My ladyship did choose rather to look at the fine tree before me
than to pass it by in hopes of a finer; so we walked beside the
carriage till we should come to a point, from which, Donald
assured us, we might, without scrambling, go as near the tree as
we chose, "though he wadna advise us to go nearer than the
highroad."

There was something grave and mysterious in Donald's sun-browned
countenance when he gave us this intimation, and his manner was
so different from his usual frankness, that my female curiosity
was set in motion.  We walked on the whilst, and I found the
tree, of which we had now lost sight by the intervention of some
rising ground, was really more distant than I had at first
supposed.  "I could have sworn now," said I to my cicerone, "that
yon tree and waterfall was the very place where you intended to
make a stop to-day."

"The Lord forbid!"  said Donald hastily.

"And for what, Donald?  Why should you be willing to pass so
pleasant a spot?"

"It's ower near Dalmally, my leddy, to corn the beasts; it would
bring their dinner ower near their breakfast, poor things.  An'
besides, the place is not canny."

"Oh!  then the mystery is out.  There is a bogle or a brownie, a
witch or a gyre-carlin, a bodach or a fairy, in the case?"

"The ne'er a bit, my leddy--ye are clean aff the road, as I may
say.  But if your leddyship will just hae patience, and wait till
we are by the place and out of the glen, I'll tell ye all about
it.  There is no much luck in speaking of such things in the
place they chanced in."

I was obliged to suspend my curiosity, observing, that if I
persisted in twisting the discourse one way while Donald was
twining it another, I should make his objection, like a hempen
cord, just so much the tougher.  At length the promised turn of
the road brought us within fifty paces of the tree which I
desired to admire, and I now saw to my surprise, that there was a
human habitation among the cliffs which surrounded it.  It was a
hut of the least dimensions, and most miserable description that
I ever saw even in the Highlands.  The walls of sod, or DIVOT, as
the Scotch call it, were not four feet high; the roof was of
turf, repaired with reeds and sedges; the chimney was composed of
clay, bound round by straw ropes; and the whole walls, roof, and
chimney, were alike covered with the vegetation of house-leek,
rye-grass, and moss common to decayed cottages formed of such
materials.  There was not the slightest vestige of a kale-yard,
the usual accompaniment of the very worst huts; and of living
things we saw nothing, save a kid which was browsing on the roof
of the hut, and a goat, its mother, at some distance, feeding
betwixt the oak and the river Awe.

"What man," I could not help exclaiming, "can have committed sin
deep enough to deserve such a miserable dwelling!"

"Sin enough," said Donald MacLeish, with a half-suppressed groan;
"and God he knoweth, misery enough too.  And it is no man's
dwelling neither, but a woman's."

"A woman's!"  I repeated, "and in so lonely a place!  What sort
of a woman can she be?"

"Come this way, my leddy, and you may judge that for yourself,"
said Donald.  And by advancing a few steps, and making a sharp
turn to the left, we gained a sight of the side of the great
broad-breasted oak, in the direction opposed to that in which we
had hitherto seen it.

"If she keeps her old wont, she will be there at this hour of the
day," said Donald; but immediately became silent, and pointed
with his finger, as one afraid of being overheard.  I looked, and
beheld, not without some sense of awe, a female form seated by
the stem of the oak, with her head drooping, her hands clasped,
and a dark-coloured mantle drawn over her head, exactly as Judah
is represented in the Syrian medals as seated under her palm-
tree.  I was infected with the fear and reverence which my guide
seemed to entertain towards this solitary being, nor did I think
of advancing towards her to obtain a nearer view until I had cast
an enquiring look on Donald; to which be replied in a half
whisper, "She has been a fearfu' bad woman, my leddy."

"Mad woman, said you," replied I, hearing him imperfectly; "then
she is perhaps dangerous?"

