know, Helen, I may not see him. We never were chums. I have
often wondered why I asked him here. It was all done in a moment. I
had thought of asking Walter Napier, and then I asked Selwyn. I have
often thought it would have pleased me better if I had invited
Walter."

"Sometimes it is permitted to us to do things for the pleasure of
others, rather than our own. I have often thought that God--who
foresaw the changes to take place here--sent Mr. Selwyn with a message
to Dominie Tallisker. The dominie thinks so too. Then how glad you
ought to be that you asked him. He came to prepare for those poor
people who as yet were scattered over Ayrshire and Cumberland. And
this thought comforts me for you, Colin. God knows just where you are
going, dear, and the people you are going to meet, and all the events
that will happen to you."

The events and situations of life resemble ocean waves--every one is
alike and yet every one is different. It was just so at Crawford Keep
after Colin left it. The usual duties of the day were almost as
regular as the clock, but little things varied them. There were
letters or no letters from Colin; there were little events at the
works or in the village; the dominie called or he did not call.
Occasionally there were visitors connected with the mines or furnaces,
and sometimes there were social evening gatherings of the neighboring
young people, or formal state dinners for the magistrates and
proprietors who were on terms of intimacy with the laird.

For the first year of Colin's absence, if his letters were not quite
satisfactory, they were condoned. It did not please his father that
Colin seemed to have settled himself so completely in Rome, among
"artists and that kind o' folk," and he was still more angry when
Colin declared his intention of staying away another year. Poor
father! How he had toiled and planned to aggrandize this only son, who
seemed far more delighted with an old coin or an old picture than with
the great works which bore his name. In all manner of ways he had made
it clear to his family that in the dreamy, sensuous atmosphere of
Italian life he remembered the gray earnestness of Scottish life with
a kind of terror.

Tallisker said, "Give him his way a little longer, laird. To bring him
hame now is no use. People canna thole blue skies for ever; he'll be
wanting the moors and the misty corries and the gray clouds erelong."
So Colin had another year granted him, and his fat