directed his steps to the chapel, climbed the broken stair, and entered the small unroofed apartment, with its ruined walls, and trailing ivy, and floor of lettered flags, bearing upon them the names of those who slept below--for this was the burial-place of the long-descended Sutherlands of Strathoran. Another uncertain glance of the wan moon directed him to a marble tablet in the wall, by the side of which he stood long in the dreary silence, motionless and still, himself like some dark statue, mocking the dead with empty honor. Hugh Sutherland and Isabel his wife, lay underneath the watcher's feet; and the son to whom they had left so fair a heritage, and who had visited their grave two twelvemonths since, bearing a name of universal honor, and looking forth upon a smiling future, through natural tears that became him well--stood there now, tearless and stern in the thick gloom of night--a houseless, joyless man. "I have obeyed," said Archibald Sutherland, leaning upon the ruined wall. "I have returned to see my father's house in the hands of an alien to his blood--and now what remains?" His knees were bent upon the stone that covered the dust of father and of mother--his brow pressed to the tablet that chronicled their names; and the ruined man in his extremity, poured out his full heart into the ear of One who heareth always, and never more certainly than when the voice of supplication rises to Him "out of the depths." "Who shall stand before thee if thou markest iniquity? yet is there forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared, and plenteous redemption." Yes, _that_ remained--omnipotent, over all, in His tender mercy, the God whose plentiful redemption encircles with its arms of divine compassion its every returning prodigal--the loving-kindness that turns no supplicant away. The sympathy most wonderful and strange of all, which "touches"--the heart of the Incarnate God with "a fellow-feeling for our infirmities!"--these remained--greater than all sorrows of the earth. So with less sternness in his pale face, and less despair in his heart, Archibald Sutherland retraced his steps, and turned to the humble fisher's house far down the Oran, the inhabitants of which had recently come to the district, and knew not either the name or the quality of the stranger whom they had reluctantly agreed to shelter for the night. He had hovered that same evening in cover of the darkness, in the neighborhood of the Tower--had passed the hospitable walls of Woodsmuir, and looked through the bare trees at Merkland; but drawing back in painful shame, had not dared to enter, or make himself known to any of them all--they all had households, kindred, warm friends about them. He only was alone.