“What for?” said Lauderdale. “I’ll no say but what it’s an interesting study, if life was long enough to allow such indulgences; but—take you my word for it, callant—it’s awfu’ hard to see a life wearing out like that, drop by drop. It’s not only that you might get to be fond of the poor lad himself, and miss him sair when he was gone,” said the philosopher, who had not just then perfect command of himself; “but it raises awfu’ questions, and you are not one of those that can take things as they come and ask no reason. What should you bind yourself for! I see a’ that would happen as clear as day. You would go into a bit country place with him, only to watch him die; and, when he was gone, you would be left with the bit bonnie sister, two bairns together—and then—but you’re no destitute of imagination,” said Lauderdale, grimly; “and I leave you to figure that part of the business to yoursel’.”

“This is foolish talk,” said Colin. “The sister, except that I am very sorry for her, has nothing in the world to do with it. If we could manage as well beside them as anywhere else, one should be glad to be of some use to one’s fellow-creatures. I am not afraid of anything that might happen,” the young man added, with a slight additional colour. “As for responsibility, it is strange to hear you warning me against that—you who were willing to take upon yourself all the responsibility of travelling with me when you thought I was dying—”

“No such thing,” said Lauderdale, hotly. “I’m fool enough, no doubt, but no such a fool as that. Callants of your age canna keep a medium. When you have a sore finger you take thoughts of dying; but I’m a man of some experience in this world. I’m travelling for my own pleasure and no for you, nor no man. As for this lad, I’ve seen the like before. He’s no singular, though I’ve little doubt he thinks he is. It’s awfu’ hard work to stop short just when you’ve come to the brow of the hill, and see a’ the fair prospect before you,” said Colin’s guardian, whose countenance was overcast and cloudy. “When the mind’s no very strong, the like of that sets it off its balance. I’ve seen them that came out of the trial as calm as the angels of God,” he went on, after a little pause, with a strain in his voice which showed unusual emotion; “and I have seen them that battled with Him that made them, to make Him render a reason; and I have seen them that took it with a high hand, and turned into preachers like this one. ‘A Voice from the Grave,’ did she say? But you’re a’ babies that ken no better. How are the like of you to know that there’s men like me—ay, and women more than men—that would give a’ their living, and would not grudge life itself, no for a voice only, but for two or three words—for one word and no more.” He put down his face in his hands for a moment as he spoke, though not to conceal tears; for Lauderdale’s sorrows, whatever they might have been, were wrapped in the deadly stillness of that past grief with which no stranger intermeddles; and his young companion watched him sorrowfully, sympathetically, but in ignorance, and with the timidity of youth, not knowing what to say.

“Him, and the like of him,” said Lauderdale, going on more softly when he found that Colin made no reply, “their voice from the grave is like a Halloween ghost to frighten the unwary. Whisht, callant! I’m no laughing at the poor dying lad. There’s nae laughing in my head one way or another; but it’s so little you know. You never think, with your warnings and your terrors, of us that have sat by our graves for years, and been confounded by the awfu’ silence. Why can they no speak nor we hear? You’ll no tell me that Heaven and the presence of God can take the love out of a living soul. I wish you would not disturb my mind with your vain thoughts; it’s no a question I dare go into. If love’s no everlasting, I’ve no desire to be everlasting myself; and, if I’m to be no more hereafter to them that belong to me, than to legions of strange angels, or a haill nation of fremd folk!—Whisht, callant! you’re no to say such things to me.”

Colin said nothing at all to interrupt this monologue. He let his friend wear himself out, pacing up and down the narrow little cabin, which it required but two of Lauderdale’s strides to traverse from end to end. He had known a chance word to produce similar results before, but had never been made acquainted with the real history of his friend’s life. He waited now till this excitement was over, knowing by experience that it was the best way; and, after a while, Lauderdale calmed down and came back to his seat, and resumed the conversation where he had left it, before his heart within him was roused to make brief utterance of its unknown burden.

“The short and the long of it is,” said Lauderdale, “that you’re making up your mind, by some process of your own—I’m no saying what it is—to give up our own plan and tack yourself on to a poor failing callant that has not above a month or two to live?”

“How do you know he has not above a month or two to live?” said Colin. “You thought the same of me a few weeks ago. One hears of the climate working wonders; and, if he had some one by him to amuse and interest him, and keep him off that book, as—as Miss Meredith says—”

“Oh, ay, no doubt, no doubt,” said Lauderdale, drily. “He has one nurse already bound to him body and soul, and maybe, if he had another to undertake the spiritual department—! But you’re no old enough, callant, to take him in hand, and you’re no strong enough, and I cannot say, for my own part, that I see any special qualification for such an office in ye,” said the merciless critic, looking at Colin in a seriously contemplative way, with his head a little on one side. After he had shown any deep emotion, Lauderdale, like a true Briton, despised himself, and made as great a leap as was practicable on the other side.

“No,” said Colin, who was a little piqued in spite of himself; “I don’t suppose I am good for much; and I never thought of being his nurse. It is out of the question to imagine that I could be for Meredith, or any other man, what you have been for me.”

