The old woman, of whom I have already spoken, undertook the melancholy office of watching the dead. She suffered nobody else to approach the body. The house felt as if it were empty. Wherever a foot trod in the passage it gave out a hollow sound; and the servants, scared by undefined terror, immured themselves in their rooms, where they remained cooped and huddled together till the last rites were over. Then went forth a scanty procession of ashy faces, winding down the black hills to the church-yard; and when she was laid in the grave, a shudder passed among them, and they whispered one to another, and then their eyes rested upon me. The action was significant of the feeling with which they regarded my situation. I was the last of my race, and my inheritance was little more than the mausoleum of my ancestors. The old woman had done well to monopolize the tending of the dead, and the management of the funeral. She knew my unfitness, from grief and ignorance of the world, to enter upon such details; and she took them all off my hands, with a most careful watchfulness of my ease--and her own interest. During that brief interval of sorrow--when the whole household had withdrawn into retirement--she collected all the plate, valuables, and moneys, she could find in the house; and when the grave was closed, and the servants had returned home, she was nowhere to be found. She had, in short, made ample provision for the rest of her life out of such spoils as she could secure; for which, I afterward discovered, she had been making industrious preparations long before. Some attempts were made to trace her, but they were fruitless. This was my first experience of the heartlessness of the world; and, although it is an incident of every-day occurrence in all civilized communities, it was new to me at that time, and stung me to the soul. After months of seclusion through the biting winter and spring, summer came round again, and I thought I would venture abroad, in hope that the air and a little activity and change of scene would recruit my health; for I was shattered and nervous, and conscious of a prostration of mind almost amounting to disease. The country round about was abrupt and wild, covered with heather for the most part, broken up and picturesque, and studded here and there with patches of bright verdure, invaded by clumps of forest trees. In some places it took a mountainous character, and brawling streams rushing through deep gorges and rocky glens assimilated the scenery to the general tone of the region that lies still farther to the north. The neighborhood was lonely and unfrequented; it resembled the hilly solitudes of Arran and Bute; there were few homesteads in the distant landscape to send up cheerful volumes of smoke among the trees: and you might ride a whole morning without meeting a wayfarer.