“I’ve got little of my ain will a’ my life, though a fremd person would tell you I was a positive woman. Most things I’ve set my heart on have come to naught. Norlaw’s near out of our hands, and Huntley and Patie are in the ends of the earth, and I’m a widow woman, desolate of my bairns; weel, weel, I’m no complaining--but when I saw you first in your cradle, Cosmo--you were the bonniest of a’ my bairns--I put my hands on your head, and I said to myself--‘I’ll make him my offering to the Lord, because he’s the fairest lamb of a’.’ Na, laddie--never mind, I’m no heeding. You needna put your arms round me. It’s near seventeen year ago, and mony a weary day since then, but I’ve aye thought upon my vow.” “Mother, if I can, I’ll fulfill it!” cried Cosmo; “but how could I know your heart was in it, when you never spoke of it before?” “Na,” said the Mistress, restraining herself with an effort. “I’ve done my best to bring you up in the fear of the Lord, and it’s no written that you maun be a minister, before you can serve Him. I’ll no’ put a burden on your conscience; but just I was a witless woman, and didna mind when I saw the bairn in the cradle that before it came that length, it would have a will of its own.” “Send me to college, mother!” said Cosmo, with tears in his eyes. “I have made no plans, and if I had I could change them--and at the worst, if we find I can not be a minister, I will never forget your vow--put your hands on my head and say it over again.” But when the boy knelt down at her side with the enthusiasm of his temper, and lifted his glowing, youthful face, full of a generous young emotion, which was only too generous and ready to be swayed by the influences of love, the Mistress could only bend over him with a silent burst of tenderness. “God bless my dearest bairn!” she said at last, with her broken voice. “But no, no!--I’ve learned wisdom. The Lord make ye a’ His ain servants--every ane--I can say nae mair.” CHAPTER XXIX. It was accordingly but a very short time after these occurrences when Cosmo, with his wardrobe carefully over-looked, his “new blacks” supplemented by a coarser every-day suit, which took the place of the jacket which the lad had outgrown, and a splendid stock of linen, home-made, snow-white and bleached on the gowans--took his way to Edinburgh in all the budding glory of a student. In those days few people had begun to speculate whether the Scotch Universities were or were not as good as the English ones, or what might be the characteristic differences of the two. The academic glories of Edinburgh still existed in the fresh glories of tradition, if they had begun to decline in reality--and chairs were still held in the northern college by men at whose feet statesmen had learned philosophy.