If Susan could but see that paradise of comfort and kindness!--she who knew no interior but Marchmain. When the Colonel had read his paper he put up his glasses, put on his great-coat, took his hat and his cane, and went out through his garden, pausing to see the progress of the crocuses, and to calculate in his own mind when his earliest tulip would bloom--to take his daily walk. Though his mind was engaged, he had all that freshness and minuteness of external observation which some old men keep to the end of their days: he saw, with a real sensation of pleasure, the first big bud upon his favourite chestnut begin to shake out its folded leaves; he noted the earliest tender shoot of a green sheath starting through the sheltered soil, in that sweet nook where his lilies of the valley waited for the spring; and so opened his garden gate and went out into the sunshine of the high-road, to see the light shining upon Arthur's seat, and the smoke floating over Edinburgh, and the country between quivering over with an indescribable sentiment of renewal and life. There was not very much variety in the Colonel's walks--this day, without any particular intention, he turned his steps towards the sea. CHAPTER XI. THE Colonel took his leisurely way, with his hat a little on the back of his head, and his cane in his hand, along the dusty high-road towards Edinburgh. Most of the people who met him on the way knew the old soldier: he got salutations respectful and familiar on all sides; he had something to say to half at least of the people on the road; and at the doors, as he passed along in the fresh sunshine, which gladdened the air without much warming it. Through the breaks in the houses were to be seen glimpses of the broad sands, with the sea breaking upon them in its long rush and roll, ringing through the air like a cannon-shot, though there was nothing beyond a fresh breeze to impel its course. The Colonel, born in this neighbourhood, and carrying its well-remembered sights and sounds in his heart, during all his years of exile, rejoiced in the boom of the Firth with that mixture of familiarity and novelty which makes all the special features of his native locality so delightful to a man who has been absent from it for years. He went along, stopping now and then to speak to some one, recognizing every turn on the road, and curious if he met a face which he had not seen before; happy in his fresh outward eye, his youthful heart, and the natural friendliness and universal interest which covered the sunny surface of this Christian soul. Do not think that what lay below was less profound or less sincere; but for that happy, natural temperament, that involuntary observation of external things, the Colonel would have been a bereaved, solitary, heartbroken man--would he have been better, or more worthy of the love and respect which followed him everywhere?