It was accordingly but a very short time after these occurrences when Cosmo, with his wardrobe carefully over-looked, his “new blacks” supplemented by a coarser every-day suit, which took the place of the jacket which the lad had outgrown, and a splendid stock of linen, home-made, snow-white and bleached on the gowans—took his way to Edinburgh in all the budding glory of a student. In those days few people had begun to speculate whether the Scotch Universities were or were not as good as the English ones, or what might be the characteristic differences of the two. The academic glories of Edinburgh still existed in the fresh glories of tradition, if they had begun to decline in reality—and chairs were still held in the northern college by men at whose feet statesmen had learned philosophy.

The manner in which Cosmo Livingstone went to college was not one, however, in which anybody goes to Maudlin or Trinity. The lad went to take up his humble lodging at Mrs. Purdie’s in the High Street, and from thence dropped shyly to the college, paid his fees and matriculated, and there was an end of it. There were no rooms to look after, no tutors to see, no “men” to be made acquainted with. He had a letter in his pocket to one of the professors, and one to the minister of one of the lesser city churches. His abode was to be the same little room with the “concealed bed” and window overlooking the town, in which his mother had rested as she passed through Edinburgh, and the honest Kirkbride woman, who was his landlady, had been already engaged at a moderate weekly rate to procure all that he wanted for him.

After which fashion—feeling very shy and lonely, somewhat embarrassed by the new coat which his mother called a surtoo and regarded with respect, dismayed by the necessity of entering shops and making purchases for himself, and standing a little in awe of the other students and of the breakfast to which the professor had invited him—Cosmo began the battle of his life.

He was now nearly seventeen, young enough to be left by himself in that little lantern and watch-house hanging high over the picturesque heights and hollows of the beautiful old town, where the lad sat at his window in the winter evenings, watching the gorgeous frosty sunset, how it purpled with royal gleams and shadows all the low hills of Fife, and shed a distant golden glow—sometimes a glow redder and fiercer than gold—upon the chilly glories of the Firth. Then, as the light faded from the western horizon, and Inchkeith and Inchcolm no longer stood out in vivid relief against the illuminated waters, how the lights of the town, scarcely less fairy-like, began to steal along the streets and to sparkle out in the windows, hanging in irregular lines from the many-storied houses at the other side of the North Bridge, and gleaming like glow-worms in the dark little valley between.

Cosmo sat at his window with a book in his hand, but did not read much—perhaps the lad was not thinking much either, as he sat in the silent little room, listening to all the voices of all the population beneath him, which rose in a softened swell of sound to his high window; sometimes mournful, sometimes joyful, sometimes with a sharp cry in it like an appeal to God, sometimes full of distinct tones, inarticulate yet individual, sometimes sweet with the hum of children—a great, full, murmuring chorus never entirely silenced, in which the heart of humanity seemed, somehow, to betray itself, and reveal unawares the unspeakable blending of emotions which no one man can ever confess for himself.

Cosmo, who had spent a due portion of his time in his class-room, had taken notes of the lectures, and been, if not a remarkably devoted, at least a moderately conscientious student, often found himself very unwilling to light the candle, and sometimes even let his fire go out, in the charmed idleness of his window-seat, which was so strangely different from his old meditative haunt in the old castle, yet which absorbed him even more—and then Mrs. Purdie would come in with brisk good-humor, and rate him soundly for sitting in the dark, and make up the much-enduring northern coals into a blaze for him, and sweep the hearth, and light the candle, and bring in the little tray with its little tea-pot and blue and white cup and saucer, and the bread and butter—which Cosmo did full justice to, in spite of his dreams. When she came to remove the things again, Mrs. Purdie would stand with one arm a-kimbo to have a little talk with her young lodger; perhaps to tell him that she had seen the Melrose courier, or met somebody newly arrived by the coach from Kirkbride, or encountered an old neighbor, who “speered very kindly” for his mother; or, on the other hand, to confide to him her fear that the lad from the Highlants in her little garret overhead, who provided himsel’, would perish with cauld in this frosty weather, and was just as like as no’ to starve himsel’, and didna keep up a decent outside, puir callant, without mony a sair pinch that naebody kent onything about; or that her other lodger, who was also a student, was in a very ill way, coming in at a’ the hours of the night, and spending hard-won siller, and that she would be very glad to let his father and mother ken, but it didna become her to tell tales.

These, and a great many other communications of the same kind, Mrs. Purdie relieved her mind by making to Cosmo, whose youth and good-looks and local claims upon her regard, made him a great favorite with the kind-hearted, childless woman, who compounded “scones” for his tea, and even occasionally undertook the trouble of a pudding, “a great fash and fyke,” as she said to herself, puddings being little in favor with humble Scotchwomen of her class.

Under the care of this motherly attendant, Cosmo got on very well in his little Edinburgh lodging, and even in some degree enjoyed the solitude which was so new and so strange to the home-bred boy. He used to sally out early in the morning, perhaps to climb as far as St. Anthony’s Chapel, or mount the iron ribs of the Crags, to watch the early mists breaking over the lovely country, and old Edinburgh rising out of the cloud like a queen—or perhaps only to hasten along the cheerful length of Princes Street, when the same mists parted from the crags of the Castle, or lay white in the valley. The boy knew nothing about his own sentiments, what manner of fancies they were, and did not pause to inquire whether any one else thought like him. He hurried in thereafter to breakfast, fresh and blooming, and then with his books to college, encountering often enough that grave, gaunt Highlander in the garret, who had no time for poetic wanderings, and perhaps not much capacity, but who struggled on towards his own aim, with a desperate fortitude and courage, which no man of his name ever surpassed in a forlorn hope, or on a battle-field. The Highland student was nearly thirty, a man full grown and labor-hardened, working his way through his “humanity” and Divinity classes, looking forward, as the goal of his ambition, to some little Gaelic-speaking parish in the far north, where some day, perhaps, the burning Celtic fervor, imprisoned under his slow English speech and impenetrable demeanor, might make him the prophet of his district; and as he entered day by day at the same academic gates, side-by-side with the seventeen-year-old boy, a strange tenderness for the lad came into the man’s heart. They grew friends shyly yet warmly, unlike as they were, though Cosmo never was admitted to any of those secrets of his friend’s menage, which Mrs. Purdie guessed at, but which Cameron would never have forgiven any one for finding out; and next to the household of Norlaw, and the strange, half-perceived knowledge that came stealing to his mind, like a fairy, in his vigils by his window, Cameron was Cosmo’s first experience of what he was to meet in life.

The Highlander lived in his garret, you could not believe or understand how, gentleman-commoner—and would have tossed, not only your shoes, but you out of his high window, had you tried to be benevolent to him, as you tried it once to that clumsy sizar of Pembroke; notwithstanding, he was no ignoble beginning for a boy’s friendship, a fact which Cosmo Livingstone had it in him to perceive.