“I’m no surprised at yon callant Leander, when one comes to think of it,” he said in his reflective way; “it’s a fine symbol, that Hero in her tower. May be she took the lamp from the domestic altar and left the household god in darkness,” said the calm philosopher; “but that makes no difference to the story. I wouldna’ say but I would swim the Hellespont myself for such an inducement--or the Holy Loch--it’s little matter which; but whiles she lets fall the torch before you get to the end--” “What do you mean? or what has Hero to do with me?” cried Colin, with a secret flush of shame and rage, which the darkness concealed but which he could scarcely restrain. “I was not speaking of you--and after all, it’s but a fable,” said Lauderdale; “most history is fable, you know; it’s no actual events, (which I never believe in, for my part,) but the instincts o’ the human mind that make history--and that’s how the Heros and Leanders are aye to be accounted for. He was drowned in the end like most people,” said Lauderdale, turning back to the parlour where the mistress was seated, pondering with a troubled countenance upon this new aspect of her boy’s life. Amid the darkness of the world outside this tender woman sat in the sober radiance of her domestic hearth, surrounded and enshrined by light; but she was not like Hero on the tower. Colin, too, came back, following his friend with a flush of excitement upon his youthful countenance. After all, the idea was not displeasing to the young man. The Hellespont, or the Holy Loch, were nothing to the bitter waters which he was prepared to breast by the light of the imaginary torch held up in the hand of that imaginary woman who was beckoning Colin, as he thought, into the unknown world. Life was beginning anew in his person, and all the fables had to be enacted over again; and what did it matter to the boy’s heroic fancy, if he too should go to swell the record of the ancient martyrs, and be drowned, as Lauderdale said--like most people--in the end? There was no further conversation upon this important subject until next morning, when the household of Ramore got up early, and sat down to breakfast before it was perfect daylight; but Colin’s heart jumped to his mouth, and a visible thrill went through the whole family, when the farmer came in from his early inspection of all the byres and stables, with another letter from Sir Thomas Frankland conspicuous in his hand. CHAPTER XIII.