that has nothing in this world to say. I am whiles inclined to think," said big Colin, thoughtfully-"laddies, you may as well go to your beds. You'll see Colin the morn, and ye canna understand what we're talking about. I am whiles disposed to think," he continued after a pause, during which the younger members of the family had left the room, after a little gentle persuasion on the part of the mistress, "when I go into the kirk on a bonnie day, such as we have by times on the loch baith in summer and winter, that its an awfu' waste of time. You lose a' the bonnie prospect and you get naething but weariness for your pains. I've aye been awfu' against set prayers read out of a book; but I canna but allow the English chapel has an advantage there, for nae fool can spoil your devotion as I've heard it done many and many's the time. I ken our minister's prayers very near as well as if they were written down," said the farmer of Ramore,

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and the maist part of them is quite nonsense. Ony little scraps o' real supplication there may be in them, you could get through in five minutes; the rest is a' remarks, that I never can discriminate if they're meant for me or for the Almighty; but my next neibor would think me an awfu' heathen if he heard what I'm saying," he continued, with a smile; "and I'm far from sure that I would get a mair merciful judgment from the wife herself."

The mistress had been very busy with her knitting while her husband was speaking; but, notwithstanding her devotion to her work, she was uneasy and could not help showing it.

"If we had been our lane it would have been naething," she said to Colin, privately; "but afore yon man that's a stranger and doesna ken!" With which sentiment she sat listening, much disturbed in her mind. "It's no a thing to say before the bairns," she said, when she was thus appealed to, "nor before folk that dinna ken you.

A stranger might think you were a careless man to hear you speak," said Mrs. Campbell, turning to Lauderdale with a bitter vexation, "for a' that

you hanna missed the kirk half a dozen times a' the years I have kent you, and that's a long time," said the mother, lifting her soft eyes to her boy. When she looked at him she remembered that he too had been rash in his talk. "You're turning awfu' like your father, Colin," said the mistress, taking up the same thoughtless way of talking. "But I think different for a' you say. Our ain kirk is aye our ain kirk to you as well as to me, in spite o' your speaking. I'm well accustomed to their ways," she said, with a smile, to Lauderdale, who, so far from being the dangerous observer she thought him, had gone off at a tangent into his own thoughts.

"The Confession of Faith is a real respectable historical document," said Lauderdale. "I might not like to commit myself to a' it says, if you were to ask me; but then I'm not the kind o' man that has a heart to commit myself to anything in the way of intel lectual truth. I wouldna bind myself to say that I would stand by any document a year after it was put forth, far less a hundred years. There's things in it naebody believes-for example, about the earth being made in six days; but I would not advise a man to quarrel with his kirk and his profession for the like of that. I put no dependence on geology for my part, nor any of the sciences. How can I tell but somebody might make a discovery the morn that would upset all their fine stories? But, on the whole, I've very little to say against the Confession. It's far more guarded about predestination and so forth than might have been expected. Every man that has a head on his shoulders believes in predestination; though I would not be the man to commit myself to any statement on the subject. The like of me is good for little," said Colin's friend, stretching his long limbs towards the fire, "but I've great ambition for that callant. He's not a common callant, though I'm speaking before his face," said Lauderdale; "it would be terrible mortifying to me to see him put himself in a corner and refuse the yoke."

"If I cannot bear the yoke conscien

tiously, I cannot bear it all," said Colin, with a little heat. "If you can't put your name to what you don't believe, why should I?-and as for ambition," said the lad, "ambition! what does it mean?—a country church, and two or three hundred ploughmen to criticise me, and the old wives to keep in good humour, and the young ones to drink tea with-is that work for a man?" cried the youth, whose mind was agitated, and who naturally had said a good deal more than he intended to say. He looked round in a little alarm after this rash utterance, not knowing whether he had been right or wrong in such a disclosure of his sentiments. The father and mother looked at each other, and then turned their eyes simultaneously upon their son. Perhaps the mistress had a glimmering of the correct meaning which Colin would not have betrayed wittingly had it cost him his life.

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"Eh, Colin, sometime ye'll think better," she cried under her breath"after a' our pride in you and our hopes!" The tears came into her eyes as she looked at him. "It's mair honour to serve God than to get on in the world," said the mistress. The disappointment went to her heart, as Colin could see; she put her hands hastily to her eyes to clear away the moisture which dimmed them. "It's may-be naething but a passing fancy-but it's no what I expected to hear from any bairn of mine," she said with momentary bitterness. As for the farmer, he looked on with a surprised and inquiring countenance.

"There has some change come over you, Colin-what has happened?" said his father. "I'm no a man that despises money, nor thinks it a sin to get on in the world, but it's only fools that quarrel wi' what's within their reach for envy of what they can never win to. If ye had displayed a strong bent any other way I wouldna have minded,” said big Colin-"but it's aye appeared to me that to write in a kind of general way on whatever subject might chance to turn up was mair the turn of your mind than ony other line, which is a

sure sign you were born to be a minister. It's the new-fangled dishes at Ardmartin that have spoiled the callant's digestion," said the farmer with a twinkle of humour in his eye-" they tell me that discontent and meesery of a' kinds proceeds no from the mind but from the mucous membrane. He'll come back to his natural inclination when he's been at home for a day or two. I would na' say but Gregory's mixture was a great moral agent according to the new philosophy," said big Colin, laying his large hand on his son's shoulder with a pressure which meant more than his words; but the youth was vexed, and impatient, and imagined himself laughed at, which is the most dreadful of insults at Colin's age, and in his circumstances. He paid no attention to his father's looks, but plunged straightway into vehement declaration of his sentiments, to which the elder people around him listened with many complications of feeling unknown to Colin. The lad thought, as was natural at his years, that nobody had ever felt before him the bondage of circumstance, and that it was a new revelation he was making to his little audience. If he could have imagined that both the men were looking at him with the half sympathy, half pity, half envy of their maturer years, remembering as vividly as if it had occurred but yesterday similar outbreaks of impatience and ambition and natural resistance to all the obstacles of life, Colin would have felt deeply humiliated in his youthful fervour; or, if he could but have penetrated the film of softening dew in his mother's eyes, and beheld there the woman's perennial spectatorship of that conflict which goes on for ever. Instead

