"It's not likely, father, that ever you'll see me under your roof again.

Forgive me all my follies now, maybe it's the last time ever you'll have an opportunity." "Tut, you foolish girl; it's enough to sicken one to hear you spake such stuff!" She stood and looked at him for a moment, and the light of her smile gradually deepened, or rather faded away, until nothing remained but a face of exquisite beauty, deeply shadowed by anxiety and distress.
The Prophet pursued his way to Dick o' the Grange's, whither, indeed, he was bent; Sarah, having looked after him for a moment with a troubled face, proceeded in the direction of old Dalton's, with the sufferings and pitiable circumstances of whose family she was already but too well acquainted.

Her journey across the country presented her with little else than records of death, suffering, and outrage.

Along the roads the funerals were so frequent, that, in general, they excited no particular notice.

They could, in fact scarcely be termed funerals, inasmuch as they were now nothing more than squalid and meagre-looking knots of those who were immediately related to the deceased, hurrying onward, with reckless speed and disturbed looks to the churchyard, where their melancholy burthen was hastily covered up with scarcely any exhibition of that simple and affecting decorum, or of those sacred and natural sorrows, which in other circumstances throw their tender but solemn light over the last offices of death.