"No--she is not mad," replied Donald; "for then it may be she
would be happier than she is; though when she thinks on what she
has done, and caused to be done, rather than yield up a hair-
breadth of her ain wicked will, it is not likely she can be very
well settled.  But she neither is mad nor mischievous; and yet,
my leddy, I think you had best not go nearer to her."  And then,
in a few hurried words, he made me acquainted with the story
which I am now to tell more in detail.  I heard the narrative
with a mixture of horror and sympathy, which at once impelled me
to approach the sufferer, and speak to her the words of comfort,
or rather of pity, and at the same time made me afraid to do so.

This indeed was the feeling with which she was regarded by the
Highlanders in the neighbourhood, who looked upon Elspat
MacTavish, or the Woman of the Tree, as they called her, as the
Greeks considered those who were pursued by the Furies, and
endured the mental torment consequent on great criminal actions.
They regarded such unhappy beings as Orestes and OEdipus, as
being less the voluntary perpetrators of their crimes than as the
passive instruments by which the terrible decrees of Destiny had
been accomplished; and the fear with which they beheld them was
not unmingled with veneration.

I also learned further from Donald MacLeish, that there was some
apprehension of ill luck attending those who had the boldness to
approach too near, or disturb the awful solitude of a being so
unutterably miserable--that it was supposed that whosoever
approached her must experience in some respect the contagion of
her wretchedness.

It was therefore with some reluctance that Donald saw me prepare
to obtain a nearer view of the sufferer, and that he himself
followed to assist me in the descent down a very rough path.  I
believe his regard for me conquered some ominous feelings in his
own breast, which connected his duty on this occasion with the
presaging fear of lame horses, lost linch-pins, overturns, and
other perilous chances of the postilion's life.

I am not sure if my own courage would have carried me so close to
Elspat had he not followed.  There was in her countenance the
stern abstraction of hopeless and overpowering sorrow, mixed with
the contending feelings of remorse, and of the pride which
struggled to conceal it.  She guessed, perhaps, that it was
curiosity, arising out of her uncommon story, which induced me to
intrude on her solitude; and she could not be pleased that a fate
like hers had been the theme of a traveller's amusement.  Yet the
look with which she regarded me was one of scorn instead of
embarrassment.  The opinion of the world and all its children
could not add or take an iota from her load of misery; and, save
from the half smile that seemed to intimate the contempt of a
being rapt by the very intensity of her affliction above the
sphere of ordinary humanities, she seemed as indifferent to my
gaze, as if she had been a dead corpse or a marble statue.

Elspat was above the middle stature.  Her hair, now grizzled, was
still profuse, and it had been of the most decided black.  So
were her eyes, in which, contradicting the stern and rigid
features of her countenance, there shone the wild and troubled
light that indicates an unsettled mind.  Her hair was wrapt round
a silver bodkin with some attention to neatness, and her dark
mantle was disposed around her with a degree of taste, though the
materials were of the most ordinary sort.

After gazing on this victim of guilt and calamity till I was
ashamed to remain silent, though uncertain how I ought to address
her, I began to express my surprise at her choosing such a desert
and deplorable dwelling.  She cut short these expressions of
sympathy, by answering in a stern voice, without the least change
of countenance or posture, "Daughter of the stranger, he has told
you my story."  I was silenced at once, and felt how little all
earthly accommodation must seem to the mind which had such
subjects as hers for rumination.  Without again attempting to
open the conversation, I took a piece of gold from my purse, (for
Donald had intimated she lived on alms), expecting she would at
least stretch her hand to receive it.  But she neither accepted
nor rejected the gift; she did not even seem to notice it, though
twenty times as valuable, probably, as was usually offered.  I
was obliged to place it on her knee, saying involuntarily, as I
did so, "May God pardon you and relieve you!"  I shall never
forget the look which she cast up to Heaven, nor the tone in
which she exclaimed, in the very words of my old friend John
Home,--

  "My beautiful--my brave!"

