“You are very good to me, Lauderdale,” he said, with a little effusion; at the sound of which words his friend grasped his shoulder affectionately and went off, without saying anything more, into the dingy Glasgow streets. Colin himself paused a minute to watch the tall, retreating figure before he climbed his own tedious stair. “Summer’s the time to dream,” he repeated to himself, with a certain brightness in his face, and went up the darkling staircase three steps at a time, stimulated most probably by some thoughts more exciting than anything connected with college prizes or essays. It was the end of March, and already now and then a chance breeze whispered to Colin that the primroses had begun to peep out about the roots of the trees in all the soft glens of the Holy Loch. It had only been in the previous spring that primroses became anything more to Colin than they were to Peter Bell; but now the youth’s eyes were anointed--he had begun to write poetry, and to taste the delights of life. Though he had already learned to throw a very transparent vein of pretended sadness upon his verses, it did not occur to Colin as possible that the life which was so sweet one year might not be equally delightful the next, or that anything could occur to deprive him of the companionship he was looking forward to. He had never received any shock yet in his youthful certainty of pleasure, and did not stop to think that the chance which brought Sir Thomas Frankland’s nursery, and with it his pretty niece, to the Castle, for all the long spring and summer, might never recur again. So he went upstairs three steps at a time, in the dingy twilight, and sat down to his essay, raising now and then triumphant, youthful eyes, which surveyed the mean walls and poor little room without seeing anything of their poverty, and making all his young, arrogant, absolute philosophy sweet with thoughts of the primroses, and the awaking waters, and the other human creature, the child-Eve of the boy’s Paradise. This was how Colin managed to compose the essay, which drew tears of mingled laughter and emotion from Lauderdale’s eyes, and dazzled the professor himself with its promise of eloquence, and secured the prize in the philosophy class. The Highland colt with the red hair, who was Colin’s rival, was very much sounder in his views, and had twenty times more logic in his composition; but the professor was dazzled, and the class itself could scarcely forbear its applause. Colin went home accordingly covered with glory. He was nearly nineteen; he was one of the most promising students of the year; he had already distinguished himself sufficiently to attract the attention of people interested in college successes; and he had all the long summer before him, and no one could tell how many rambles about the glens, how many voyages across the loch, how many researches into the wonders of the hills. He bade farewell to Lauderdale