"Lewis Ross, I have told you to hold your peace--though I will not say but what there are glimmerings of discernment breaking through the shell; tell Alice from me, James Aytoun, that the youth, if he were once through this season of vanity, gives promise of more judgment than I looked for at his hands. It is not my wont to wait for other folk's bidding, Lewis--the barricade is down before now; but what order is it right that I should take, if the cattle put it up again?" "Had you not better try a remonstrance, Mrs. Catherine," said James. "It may have been done in ignorance." "Remonstrance! a bonnie story that I should condescend to remonstrate with the hounds. Where are you going, Anne? Did I not bid ye remain with us?" "You forget that Marjory is up stairs, Mrs. Catherine," said Anne. "I forget no such thing--the bairns are mad! counselling me with their wisdom in my own house--and that minds me that I am forgetting the comfort of the stranger like a self-seeking old wife as I am. James Aytoun, I will let you see your room--and you, bairns, remain where you are, and dine with him. You are like to be near kindred--it is right you should be friends." Mrs. Catherine led James Aytoun away, and Anne and Lewis joined Marjory in the drawing-room, where, the fumes of her indignation scarcely over, she had been firmly shutting her lips for the last hour, lest some hint of the shut-up by-way should escape them, to pain the landless Archibald. They spent the evening pleasantly together. James Aytoun was fresh from that peculiar society of Edinburgh, whose intellectual progress is the pulse of Scotland, healthful, strong, and bold, as its beatings have been for these past centuries. His own compeers and companions were the rising generation--lawyers, physicians, clergymen, literati, whom the course of some score years would find in the highest places there. The intellectual life and activity which breathed out from his very conversation, stimulated Lewis. These pursuits of science and literature--those professional matters even, to the consideration of which intellect so elevated and acute was devoted, gave the country laird a new idea of the pleasure and dignity of life. Labor--healthful, vigorous, energetic, manly labor--not vacant ease of frivolous enjoyment, was the thing esteemed in that lettered community of beautiful Edinburgh, the names of whose toiling, daring, chivalrous, intellectual workmen, would be household words to the next wave of Scottish population--would have risen into the mental firmament ere then, stars for a world to see.