m. He may hae pity upo' you--wha kens?" said Thomas,
as he followed Alec, whom he had already released, out of the shop.

"Ye see, Alec," he resumed in a low voice, when they were in the open
air--Curly going on before them, "it's time 'at ye was growin' a man,
and pittin' awa' childish things. Yer mither 'll be depen'in' upo' you,
or lang, to haud things gaein'; and ye ken gin ye negleck yer chance at
the school, yer time'll no come ower again. Man, ye sud try to do
something for conscience-sake. Hae ye learnt yer lessons for the morn,
noo?"

"No, Thomas. But I will. I'm jist gaein' to buy a pair o' rabbits to
Truffey; and syne I'll gang hame."

"There's a guid lad. Ye'll be a comfort till yer mither some day yet."

With these words, Thomas turned and left them.

There had been a growing, though it was still a vague sense, in Alec's
mind, that he was not doing well; and this rebuke of Thomas Crann
brought it full into the light of his own consciousness. From that day
he worked better. Mr Malison saw the change, and acknowledged it. This
reacted on Alec's feeling for the master; and during the following
winter he made three times the progress he had made in any winter
preceding.

For the sea of summer ebbed away, and the rocky channels of the winter
appeared, with its cold winds, its ghost-like mists, and the damps and
shiverings that cling about the sepulchre in which Nature lies
sleeping. The boat was carefully laid up, across the rafters of the
barn, well wrapped in a shroud of tarpaulin. It was buried up in the
air; and the Glamour on which it had floated so gaily, would soon be
buried under the ice. Summer alone could bring them together again--the
one from the dry gloom of the barn, the other from the cold seclusion
of its wintry hebetude.

Meantime Mrs Forbes was somewhat troubled in her mind as to what should
be done with Alec; and she often talked with the schoolmaster about
him. Herself of higher birth, socially considered, than her husband,
she had the ambition that her son should be educated for some
profession. Now in Scotland education is more easily got than almost
anything else; and whether there might be room for the exercise of the
profession afterwards, was a matter of less moment to Mrs Forbes,
seeing she was not at all willing that the farm which had been in her
husband's family for hundreds of years, should pass into the hands of
strangers, and Alec himself had the strongest attachment to t