And so they left him; Colonel Sutherland really believing that to brave himself for a scene which must excite him painfully, but where real grief was not to be expected from him, Horace had come intoxicated to his father's death-bed, and Susan half-disgusted, half-comforted to believe that his maniac looks of last night might be attributed to such a cause. They went away, the Colonel to take an hour's sleep after his long visit, and Susan to weep out her heart, thinking over that one touch of natural sympathy, which, beyond death and the grave, gave her more hold of love upon her father, than she had ever before felt herself to possess. The morning was kindling over the moor, brightening the golden-blossomed gorse, and glowing over the purple beds of heather; but the blinds were drawn down and the shutters closed in Marchmain; the obscure and gloomy atmosphere of death reigned in the house. Peggy sat by the kitchen-fire, with her white apron thrown over her head--her mind lost in long trains of recollection, sometimes her wearied frame yielding to a half-hour's sleep, sometimes her troubled thoughts overflowing in a few natural tears. The woman who had come to be nurse and household assistant dozed on the other side of the fire. Colonel Sutherland, very grave, and full of the thoughts which death brings in his train, sat alone in the darkened dining-room, taking an hour's sleep as he said--though in reality the old soldier had only read his morning chapter in his old Bible, and was composing himself with the tender strength of these words of God; while Susan, withdrawn in her own room, gave the dead man his dues, and paid that duty of nature, a woman's lamentations, to the concluded life.