he
ancestral soil; for to be loved it is not necessary that land should be
freehold. At length his increased diligence, which had not escaped her
observation, and was testified to by Mr Malison, confirmed her
determination that he should at least go to college. He would be no
worse a farmer for having an _A.M_. after his name; while the
curriculum was common to all the professions. So it was resolved that,
in the following winter, he should _compete for a bursary_.

The communication that his fate lay in that direction roused Alec still
more. Now that an ulterior object rendered them attractive, he turned
his attention to the classics with genuine earnestness; and, on a
cloudy day in the end of October, found himself on the box-seat of the
Royal Mail, with his trunk on the roof behind him, bound for a certain
city whose advantages are not confined to the possession of a
university.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

After driving through long streets, brilliant with shops of endless
marvel, the coachman pulled up for the last time. It was a dull drizzly
evening, with sudden windy gusts, and, in itself, dark as pitch. But
Alec descended, cold and wet, in a brilliant light which flowed from
the door of the hotel as if it had been the very essence of its
structure. A porter took charge of his box, hoisted it on his back, and
led the way to the address he gave him.

Notwithstanding the drizzle, and the angry rushes of the wind round the
street-corners, the foot-pavements were filled with men and women,
moving in different directions, like a double row of busy ants. Through
queer short cuts that terribly bewildered the way, the porter led him
to the house, and pushing the door open, went up two flights of stone
stairs and knocked at a door on the landing. Alec was shown into a room
where a good fire was blazing away with a continuous welcome; and when
seated by it drinking his tea, he saw the whole world golden through
the stained windows of his imagination.

But his satisfaction gradually passed into a vague longing after
something else. Would human nature be more perfect were it capable of
being satisfied with cakes and ale? Alec felt as if he had got to the
borders of fairy-land, and _something_ was going to happen. A door
would open and admit him into the secret of the world. But the door was
so long in opening, that he took to unpacking his box; when, as he
jumped up to thank his mother for some peculiar remembrance of