“Ay, I heard of the accident. No that I thought anything particular of that. You’re no the kind of callant, nor come of the kind of race, to give in to an accident. I came for my own pleasure. I hope I’m old enough to ken what pleases myself. Take your dinner, callant, and leave me to mind my business. I could do that much before you were born.”

It was Lauderdale who made this answer to Colin’s half-pleased, half-impatient questioning. The new comer sat, gaunt and strange, throwing a long shadow over the sick-bed, and looking, with a suppressed emotion, more pathetic than tears, upon the tray which was placed on a little table by Colin’s side.{170} It was a sad sight enough. The young man, in the flush and beauty of his youth, with his noble physical development, and the eager soul that shone in his eyes, laid helpless, with an invalid’s repast before him, for which he put out his hand with a languid movement like a sick child. Lauderdale himself looked haggard and careworn. He had travelled by night, and was unshaven and untrimmed, with a wild gleam, of exhaustion and hungry anxiety in his eyes.

“Whatever the reason may be, we’re real glad to see you,” said Mrs. Campbell. “If I could have wished for anything to do Colin good more than he’s getting, it would have been you. But he’s a great deal better—a wonderful deal better; you would not know him for the same creature that he was when I came here; and I’m in great hopes he’ll no need to be sent away for the rest of the winter, as the doctor said,” said the sanguine mother, who had reasoned herself into hope. She looked with wistful inquiry as she spoke into Lauderdale’s eyes, trying hard to read there what was the opinion of the new comer. “It would be an awfu’ hard thing for me to send him away by himsel’, and him no strong,” said the Mistress, with a hope that his friend would say that Colin’s looks did not demand such a proceeding, but that health would come back to him with the sweet air of the Holy Loch.

“I heard of that,” said Lauderdale, “and, to tell the truth, I’m tired of staying in one place all my life mysel’. If a man is to have no more good of his ain legs than if he were a vegetable, I see no good in being a man; it would save an awfu’ deal of trouble to turn a cabbage at once. So I’m thinking of taking a turn about the world as long as I’m able; and, if Colin likes to go with me—”

“Which means, mother, that he has come to be my nurse,” said Colin, whose heart was climbing into his throat; “and here I lie like a log, and will never be able to do more than say thanks. Lauderdale—”

“Whisht, callant,” said the tender giant, who stood looking down upon Colin with eyes which would not trust themselves to answer the mother’s appealing glances; “I’m terrible fatigued with my life, and no able to take the trouble of arguing the question. Not that I consent to your proposition, which has a fallacy on the face of it; for it would be a bonnie-like thing to hear you say thanks either to your mother or me. Since I’ve been in my situation—which, maybe, I’ll tell you more about by-and-bye, now that my mouth’s opened—I’ve saved a little{171} siller, a hundred pounds—or maybe mair,” said the philosopher, with a momentary smile, “and I see no reason why I shouldna have my bit holiday as well as other folk. I’ve worked long for it.” He turned away just then, attracted by a gleam of sunshine at the window, his companion thought, and stood looking out disposing as he best could of a little bitter moisture that had gathered in the deep corners of his eyes. “It’ll no be very joyful when it comes,” he said to himself, with a pang of which nobody was aware, and stood forming his lips into an inaudible whistle to conceal how they quivered. He, too, had built high hopes upon this young head which was now lying low. He had said to himself, with the involuntary bitterness of a mind disappointed and forlorn, that here at least was a life free from all shadows—free from the fate that seemed to follow all who belonged to himself—through which he might again reconcile himself to Providence, and re-connect himself with existence. As he stood now, with his back to Colin, Lauderdale was again going over the burning ploughshares, enduring the fiery ordeal. Once more his unselfish hope was going out in darkness. When he turned round again his lips had steadied into the doleful turn of a familiar air, which was connected in Colin’s mind with many an amusing and many a tender recollection. Between the two people who were regarding him with love and anguish so intense, the sick youth burst into pleasant laughter—laughter which had almost surprised the bystanders into helpless tears—and repeated, with firmer breath than Lauderdale’s, the fragment of his favourite air.

“He never gets beyond that bar,” said Colin. “It carries me back to Glasgow and all the old days. We used to call it Lauderdale’s pibroch. Give me my dinner, mother. I don’t see what I should grumble about as long as you and he are by me. Help me to get up, old fellow,” the young man said, holding out his hands; and he ate his invalid meal cheerfully, with eager questions about all his old companions, and bursts of passing laughter, which to the ears of his friend were more terrible than so many groans. As for the Mistress, she had got used by this time to connect together those two ideas of Colin and a sick-bed, the conjunction of which was as yet misery to Lauderdale; and she was glad in her boy’s pleasure, and took trembling hope from every new evidence of his unbroken spirit. Before long the old current of talk had flowed into its usual channel; and, but for the strange, novel circumstances which surrounded them, one at least of the party might have forgotten{172} for the moment that they were not in the pleasant parlour of Ramore; but that one did not see his own countenance, its eloquent brightness, its flashes of sudden colour, and the shining of its too brilliant eyes. But there could not be any doubt that Colin improved from that moment. Lauderdale had secured a little lodging in the village, from which he came every morning to the “callant,” in whom his disappointed spirit, too careless of personal good, too meditative and speculative for any further ambition on his own account, had fixed its last hopes. He even came, in time, after he had accustomed himself to the young man’s illness, to share, by moments, in the Mistress’s hopes. When Colin at last got up from his bed, it was Lauderdale’s arm he leant on. That was an eventful day to the little anxious group in the sick chamber, whose hopes sometimes leapt to certainty, but whose fears, with an intuition deeper still, sometimes fell to the other extreme, and were hushed in the silence of an anguish too deep to be fathomed, from which thought itself drew back. It was a bright winter day, with symptoms of spring in the air, when the young patient got up from his weary bed. Colin made very light of his weakness in the rising tide of his spirits. He faulte............