because he couldna get help to
cut it. I laughed when I heard it; I didna ken the man then. I'm
going to-morrow to cut the dominie's wheat; which o' you will go wi'
me?"

"I!" and "I!" and "I!" was the hearty response; and so next day
Traquare saw a strange sight--a dozen colliers in a field of wheat,
making a real holiday of cutting the grain and binding the sheaves, so
that before the next Sabbath it had all been brought safely home.

CHAPTER V.

But during these very days, when the dominie and his parishioners were
drawing a step closer to each other, the laird and his son were
drifting farther apart. Crawford felt keenly that Colin took no
interest in the great enterprises which filled his own life. The fact
was, Colin inherited his mother's, and not his father's temperament.
The late Lady Crawford had been the daughter of a Zetland Udaller, a
pure Scandinavian, a descendant of the old Vikings, and she inherited
from them a poetic imagination and a nature dreamy and inert, though
capable of rousing itself into fits of courage that could dare the
impossible. Colin would have led a forlorn hope or stormed a battery;
but the bare ugliness and monotony of his life at the works fretted
and worried him.

Tallisker had repeatedly urged a year's foreign travel. But the laird
had been much averse to the plan. France, in his opinion, was a hotbed
of infidelity; Italy, of popery; Germany, of socialistic and
revolutionary doctrines. There was safety only in Scotland. Pondering
these things, he resolved that marriage was the proper means to
"settle" the lad. So he entered into communication with an old friend
respecting his daughter and his daughter's portion; and one night he
laid the result before Colin.

Colin was indignant. He wanted to marry no woman, and least of all
women, Isabel McLeod.

"She'll hae L50,000!" said the laird sententiously.

"I would not sell myself for L50,000."

"You'd be a vera dear bargain at half the price to any woman, Colin.
And you never saw Isabel. She was here when you were in Glasgow. She
has the bonniest black e'en in Scotland, and hair like a raven's
wing."

"When I marry, sir, I shall marry a woman like my mother: a woman with
eyes as blue as heaven, and a face like a rose. I'll go, as you did,
to Shetland for her."

"There isna a house there fit for you to take a wife from, Colin, save
and except the Earl's ain; and his daughter, the Lady Selina, is near
thirty years ol