of that, he thought he was making a new revelation to his hearers; he thought he was cruel to them, tearing asunder their pleasant mists of illusion, and disenchanting their eyes; he had not an idea that they knew all about it better than he did, and were watching him along the familiar path which they all had trod in different ways, and of which they knew the inevitable ending. Colin, in the heat and im

patience of his youth, took full advantage of his moment of utterance. He poured forth in his turn that flood of immeasurable discontent with all conditions and restrictions, which is the privilege of his years. To be sure, the restrictions and conditions surrounding himself were, so far as he knew, the sole objects of that indignation and scorn and defiance which came to his lips by force of nature. The mistress listened, for her part, with that mortification which is always the woman's share. She understood him, sympathised with him, and yet did not understand nor could tolerate his dissent from all that in her better judgment she had decided upon on his behalf. She was far more tender, but she was less tolerant than the other spectators of Colin's outburst; and mingled with all her personal feeling was a sense of wounded pride and mortification, that her boy had thus betrayed himself "before a stranger." "If we had been our lane, it would have been less matter," she said to herself, as she wiped the furtive tears hurriedly from the corners of her

eyes.

When Colin had come to an end there was a pause. The boy himself thought it was a pause of horror and consternation, and perhaps was rather pleased to produce an effect in some degree corresponding to his own excitement. After that moment of silence, however, the farmer got up from his chair. "Its very near time we were a' gaun to our beds," said big Colin. "I'll take a look round to see that the beasts are comfortable, and then we'll have in the hot water. You and me can have a talk the morn,” said the farmer to his son. That was all the reply which the youth received from the parental authorities. When the master went out to look after the beasts, Lauderdale followed to the door, where Colin in another moment strayed after him, considerably mortified, to tell the truth; for even his mother addressed herself to the question of "hot water," which implied various other accessories of the homely supper-table; and the

young man, in his excitement and elevation of feeling, felt as if he had suddenly tumbled down out of the stormy but lofty firmament, into which he was soaring-down, with a shock, into the embraces of the homely tenacious earth. He went after his friend, and stood by Lauderdale's side, looking out into a darkness so profound that it made his eyes ache and confused his very mind. The only gleam of light visible in earth or heaven was big Colin's lantern, which showed a tiny gleam from the door of the byre where the farmer was standing. All the lovely landscape round the loch and the hills, the sky and the clouds, lay unseen— hidden in the night. "Which is an awfu' grand moral lesson, if we had true sense to discern it," said the voice of Lauderdale ascending half way up to the clouds; "for the loch has na' vanished, as might be supposed, but only the light. As for you, callant," said the philosopher, "you hae neither the light nor the darkness as yet, but are aye seeing miraculous effects like yon man Turner's pictures, Northern Streamers, or Aurora Borealis, or whatever ye may call it. And it's but just you should have your day;" with which words Lauderdale heaved a great sigh, which moved the clouds of hair upon Colin's forehead, and even seemed to disturb for a moment, the profound gloom of the night.

"What do you mean by having my day?" said Colin, who was affronted by the suggestion. "You know I have said nothing that is not true. Can I help it if I see the difficulties of my own position more clearly than you do, who are not in my circumstances?" cried the lad with a little indignation. Lauderdale, who Lauderdale, who was watching the lantern gliding out and in through the darkness, was some time before he made any reply.

"I'm no surprised at yon callant Leander, when one comes to think of it," he said in his reflective way; "it's a fine symbol, that Hero in her tower. May be she took the lamp from the altar and left the household god in

darkness," said the calm philosopher; "but that makes no difference to the story. I would na' say but I would swim the Hellespont myself for such an inducement-or the Holy Loch-its little matter which-but whiles she lets fall the torch before you get to the end-"

"What on earth do you mean? or what has Hero to do with me?" cried Colin, with a secret flush of shame and rage, which the darkness concealed but which he could scarcely restrain.

"I was not speaking of you-and after all, it's but a fable," said Lauderdale; "most history is fable, you know; it's no actual events, (which I never believe in, for my part,) but the instincts o' the human mind that make history, and that's how the Heros and Leanders are aye to be accounted for. He was drowned in the end like most people," said Lauderdale, turning back to the parlour where the mistress was seated, pondering with a troubled countenance upon this new aspect of her boy's life. Amid the darkness of the world outside this tender woman sat in the sober radiance of her domestic hearth, surrounded and enshrined by light; but she was not, like Hero, on the tower.

Colin, too, came back, following his friend with a flush of excitement upon his youthful countenance. After all, the idea was not displeasing to the young man. The Hellespont, or the Holy Loch, was nothing to the bitter waters which he was prepared to breast for the sake of the imaginary torch held up in the hand of that imaginary woman who was beckoning Colin, as he thought, into the unknown world. Life was beginning anew in his person, and all the fables had to be enacted over again; and what did it matter to the boy's heroic fancy, if he too should go to swell the records of the noble martyrs, and be drowned, as Lauderdale said, like most people in the end.

There was no more conversation upon that important subject until next morning, when the household of Ramore got up early, and sat down to breakfast before it was perfect daylight; but Colin's heart jumped to his mouth, and a visible thrill went through the whole family, when the farmer came in from his early inspection of all the byres and stables, with another letter from Sir Thomas Frankland conspicuous in his hand.

To be continued.

Y