All these things went through Colin’s mind as he sat in the dining-room after dinner contemplating Sir Thomas’s nap, which was not of itself an elevating spectacle. He thought to himself at that moment that he was but fulfilling the office of a drudge at Wodensbourne, which anybody could fill. It did not require those abilities which had won with acclamation the prize in the philosophy class to teach Charley Frankland the elements of science; and all the emulations and glories of his college career came back to Colin’s mind. The little public of the University had begun to think of him--to predict what he would do, and anticipate his success, at home; but here, who knew anything about him? These thoughts disturbed him much as he sat watching the fire gleam in the wainscot, and calculating the recurrence of that next great snore which would wake Sir Thomas, and make him sit up of a sudden and look fiercely at his companion before he murmured out a “Beg your pardon,” and went to sleep again. Not an interesting prospect certainly. Should he go home? should he represent to the baronet, when he woke up for the night, that it had all been a mistake, and that his present office was perfectly unsuited to his ambition and his hopes? But then what could he say? for after all it was as Charley Frankland’s tutor simply, and with his eyes open, that he came to Wodensbourne, and Sir Thomas had said nothing about the society of his niece, or any other society, to tempt him thither. Colin sat in a bitterness of discontent, which would have been incredible to him a few weeks before, pondering these questions. There was not a sound to be heard, but the dropping of the ashes on the hearth, and Sir Thomas’s heavy breathing as he slept. Life went on velvet slippers in the great house from which Colin would gladly have escaped (he thought) to the poorest cottage on the Holy Loch. He could not help recalling his shabby little room in Glasgow, and Lauderdale’s long comments upon life, and all the talk and the thoughts that made existence bright in that miserable little place, which Sir Thomas Frankland’s grooms would not have condescended to live in, but which the unfortunate young tutor thought of with longing as he sat dreary in the great dining-room. What did it matter to him that the floor was soft with Turkey carpets, that the wine on the table was of the most renowned vintages, and that his slumbering companion in the great easy-chair was the head of one of the oldest commoner families in England--a baronet and a county member? Colin after all was only a son of the soil; he longed for his Glasgow attic, and his companions who spoke the dialect of that remarkable but unlovely city, and felt bitterly in his heart that he had been cheated. Yet it was hard to say to any one--hard even to put in words to himself--what the cheat was. It was a deception he had practised on himself, and in the bitterness of his disappointment