And then she took up her basket of mended stockings, and, with a little impatience, to hide a chance drop on her eyelash, carried them away to Colin’s room, where his chest stood open and was being packed for the journey. It was not a very long journey, but it was the boy’s first outset into independent life; and very independent life was that which awaited the country lad in Glasgow, where he was going to the University. On such a day dark shadows of many a melancholy story floated somehow upon the darkened atmosphere into Mrs. Campbell’s mind. “If we could but have boarded him in a decent family,” she said to herself, as she packed her boy’s stockings. But it had been “a bad year” at Ramore, and no decent family would have received young Colin for so small a sum as that on which he himself and various more wise advisers considered it possible for him to live, by the help of an occasional hamper of home produce, in a little lodging of his own. Mrs. Campbell had acceded to this arrangement as the best; but it occurred to her to remember various wrecks she had encountered even in her innocent life; and her heart failed her a little as she leaned over Colin’s big “kist.” Colin himself said very little on the subject, though he thought of nothing else; but he was a taciturn Scotch boy, totally unused to disclose his feelings. He was strolling round and round the place with his hands in his pockets, gradually getting soaked by the persistent rain, and rather liking it than otherwise. As he strayed about--having nothing to do that day in consideration of its being his last day at home--Colin’s presence was by no means welcomed by the other people about the farm. Of course, being unoccupied himself, he had the sharpest eyes for every blunder that was going on in the stable or the byre, and announced his little discoveries with a charming candour. But in his heart, even at the moment when he was driving Jess to frenzy by uncalled-for remarks touching the dinner of the pigs, Colin was all a-blaze with anticipation of the new life that was to begin to-morrow. He thought of it as something grand and complete, not made up of petty details like this life he was leaving. It was a mist of learning, daily stimulation and encounter of wits, with glorious prizes and honours hanging in the hazy distance, which Colin saw as he went strolling about the farm-yard in the rain, with his hands in his pockets. If he said anything articulate to himself on the subject, it was comprised in one succinct, but seemingly inapplicable, statement. “Eton’s no a college,” he said once, under his breath, with a dark glow of satisfaction on his face as he stopped opposite the door, and cast a glance upon the loch and the boat, which latter was now drawn up high and dry out of reach of the wintry water; and then a cloud suddenly lowered over Colin’s face, as a sudden doubt of his own accuracy seized him--a torturing thought