At that moment Colin had just pushed forth into the loch, flinging himself into the boat anyhow, disgusted with the world and himself and everything that surrounded him. In a moment, in the drawing of a breath, an utter blank and darkness had replaced all the lovely summer landscape that was glowing by anticipation in his heart. In the sudden pang of disappointment, the lad’s first impulse was to fling himself forth into the solitude, and escape the voices and looks which were hateful to him at that moment. Nor was it simple disappointment that moved him; his feelings were complicated by many additional shades of aggravation. It had seemed so natural that everything should happen this year as last year, and now it seemed such blind folly to imagine that it could have been possible. Not only were his dreams all frustrated and turned to nothing, but he fell ever so many degrees in his own esteem, and felt so foolish and vain and blind, as he turned upon himself with the acute mortification and sudden disgust of youth. What an idiot he had been! To think she would again leave all the brilliant world for the loch and the primroses, and those other childish delights on which he had been dwelling like a fool! Very bitter were Colin’s thoughts, as he dashed out into the middle of the loch, and there laid up his oars and abandoned himself to the buffetings of excited fancy. What right had he to imagine that she had ever thought of him again, or to hope that such a thread of gold could be woven into his rustic and homely web of fate? He scoffed at himself, as he remembered, with acute pangs of self-contempt, the joyous rose-coloured dreams that had occupied him only a few hours ago. What a fool he was to entertain such vain, complacent fancies! He, a farmer’s son, whose highest hope must be, after countless aggravations and exasperations, to get “placed” in a country church in some rural corner of Scotland. And then Colin recalled Sir Thomas Frankland’s proposal, and took to his oars again in a kind of fury, feeling it impossible to keep still. The baronet’s kind offer looked like an intentional insult to the excited lad. He thought to himself that they wanted to reward him somehow by rude, tangible means, as if he were a servant, for what Colin proudly and indignantly declared to himself was no service--certainly no intentional service. On the whole, he had never been so wretched, so downcast, so fierce and angry and miserable, in all his life. If he could but, by any means, by any toil, or self-denial, or sacrifice, get to Oxford, on his own account, and show the rich man and his son how little the Campbells of Ramore stood in need of patronage! All the glory had faded off the hills before Colin bethought himself of the necessity of returning to the homely house which he had greeted with so much natural pleasure a few hours before. His mother was standing at the door looking out for him as he