“I’ve kent ye longer than two days,” said Colin’s guardian, without showing any signs of propitiation, “which to be sure makes a little difference. Though them that are destined to come together need little time to make it up—I’ve aye been a believer, for my part, not only in love, but in friendship, at first sight.”

“There’s no question of either love or friendship,” said Colin, with prompt irritation. “Surely one may feel pity, sympathy, fellow-feeling, with a man of one’s own age without being misunderstood.”

“I understand you an awfu’ deal better than you understand yourself,” said Lauderdale; “and, as I was saying, I am a great believer in first impressions. It’s a mercenary kind of thing to be friends with a man for his good qualities—there’s a kind of barter in it that goes against my instincts; but, when you take to a man for nae reason, but out of pure election and choice, that’s real friendship—or love, as it might be,” he went on, without pity, enjoying the heightened colour and air of embarrassment on Colin’s face.

“You say all this to make me lose my temper,” said Colin. “Don’t let us talk of it any more to-night; I will think it all over again, since you oppose it, and to-morrow—”

“Ay, to-morrow,” said Lauderdale—“it’s a bonnie new world, and we’ll no interfere with it. Good-night, callant; I’m no a man that can be quarrelled with if you tried ever so hard; to-morrow you’ll take your own way.”

Colin did not sleep till the night was far advanced. He lay awake, watching the moonlight, and pondering over this matter, which looked very important as he contemplated it. By thinking was meant, in his mind, as in most minds of his age, not any complicated course of reasoning, but a rapid framing of pictures on one side and the other. On one side he saw Meredith beguiled from his book, persuaded to moderate his words in season and out of season, and induced to take a little interest in ordinary human affairs, gradually recovering his health, and returning to a life which should no longer appear to him a near preparation for dying; and it cannot be denied that there did come into Colin’s mind a certain consciousness of grateful looks and sweet-voiced thanks attending this restoration, which made the picture wonderfully pleasant. Then, on the other side, there was Lauderdale’s sketch of the sadder possibilities filled in by Colin’s imagination:—poor Meredith dying slowly, looking death in the face for long days and lonely nights, sorely wanting all the succour that human compassion could give him; and the forlorn and solitary mourner that would be left, so young and friendless, by the stranger’s grave. Perhaps, on the whole, this suggestion of Lauderdale’s decided the matter. The thought was too pitiful, too sad to be borne. She was nothing in the world to him; but she was a woman, and Colin thought indignantly of the unchristian cowardice which, for fear of responsibility, would desert a friendless creature exposed to such dangers. Notwithstanding, he was prudent, very prudent, as was natural. It was not Alice, but Arthur Meredith who was to be his friend. She had nothing to do with this decision whatever. If such a melancholy necessity should happen, Colin felt it was in him, respectfully, sympathetically, to take the poor girl home; and if, somehow, the word “home” suggested to him his mother, who that knew anything of the Mistress, could wonder at that thought?

Thus he went on drawing the meshes closer about his feet, while the moonlight shone on the sea, and poor Meredith wrote his book, and Lauderdale, as sleepless as his charge, anxiously pondered the new state of affairs. At home that same moon suggested Colin to more minds than one in the peaceful country over which the March winds were blowing. Miss Matty thought of him, looking out over the Wodensbourne avenue, where the great trees stood stately in the moonlight with a glory on their heads. She was so late because she had been at a ball, where her cousin Harry had made himself highly disagreeable, and where, prompted by his sulky looks, she had carried a little flirtation a hair’s-breadth too far—which was not a comfortable consciousness. Why she should think of Colin under such circumstances it would be hard to say; but the thoughts of a young woman at three o’clock in the morning are not expected to be logical. She thought of him with a shadow of the same feeling that made the Psalmist long for the wings of a dove; though, if Miss Matty had but known it, her reception—could she have made her escape to her former worshipper at that moment—would have been of a disappointing character. And about the same time the Mistress woke out of her quiet sleep, and saw the broad, white flood of light streaming through the little square window of the room in which Colin was born. Her fancy was busy enough about him night and day; and she fancied she could see, as clear as in a picture, the ship speeding on, with perhaps its white wings spread over the glistening sea, and the moon stealing in at the cabin window, and caressing her boy, who must be fast asleep, resting and gathering strength, with new life breathing in upon him in every breath of favourable wind that crisped the sleeping sea. Such was the vision that came to the mind of the Mistress when she woke in the “dead of night,” and saw the moonlight at her window. “God bless my Colin,” she said to herself, as she closed her tender eyes; and in the meantime Colin, thinking nothing of his old love, and not very much of his home, was busily engaged in weaving for himself another tangle in the varied web of existence—although none of the people most interested in him—except Lauderdale, who saw a faint shadow of the future—had the least idea that this night at sea was of any moment in his life. He did not know it himself, though he was conscious of a certain thrill of pleasant excitement and youthful awe, half voluntary, half real. And so the new scene got arranged for this new act of the wonderful drama; and all the marvellous, delicate influences of Providence and will, poising and balancing each other, began to form and shape the further outlines of his life.