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 £50,000!" said the laird sententiously.

"I would not sell myself for £50,000."

"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