This done, the male part of the household, though full of the affair, and their innumerable yarns of the corps, which it had called to memory, felt more composed on the subject. The quartermaster furbished up his old red coat, and remained to dinner: Flora's engagement to ride with young Fernwoodlee and the meet at Kilhenzie, were committed to oblivion, and were utterly forgotten, as she sat alone, full of thought, on the old mossgrown garden-seat, with the autumn leaves whirling round her. Through the branches of the stripped trees on which the rooks were cawing, the sunlight fell aslant upon the copper gnomon of the ancient sun and moon dial, which occupied the centre of the quaint Scoto-French garden, and round the pedestal of which Quentin, to please her, during the last spring, had trained a creeping plant. The plant was still there, but its tendrils and trailers were dead, withered, and yellow, and sadly Flora felt in her heart that she was lonely, and that Rohallion was now a _broken home_--broken, indeed, as if Death himself had been there! Lady Winifred was also alone. The noonday sun was streaming as of old into the yellow damask drawing-room, and the sea-coal fire crackled on the hearth between the delft-lined jambs cheerily and brightly. Before it, on the thick cosy rug, a sleek tom-cat sat winking and purring, and the favourite terrier of Quentin, coiled up round as a ball, was there too, but fast asleep beside the many-spotted Dalmatian dog, which always followed the old-fashioned family carriage. The antique ormolu clock, that ticked so loudly on the mantelpiece on the night when Quentin was rescued from the wreck, and his father's corpse was cast on the surf-beaten sand, and when he, a wailing child, was brought by Elsie Irvine to Rohallion, was ticking there still, quietly, regularly, and monotonously, and Lady Winifred looked at its quaint dial wistfully, as she might have done in the face of an old and familiar friend. Now Quentin and her beloved and only son were both far, far away; both were to encounter the perils of war, and she might never see them more! How much and how many things had happened, she thought, and still the old clock ticked there monotonously, even as it had done when, on an evening now many, many years ago, she came a blooming bride to the old castle by the sea; and so it might continue to tick, long after she, and her comely and affectionate old Lord, lay side by side among the Crawfords of past centuries in the Rohallion aisle of the venerable kirk whose tower she could see terminating the woody vista of yonder lonely glen.