Somehow these lines floated in upon Huntley’s mind as he stood gazing upon the summer landscape. To win Melmar with all its wealth and influence, or to lose what remained of Norlaw, with all the associations and hereditary bonds that belonged to that home of his race--should he put it to the touch? A conflict, not less stormy that it was entirely unexpressed, rose within the young, ambitious, eager mind, gazing over those fields and hills. A certain personification and individuality came to the struggling powers within him. On either side stood a woman, one a pale, unknown shadow, hovering upon the chances of his triumph, ready to take the prize, when it was won, out of his hands--the other his own well-beloved, home-dwelling mother, whose comfort and certain habitation it was in Huntley’s power at once to secure. Should he put it to the touch? should he risk all that he might win all?--and the tempters that assailed Huntley suddenly vailed over to his eyes all that sunny home landscape, and spread before him the savage solitudes of the far country, the flocks and the herds which should be his sole companions--the hut in the strange woods; oh beautiful home valleys, glorious hills, dear gleams of water-springs! oh, love hiding sweet among the trees, whispering ere it comes!--oh tender friends and bonds of youth!--shall he put it to the touch? The council of war held its debate among the dust and din of battle, though the summer sunshine shone all the time in an undisturbed and peaceful glory upon the slope of Norlaw. CHAPTER XXI. “Do you think _I_ could bear the thought--me!” cried the Mistress energetically; “have ye kent me all your days, Huntley Livingstone, and do ye dare to think your mother would baulk your fortune for ease to hersel’? is it like me? would any mortal even me with the like, but your ainsel’?” The Mistress stood by herself in the middle of the room, with her hand on the table--her eyes shone with a mortified and grieved fire through unshed tears--her heightened color--her frame, which seemed to vibrate with a visible pang--the pain of unappreciated love, which looked like anger in her face--showed how little congenial to her mind was Huntley’s self-abnegation. There was no sacrifice in the world which she herself could not and would not have made for her children; but to feel herself the person for whom a sacrifice was needed, a hindrance to her son’s prospects, a person to be provided for, struck with intense and bitter mortification the high spirit of the Mistress. She could not be content with this subordinate and passive position. Poverty, labor, want itself, would have come easier to her proud, tender motherhood, than thus to feel herself a bar upon the prospects of her boy.