Alec was sitting in the parlour with his father and sister. He had been at home, rather against his will, since the beginning of May. He was now a tall, broad-shouldered fellow, strikingly handsome in feature, but rather awkward in limb--educated, so far as a sufficiency of Latin, Greek, and mathematics was concerned, but entirely ignorant of modern languages and history, and almost as ignorant of the world and human life as he had been when he first went to College. His winters had generally been spent in the society of his friend Cameron (who had at last won the desire of his heart, by being appointed assistant to the Professor of Surgery), and Cameron’s influence upon him was stronger than he had any idea of. In heart and in experience Alec was still a boy, and he was, boy like, letting his attention wander from his volume of Spinoza to dream an impossible dream, when he was recalled to the earth by the sound of his father’s voice. ‘I met Mr. Dickson to-day, Alec.’ ‘Yes?’ ‘He tells me the Presbytery meets next week. Hadn’t you better be getting ready for the examination? I suppose there is one before you go to the Hall?’ Alec was silent for a moment. He understood perfectly that the subject had been introduced in a half-indirect way, so as to throw upon him the burden of beginning the attack, as it were; and he understood, too, that the time had come for this question being settled. ‘I thought I had told you, father, that I am not going to the Free Church Hall.’ ‘Margaret, will you leave us alone for a few minutes?’ said Mr. Lindsay, and his daughter gathered up her work and left the room. ‘So you have been deceiving us all this time?’ said the laird in a low tone, fixing his cold, stern eyes upon his son. ‘I have never deceived you!’ burst out the young man hotly. ‘When I agreed to furnish the means for your going to College,’ said the laird slowly, ‘I certainly understood that you were thinking of the ministry. What other reason was there for your staying here in idleness since you left College? And why, in that case, did you go to College at all? You have no wish to be a doctor, have you? Answer me, sir!’ ‘No; I have not.’ ‘Then you _have_ been deceiving me, I see.’ With a great effort Alec restrained himself. ‘When I first went to Glasgow,’ he began, ‘I said I wanted to be educated. I said nothing of becoming a minister; and I have never given you any reason to suppose that I intended doing anything of the kind.’ ‘You knew very well, sir, that it was not only my expectation, but my earnest desire, and that I never would have consented to throw away so much money on your education, merely to try to turn you into a fine gentleman.’ Alec flushed up, opened his lips, and closed them again without speaking. He could not tell his father that the insinuation conveyed by his words was untrue.