It was the language of nature, and arose from the heart of the
deprived mother, as it did from that gifted imaginative poet
while furnishing with appropriate expressions the ideal grief of
Lady Randolph.



CHAPTER II.

  Oh, I'm come to the Low Country,
    Och, och, ohonochie,
  Without a penny in my pouch
    To buy a meal for me.
  I was the proudest of my clan,
    Long, long may I repine;
  And Donald was the bravest man,
    And Donald he was mine.          OLD SONG.

Elspat had enjoyed happy days, though her age had sunk into
hopeless and inconsolable sorrow and distress.  She was once the
beautiful and happy wife of Hamish MacTavish, for whom his
strength and feats of prowess had gained the title of MacTavish
Mhor.  His life was turbulent and dangerous, his habits being of
the old Highland stamp which esteemed it shame to want anything
that could be had for the taking.  Those in the Lowland line who
lay near him, and desired to enjoy their lives and property in
quiet, were contented to pay him a small composition, in name of
protection money, and comforted themselves with the old proverb
that it was better to "fleech the deil than fight him."  Others,
who accounted such composition dishonourable, were often
surprised by MacTavish Mhor and his associates and followers, who
usually inflicted an adequate penalty, either in person or
property, or both.  The creagh is yet remembered in which he
swept one hundred and fifty cows from Monteith in one drove; and
how he placed the laird of Ballybught naked in a slough, for
having threatened to send for a party of the Highland Watch to
protect his property.

Whatever were occasionally the triumphs of this daring cateran,
they were often exchanged for reverses; and his narrow escapes,
rapid flights, and the ingenious stratagems with which he
extricated himself from imminent danger, were no less remembered
and admired than the exploits in which he had been successful.
In weal or woe, through every species of fatigue, difficulty, and
danger, Elspat was his faithful companion.  She enjoyed with him
the fits of occasional prosperity; and when adversity pressed
them hard, her strength of mind, readiness of wit, and courageous
endurance of danger and toil, are said often to have stimulated
the exertions of her husband.

Their morality was of the old Highland cast--faithful friends and
fierce enemies.  The Lowland herds and harvests they accounted
their own, whenever they had the means of driving off the one or
of seizing upon the other; nor did the least scruple on the right
of property interfere on such occasions.  Hamish Mhor argued like
the old Cretan warrior:

  "My sword, my spear, my shaggy shield,
     They make me lord of all below;
   For he who dreads the lance to wield,
     Before my shaggy shield must bow.
   His lands, his vineyards, must resign,
     And all that cowards have is mine."

But those days of perilous, though frequently successful
depredation, began to be abridged after the failure of the
expedition of Prince Charles Edward.  MacTavish Mhor had not sat
still on that occasion, and he was outlawed, both as a traitor to
the state and as a robber and cateran.  Garrisons were now
settled in many places where a red-coat had never before been
seen, and the Saxon war-drum resounded among the most hidden
recesses of the Highland mountains. The fate of MacTavish became
every day more inevitable; and it was the more difficult for him
to make his exertions for defence or escape, that Elspat, amid
his evil days, had increased his family with an infant child,
which was a considerable encumbrance upon the necessary rapidity
of their motions.

At length the fatal day arrived.  In a strong pass on the skirts
of Ben Crunchan, the celebrated MacTavish Mhor was surprised by a
detachment of the Sidier Roy.  [The Red Soldier.]  His wife
assisted him heroically, charging his piece from time to time;
and as they were in possession of a post that was nearly
unassailable, he might have perhaps escaped if his ammunition had
lasted.  But at length his balls were expended, although it was
not until he had fired off most of the silver buttons from his
waistcoat; and the soldiers, no longer deterred by fear of the
unerring marksman, who had slain three and wounded more of their
number, approached his stronghold, and, unable to take him alive,
slew him after a most desperate resistance.

