter, saying that her father had forbidden all further intercourse between us, and bidding me farewell; but——”

“But,” said the Mistress, “it no of her own will; she’s faithful in her heart? And if she’s true to you, you’ll be true to her? Isna that what you mean?”

“I suppose so,” said Colin; and then he made a little pause. “There never was any one so patient and so dutiful,” he said. “When poor Arthur died, it was she who forgot herself to think of us. Perhaps even this is not so hard upon her as one thinks.”

“Eh, but I was thinking first of my ain, like a heartless woman as I am,” said his mother. “I was thinking it was hard on you.”

He did not turn round his face to her as she had hoped; but her keen eyes could see the heightened colour which tinged even his neck and his forehead. “Yes,” said Colin; “but for my part,” he added, with a little effort, “it is chiefly Alice I have been thinking of. It may seem vain to say so—but she will have less to occupy her thoughts than I shall have, and—and the time may hang heavier. You don’t like me to go to Oxford, mother?” This question was said with a little jerk, as of a man who was pleased to plunge into a new subject; and the Mistress was far too close an observer not to understand what her son meant.

“I like whatever is good for you, Colin,” she said; “but it was aye in the thought of losing time. I’m no meaning real loss of time. I’m meaning I was thinking of mair hurry than there is. But you’re both awfu’ young, and I like whatever is for your good, Colin,” said the tender mother. She kept folding back his heavy locks as she spoke, altogether disconcerted and at a loss, poor soul; for Colin’s calmness did not seem to his mother quite consistent with his love; and the possibility of a marriage without that foundation was to Mrs. Campbell the most hideous of all suppositions. And then, like a true woman as she was, she went back to her little original romance, and grew more confused than ever.

“I’m maybe an awfu’ foolish woman,” she said, with an attempt at a smile, which Colin was somehow conscious of, though he did not see it, “but, even if I am, you’ll no be angry at your mother. Colin, my man, maybe it’s no the best thing for you that thae folk at the castle should be here?”

“Which folk at the castle?” said Colin, who had honestly forgotten for the moment. “Oh, the Franklands! What should it matter to me?”

This time he turned round upon her with eyes of unabashed surprise, which the Mistress found herself totally unprepared to meet. It was now her turn to falter, and stammer, and break down.

“Eh, Colin, it’s so hard to ken,” said the Mistress. “The heart’s awfu’ deceitful. I’m no saying one thing or another; for I canna read what you’re thinking, though you are my ain laddie; but if you were to think it best no to enter into temptation—”

“Meaning Miss Matty?” said Colin; and he laughed with such entire freedom that his mother was first silenced and then offended by his levity. “No fear of that, mother; and then she has Harry, I suppose, to keep her right.”

“I’m no so clear about that,” said Mrs. Campbell, nettled, notwithstanding her satisfaction, by her son’s indifference; “he’s away abroad somewhere; but I would not say but what there might be another,” she continued, with natural esprit du corps, which was still more irritated by Colin’s calm response,—

“Or two or three others,” said the young man; “but, for all that, you are quite right to stand up for her, mother; only I am not in the least danger. No, I must get to work,” said Colin; “hard work, without any more nonsense; but I’d like to show those fellows that a man may choose to be a Scotch minister though he is Fellow of an English college—”

The Mistress interrupted her son with the nearest approach to a scream which her Scotch self-control would admit of. “A Fellow of an English college,” she said in dismay, “and you troth-plighted to an innocent young woman that trusts in you, Colin! That I should ever live to hear such words out of the mouth of a son of mine!”

And, notwithstanding his explanations, the Mistress retired to her own room, ill at ease, and with a sense of coming trouble. “A man that’s engaged to be married shouldna be thinking of such an awfu’ off-put of time,” she said to herself; “and ah, if the poor lassie is aye trusting to his coming, and looking for him day by day!” This thought took away from his mother half the joy of Colin’s return. Perhaps her cherished son, too, was growing “worldly,” like his father, who thought of the “beasts” even in his dreams. And, as for Colin himself, he, too, felt the invisible curb upon his free actions, and chafed at it in the depths of his heart when he was alone. With all this world of work and ambition before him, it was hard to feel upon his proud neck that visionary rein. Though Alice had set him free in her little letter, it was still in her soft fingers that this shadowy bond remained. He had not repudiated it, even in his most secret thoughts; but, as soon as he began to act independently, he became conscious of the bondage, and in his heart resented it. If he had brought her home, as he had intended, to his father’s house, his young dependent wife, he probably would have felt much less clearly this sense of having forestalled the future, and mortgaged his very life.