Then came more cheers, songs, and volleys of peas; and when everybody was hoarse the meeting came to an end, the leading spirits on both sides adjourning to their committee-rooms, and afterwards to the hotels which they usually patronized. These meetings were continued for about ten days, and then the vote was taken. The four ‘nations’ had each one vote. Two voted for Mr. Sharpe, and two for Lord Dummieden. And then the Chancellor, in accordance with old established practice, gave his casting vote in favour of the Conservative candidate. It was over. The manifestoes and satirical ballads were swept away; and the twelve hundred men and boys settled down to six months’ labour. CHAPTER VI. A NEW EXPERIENCE. For the next six weeks Alec Lindsay’s life was one unvarying round of lectures, and preparation for lectures. For recreation he had football on the College Green, long walks on Saturday afternoons, and long debates with his friend Cameron. The debates, however, were not very frequent, for the Highlander was working twelve hours a day. ‘I mean to get a first-class in surgery,’ he said to Alec one Saturday night, as the two sat over their pipes in Alec’s sitting-room; ‘and then perhaps the Professor will ask me to be an assistant. If he does, my fortune is made, for I know my work.’ ‘Ay, that’s the great thing,’ said Alec absently. ‘Don’t you ever go to church, Cameron?’ he added abruptly. ‘As seldom as I can,’ said the other, with a side look at his companion; ‘but don’t take me for a guide.’ ‘I can’t help it,’ replied the lad, still gazing into the fire; ‘we all take our neighbours for guides, whether we acknowledge it or not.’ ‘More or less, no doubt.’ ‘Don’t you think one _ought_ to go to church?’ ‘How can I tell? Every man for himself, my lad.’ ‘That won’t do,’ answered Alec, rousing himself and facing his friend; ‘right’s right, and wrong’s wrong; what is right for one man must be right for every man--under the same circumstances, I mean.’ ‘Will you just tell me,’ said Cameron, half defiantly, ‘what good going to church can do me? I know the psalms almost by heart, and I know the chapters the minister reads almost as well. As for the prayers, half of them aren’t prayers at all, and the other half I could say as weel at hame, if I had a mind. And the sermons!--man, Alec, ye canna say ye think they can do good to any living creature.’ ‘Some of them, perhaps.’ ‘When I find a minister that doesna tell us the same thing over, and over, and over again, and use fifty words to say what might be said in five, to spin out the time, I’ll reconsider the p’int,’ said Cameron. ‘But you believe there’s a God,’ said Alec. ‘That’s a lang stap furret,’ said the other. ‘But do you?’ ‘Well, I do, and I dinna. I don’t believe in the Free Kirk God. It’s hard to think this warl could mak’ itsel’: but I hae my doots.’ ‘Then you’re an Agnostic?’ ‘What if I am? Are ye scunnered?’[1]