All this Elspat witnessed and survived; for she had, in the child
which relied on her for support, a motive for strength and
exertion.  In what manner she maintained herself it is not easy
to say.  Her only ostensible means of support were a flock of
three or four goats, which she fed wherever she pleased on the
mountain pastures, no one challenging the intrusion.  In the
general distress of the country, her ancient acquaintances had
little to bestow; but what they could part with from their own
necessities, they willingly devoted to the relief of others, From
Lowlanders she sometimes demanded tribute, rather than requested
alms.  She had not forgotten she was the widow of MacTavish Mhor,
or that the child who trotted by her knee might, such were her
imaginations, emulate one day the fame of his father, and command
the same influence which he had once exerted without control.
She associated so little with others, went so seldom and so
unwillingly from the wildest recesses of the mountains, where she
usually dwelt with her goats, that she was quite unconscious of
the great change which had taken place in the country around her
--the substitution of civil order for military violence, and the
strength gained by the law and its adherents over those who were
called in Gaelic song, "the stormy sons of the sword."  Her own
diminished consequence and straitened circumstances she indeed
felt, but for this the death of MacTavish Mhor was, in her
apprehension, a sufficing reason; and she doubted not that she
should rise to her former state of importance when Hamish Bean
(or fair-haired James) should be able to wield the arms of his
father.  If, then, Elspat was repelled, rudely when she demanded
anything necessary for her wants, or the accommodation of her
little flock, by a churlish farmer, her threats of vengeance,
obscurely expressed, yet terrible in their tenor, used frequently
to extort, through fear of her maledictions, the relief which was
denied to her necessities; and the trembling goodwife, who gave
meal or money to the widow of MacTavish Mhor, wished in her heart
that the stern old carlin had been burnt on the day her husband
had his due.

Years thus ran on, and Hamish Bean grew up--not, indeed, to be of
his father's size or strength, but to become an active, high-
spirited, fair-haired youth, with a ruddy cheek, an eye like an
eagle's, and all the agility, if not all the strength, of his
formidable father, upon whose history and achievements his mother
dwelt, in order to form her son's mind to a similar course of
adventures.  But the young see the present state of this
changeful world more keenly than the old.  Much attached to his
mother, and disposed to do all in his power for her support,
Hamish yet perceived, when he mixed with the world, that the
trade of the cateran was now alike dangerous and discreditable,
and that if he were to emulate his father's progress, it must be
in some other line of warfare more consonant to the opinions of
the present day.

As the faculties of mind and body began to expand, he became more
sensible of the precarious nature of his situation, of the
erroneous views of his mother, and her ignorance respecting the
changes of the society with which she mingled so little.  In
visiting friends and neighbours, he became aware of the extremely
reduced scale to which his parent was limited, and learned that
she possessed little or nothing more than the absolute
necessaries of life, and that these were sometimes on the point
of failing.  At times his success in fishing and the chase was
able to add something to her subsistence; but he saw no regular
means of contributing to her support, unless by stooping to
servile labour, which, if he himself could have endured it,
would, he knew, have been like a death's-wound to the pride of
his mother.

Elspat, meanwhile, saw with surprise that Hamish Bean, although
now tall and fit for the field, showed no disposition to enter on
his father's scene of action.  There was something of the mother
at her heart, which prevented her from urging him in plain terms
to take the field as a cateran, for the fear occurred of the
perils into which the trade must conduct him; and when she would
have spoken to him on the subject, it seemed to her heated
imagination as if the ghost of her husband arose between them in
his bloody tartans, and laying his finger on his lips, appeared
to prohibit the topic.  Yet she wondered at what seemed his want
of spirit, sighed as she saw him from day to day lounging about
in the long-skirted Lowland coat which the legislature had
imposed upon the Gael instead of their own romantic garb, and
thought how much nearer he would have resembled her husband had
he been clad in the belted plaid and short hose, with his
polished arms gleaming at his side.

