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 father added thousand
to thousand, and said to his heart wearily many and many a time, "It
is all vexation of spirit."

At the end of the second year Crawford wrote a most important letter
to his son. There was an opening for the family that might never come
again. All arrangements had been made for Colin to enter the coming
contest for a seat in Parliament. The Marquis of B---- had been spoken
to, and Crawford and he had come to an understanding Crawford did not