Robert Glen, whose reappearance had so interested and excited the innocent mind of Margaret Leslie, was no other than the farmer’s son, in point of locality her nearest neighbor, but in every other respect, childhood being fairly over, as far removed from her as if she had been a princess, instead of the child of an impoverished country gentleman. In childhood it had not been so. Little Margaret had played with Rob in the hay-fields, and sat by him while he fished in the burn, and had rides upon the horses he was leading to the water, many a day in that innocent period. She had been as familiar about the farm “as if it had belonged to her,” Mrs. Glen had said, and had shared the noonday “piece” of her little cavalier often enough, as well as his sports. Even Bell had found nothing to say against this intimacy. The Glens were very decent folks, not on a level with the great farmers of Fife, yet well to do and well doing; and Rob’s devoted care of the little lady had saved Bell, as she herself expressed it, “many a trail;” but in the ten years from seven to seventeen many changes occur. Rob, who was the youngest, had been the clever boy of the family at the farm. His mother, proud of his early achievements, had sent him to St. Andrews to the excellent schools there, with vague notions of advancement to come. That he should be a minister was, of course, her chief desire, and the highest hope of her ambition; but at this early period there was no absolute necessity for a decision. He might be a writer if he proved to have no “call” for the ministry; or he might be a doctor if his mind took that turn. However, when he had reached the age at which in Scotland the college supplants the school (too early, as everybody knows), Rob was quite of opinion that he had a call to be a minister; and he would have gone on naturally to his college career at St. Andrews, but for the arrival of an uncle, himself sonless, from Glasgow, whose family pride was much excited by Rob’s prizes and honors. This was his mother’s brother, like herself come of the most respectable folk, “a decent, honest man,” which means everything in Scottish moral phraseology. He was “a merchant” in Glasgow, meaning a shopkeeper, and had a good business and money in the bank, and only one little daughter--a fact which opened his heart to the handsome, bright boy who was likely to bring so much credit to his family. Whether Robert Hill (for the boy was his namesake) would have thought so highly of his nephew without these prizes is another question; but as it was, he took an immediate and most warm interest in him. Mr. Hill, however, felt the usual contempt of a member of a large trading community for every small and untrading place.