“I’ve been thinking of that,” said Huntley, slowly; “If I went to America, or Canada, or any such place, I would be like to stay. My mind’s against staying; I want to come back--to keep home in my eye. So I say Australia, mother.” “America, Canada, Australia!--the laddie’s wild!” cried the Mistress. “Do you mean to say ye’ll be an emigrant? a bairn of mine?” Emigration was not then what it is now; it was the last resort--sadly resisted, sadly yielded to--of the “broken man;” and Huntley’s mother saw her son, in imagination, in a dreary den of a cabin, in a poor little trading ship, with a bundle on the end of a stick, and despair in his heart, when he spoke of going away. “There’s more kinds of emigrants than one kind, mother,” said Patie. “Ay,” said the Mistress, her imagination shifting, in spite of her, to a dismal family scene, in which the poor wife had the baby tied on her back in a shawl, and the children at her feet were crying with cold and hunger, and the husband at her side looking desperate. “I’ve seen folk on the road to America--ay, laddies, mony a time. I’m older than you are. I ken what like they look; but pity me, did I ever think the like of that would be evened to a bairn of mine!” “Mother,” said Huntley, with a cheerfulness which he did not quite feel, “an emigrant goes away to stay--I should not do that--I am going, if I can, to make a fortune, and come home--and it’s not America; there are towns _there_ already like our own, and a man, I suppose, has only a greater chance of getting bread enough to eat. I could get bread enough in our own country-side; but I mean to get more if I can--I mean to get a sheep farm and grow rich, as everybody does out there.” “Poor laddie! Do they sell sheep and lands out there to them that have no siller?” said the Mistress. “If you canna stock a farm at hame, where you’re kent and your name respected, Huntley Livingstone, how will you do it there?” “That’s just what I have to find out,” said Huntley, with spirit; “a man may be clear he’s to do a thing, without seeing how at the moment. With your consent, I’m going to Australia, mother; if there’s any thing over, when all our affairs are settled, I’ll get my share--and as for the sheep and the land, they’re in Providence; but I doubt them as little as if they were on the lea before my eyes. I’m no’ a man out of a town that knows nothing about it. I’m country bred and have been among beasts all my days. Do you think I’m feared! Though I’ve little to start with, mother, you’ll see me back rich enough to do credit to the name of Norlaw!” His mother shook her head. “It’s easy to make a fortune on a summer night at hame, before a lad’s twenty, or kens the world,” she said. “I’ve seen mony a stronger man than you, Huntley, come hame baith penniless and hopeless--and the like of such grand plans, they’re but trouble and sadness to me.”