“Ay,” said Lauderdale, with a kind of groan; “that is how the world appears at your years. Who can tell when we may be here again together? Who can tell, laddie, what thoughts may be in our hearts when we _are_ here again? I never have any security myself, when I leave a place, that I’ll ever dare to come back,” said the meditative man. “The innocent fields might have a cruel aspect, as if God had cursed them, and, for anything I know, I might hate the flowers that could bloom, and the sun that could shine, and had no heart for my trouble. No that you understand what I’m meaning; but that’s the way it affects a man like me.” “What are you thinking of?” cried Colin, with a little dismay; “one would fancy you saw some terrible evil approaching. Of course the future is uncertain, but I am not particularly alarmed by anything that appears to me. What are you thinking of, Lauderdale? Your own career?” “Oh, ay, just my ain career,” said Lauderdale, with a smile; “such a career to make a work about! though I am just as content as most men. I mind when my ain spirit was whiles uplifted as yours is, laddie; it’s _that_ that makes a man think. It comes natural to the time of life, like the bright eye and the bloom on the cheek; and there’s no sentence of death in it either, if you come to that,” he went on to himself after a pause. “Life holds on--it aye holds on; a hope mair or less makes little count. And without the struggle, never man that was worth calling man came to his full stature.” All this Lauderdale kept saying to himself as he descended the hillside, leaping here and there over a half-concealed streamlet, and making his way through the withered ferns and the long tangled streamers of the bramble, which caught at him as he passed. He was not so skilful in overcoming these obstacles as Colin, who was to the manner born; and he got a little out of breath as he followed the lad, who, catching his monologue by intervals in the descent, looked at the melancholy philosopher with his young eyes, which laughed, and did not understand. “I wonder what you are thinking of,” said Colin. “Not of me, certainly; but I see you are afraid of something, as if I were going to encounter a great danger. Lauderdale,” said the lad, stopping and laying his hand on his friend’s arm for one confidential moment, “whatever danger there is, I _have_ encountered it. Don’t be afraid for me.”