The manner in which Cosmo Livingstone went to college was not one, however, in which anybody goes to Maudlin or Trinity. The lad went to take up his humble lodging at Mrs. Purdie’s in the High Street, and from thence dropped shyly to the college, paid his fees and matriculated, and there was an end of it. There were no rooms to look after, no tutors to see, no “men” to be made acquainted with. He had a letter in his pocket to one of the professors, and one to the minister of one of the lesser city churches. His abode was to be the same little room with the “concealed bed” and window overlooking the town, in which his mother had rested as she passed through Edinburgh, and the honest Kirkbride woman, who was his landlady, had been already engaged at a moderate weekly rate to procure all that he wanted for him. After which fashion--feeling very shy and lonely, somewhat embarrassed by the new coat which his mother called a surtoo and regarded with respect, dismayed by the necessity of entering shops and making purchases for himself, and standing a little in awe of the other students and of the breakfast to which the professor had invited him--Cosmo began the battle of his life. He was now nearly seventeen, young enough to be left by himself in that little lantern and watch-house hanging high over the picturesque heights and hollows of the beautiful old town, where the lad sat at his window in the winter evenings, watching the gorgeous frosty sunset, how it purpled with royal gleams and shadows all the low hills of Fife, and shed a distant golden glow--sometimes a glow redder and fiercer than gold--upon the chilly glories of the Firth. Then, as the light faded from the western horizon, and Inchkeith and Inchcolm no longer stood out in vivid relief against the illuminated waters, how the lights of the town, scarcely less fairy-like, began to steal along the streets and to sparkle out in the windows, hanging in irregular lines from the many-storied houses at the other side of the North Bridge, and gleaming like glow-worms in the dark little valley between. Cosmo sat at his window with a book in his hand, but did not read much--perhaps the lad was not thinking much either, as he sat in the silent little room, listening to all the voices of all the population beneath him, which rose in a softened swell of sound to his high window; sometimes mournful, sometimes joyful, sometimes with a sharp cry in it like an appeal to God, sometimes full of distinct tones, inarticulate yet individual, sometimes sweet with the hum of children--a great, full, murmuring chorus never entirely silenced, in which the heart of humanity seemed, somehow, to betray itself, and reveal unawares the unspeakable blending of emotions which no one man can ever confess for himself.