"Perhaps, my dear child, I ought to say you must obey your father, and not write to me," said Uncle Edward--"but I am not quite virtuous enough for that; only always do it honestly, Susan--never conceal it from him--and stop if it should make you unhappy, or you find it out to be wrong in your own conscience. However, I shall write to you in any case. My boy Ned will want to come and see you, I fear, before he leaves the country. You must always remember that you are of great importance to us, Susan, though we have not the first claim on you. You are the only woman in the family; you represent all those who are gone, to me, my little girl. Hush! do not cry--you must be very strong and courageous, for all our sakes." "I am not crying!" cried Susan, with a gasp of fervent resolution, though she could scarcely articulate the words. "That is right, my darling," said the Colonel. "Now, don't let us think any more about it, Susan. We shall hear from each other constantly, and some time or other I'll show you Inveresk, and Edinburgh, and your mother's country; and in the meantime, you will be cheerful and brave like yourself. Now tell Peggy to bring me some bread and cheese, my love--I am going to be grand to-day; my carriage is coming for me presently. Where is Horace? I must see him before I go--call him here, Susan, and order me my bread and cheese." Susan was very glad, as her uncle suspected, to run out of the room for a moment, and deliver herself of the sob with which she was choking. When she was gone, Colonel Sutherland looked sadly round him upon the dreary apartment, to which the agitation of this day had given a more than usually neglected and miserable appearance. He shook his head as he glanced round upon those meagre walls, and out to that bare moor, which was the only refuge for the eye. He thought it a terrible prison for a girl of seventeen, unsweetened by any love or society. He thought that even the departure of Horace, though he was not much of a companion to his sister, would aggravate her solitude; and involuntarily the old man thought of his own bright apartments at Inveresk, and wondered, with a natural sigh, over the strange problems of Providence. Had Susan been a child of his own, saved to him from among the many dead, what a different lot had been hers!--but here was this flower blossoming in the desert, where no one cared for its presence--and _his_ hearth was solitary. He did not repine or complain--ingratitude had no place in his tender Christian soul, but he sighed and wondered at the bottom of his heart.