“I had nae intention of answering any questions; and I can take care of myself,” answered Colin, hanging back and declining the invitation. The stranger, however, only smiled, stretched out his long arm, and drew the boy towards him. And certainly he had received a cut on the head which required to be attended to. Reluctant as he was, the lad was too shy to make any active resistance, even if he had possessed moral courage enough to oppose successfully the will of a man so much older than himself. He submitted to have the cut bathed and plastered up, which his new friend did with the utmost tenderness, delivering a slow and lengthy address all the while over his head. When the operation was over, Colin was more and more perplexed what to do with his visitor; though a little faint after his fight and excitement, he was still well enough to be very hungry, but the idea of asking this unknown friend to share his dinner did not occur to him. He had never done anything beyond launching the boat, or mounting the horses on his own responsibility before, and he could not tell what Mrs. Fergus would think of his wound or his visitor. Altogether, Colin was highly perplexed and not over civil, and sat down upon the edge of a chair facing the intruder with an expression of countenance very plainly intimating that he thought him much in the way. But the stranger was much above any consideration of Colin’s countenance. He was very tall, as we have said, very gaunt and meagre, with a long, pale face surmounted by black locks, thin and dishevelled. He had a black beard, too--a thing much less common at that time than now--which increased his general aspect of dishevelment. His eyes were large, and looked larger in the great sockets hollowed out by something more than years, from which they looked out as from two pale caverns; yet, with all this gauntness of aspect, his smile, when he smiled, which was seldom, threw a wonderful light over his face, and reminded Colin somehow, he could not tell how, of the sudden gleam of the sun over the Holy Loch when the clouds were at the darkest, and melted the boy’s heart in spite of himself. “I was saying we were not very like classfellows,” said the stranger; “that’s a queer feature in our Scotch colleges; there’s you, a great deal too young, and me, a great deal too old; and here we meet for the same purpose, to learn two dead languages and some sciences that are only half living; and that’s the only way for either you or me to get ourselves made ministers. The English system’s an awful deal better, I’m meaning in theory;--as for the practice, that’s neither here nor there. Nothing’s right in practice. It’s a great thing to have a right idea at the bottom if you can.” “Are you to be a minister?” said Colin, not well knowing what to say.