I know not whether it was the nature of my studies, the force of circumstances, or my natural inclination towards high enterprise, that have guided me; but _this_ I may boldly aver, that never, to my knowledge, have I swerved from the proper path which a gentleman of honour and cavalier of spirit ought to pursue in his intercourse with society. CHAPTER II. HOW I BECAME A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE. Having completed my studies at the King's College, I left it in the June of 1626, and returned to my father's house, from which I had been so long absent, and as I felt with bitterness, unregrettedly so, by all save my poor mother, whom to my sorrow I found on the verge of death. She had long been suffering from a pain in her side, and was divining away (as we Scots say,) but I was not prepared to see her only live to bless me, and then close her eyes for ever. I felt that the only friend I possessed on earth had left both it and me! I was very--very desolate. Many a ghastly visage, and many a stiffened form, have I seen since that day of grief, which passed so many years ago; but that pale face, and those kind sinking eyes, come vividly before me at times, out of the mist of the years that have gone. My father, as he closed her eyes, averred sorrowfully, "that, had her mouth been larger, she would have respired more freely, and might have lived for ten good years longer;" but she died--and on a bed of pigeons' feathers too, to the dismay of all the wise women in Cromarty; for it is an old superstition, that one cannot die on the feathers of those birds. Though a numerous host of relations were around that gloomy bed, and crowding the chambers of the old tower, I felt lonely (for such was the miserable prejudice against me), and that I was viewed as somewhat of an alien among them--even by those of my own blood and kindred; and the consciousness of that filled my heart with mingled rage and grief.