“Ye’ll find a’ strange when ye gang to Glasgow,” continued the farmer. “I’m no feared for any great temptation, except idleness, besetting a callant like you; but a man that has his ain bread and his ain way to make in the world, has nae time for idleness. You’ve guid abilities, Colin, and if they dinna come to something you’ll have but yoursel’ to blame: and I wouldna’ put the reproach on my Maker of having brought a useless soul into the world, if I were you,” said big Colin. “There’s never ony failures that I can see among the lower creation, without some guid reason; but it’s the privilege o’ men to fail without ony cause o’ failure except want o’ will to do weel. When ye see the like of George, for instance, ye ask what the Lord took the trouble to make such a ne’er-do-weel for?” said the homely philosopher; “I never could help thinking, for my part, that it was labour lost--though nae doubt Providence kent better; but I wouldna’ be like _that_ if I could help it. There’s no a silly sheep on the hill, nor horse in the stable, that isna’ a credit to Him that made it. I would take good heed no to put mysel’ beneath the brute beasts, if I were you.” “I’m no meaning,” cried Colin, with ungrammatical abruptness and a little offence; for he was pricked in his pride by this address, which was not, according to his father’s ideas, any “appeal to his feelings,” but a calm and common-sense way of putting an argument before the boy. “I never said you were,” said the farmer. “It’ll cost us hard work to keep ye at your studies, and I put it to your honour no to waste your time; and you’ll write regular, and mind what kind o’ thoughts your mother’s thinking at home in Ramore; and I may tell you, Colin, I put confidence in you,” said the father, laying his big hand with a heavy momentary pressure upon the lad’s shoulder. “Now, good night, and go to your bed, and prepare for the morn.” Such were the parting advices with which the boy was sent out into the world. His mother was in his room, kneeling before his chest, adding the last particulars to its store, when Colin entered the homely little chamber--but what they said to each other before they parted was for nobody’s ear; and the morning was blazing with a wintry brightness, and all the hills standing white against the sky, and the heart of the mistress hopeful as the day, when she wiped off her tears with her apron, and waved her farewell to her boy, as he went off in the little steamer which twice a day thrilled the loch with communications from the world. “He’ll come back in the spring,” she said to herself, as she went about her homely work, and ordered her household. And so young Colin went forth, all dauntless and courageous, into the great battlefield, to encounter whatsoever conflicts might come to him, and to conquer the big world and all that was therein, in the victorious dreams of his youth. CHAPTER V.