Besides these subjects for anxiety, Elspat had others arising
from the engrossing impetuosity of her temper.  Her love of
MacTavish Mhor had been qualified by respect and sometimes even
by fear, for the cateran was not the species of man who submits
to female government; but over his son she had exerted, at first
during childhood, and afterwards in early youth, an imperious
authority, which gave her maternal love a character of jealousy.
She could not bear when Hamish, with advancing life, made
repeated steps towards independence, absented himself from her
cottage at such season and for such length of time as he chose,
and seemed to consider, although maintaining towards her every
possible degree of respect and kindness, that the control and
responsibility of his actions rested on himself alone.  This
would have been of little consequence, could she have concealed
her feelings within her own bosom; but the ardour and impatience
of her passions made her frequently show her son that she
conceived herself neglected and ill-used.  When he was absent for
any length of time from her cottage without giving intimation of
his purpose, her resentment on his return used to be so
unreasonable, that it naturally suggested to a young man fond of
independence, and desirous to amend his situation in the world,
to leave her, even for the very purpose of enabling him to
provide for the parent whose egotistical demands on his filial
attention tended to confine him to a desert, in which both were
starving in hopeless and helpless indigence.

Upon one occasion, the son having been guilty of some independent
excursion, by which the mother felt herself affronted and
disobliged, she had been more than usually violent on his return,
and awakened in Hamish a sense of displeasure, which clouded his
brow and cheek.  At length, as she persevered in her unreasonable
resentment, his patience became exhausted, and taking his gun
from the chimney corner, and muttering to himself the reply which
his respect for his mother prevented him from speaking aloud, he
was about to leave the hut which he had but barely entered.

"Hamish," said his mother, "are you again about to leave me?"
But Hamish only replied by looking at and rubbing the lock of his
gun.

"Ay, rub the lock of your gun," said his parent bitterly. "I am
glad you have courage enough to fire it?  though it be but at a
roe-deer."  Hamish started at this undeserved taunt, and cast a
look of anger at her in reply.  She saw that she had found the
means of giving him pain.

"Yes," she said, "look fierce as you will at an old woman, and
your mother; it would be long ere you bent your brow on the angry
countenance of a bearded man."

"Be silent, mother, or speak of what you understand," said
Hamish, much irritated, "and that is of the distaff and the
spindle."

"And was it of spindle and distaff that I was thinking when I
bore you away on my back through the fire of six of the Saxon
soldiers, and you a wailing child?  I tell you, Hamish, I know a
hundredfold more of swords and guns than ever you will; and you
will never learn so much of noble war by yourself, as you have
seen when you were wrapped up in my plaid."

"You are determined, at least, to allow me no peace at home,
mother; but this shall have an end," said Hamish, as, resuming
his purpose of leaving the hut, he rose and went towards the
door.

"Stay, I command you," said his mother--"stay!  or may the gun
you carry be the means of your ruin!  may the road you are going
be the track of your funeral!"

"What makes you use such words, mother?"  said the young man,
turning a little back; "they are not good, and good cannot come
of them.  Farewell just now!  we are too angry to speak together
--farewell!  It will be long ere you see me again."  And he
departed, his mother, in the first burst of her impatience,
showering after him her maledictions, and in the next invoking
them on her own head, so that they might spare her son's.  She
passed that day and the next in all the vehemence of impotent and
yet unrestrained passion, now entreating Heaven, and such powers
as were familiar to her by rude tradition, to restore her dear
son, "the calf of her heart;" now in impatient resentment,
meditating with what bitter terms she should rebuke his filial
disobedience upon his return, and now studying the most tender
language to attach him to the cottage, which, when her boy was
present, she would not, in the rapture of her affection, have
exchanged for the apartments of Taymouth Castle.

Two days passed, during which, neglecting even the slender means
of supporting nature which her situation afforded, nothing but
the strength of a frame accustomed to hardships and privations of
every kind could have kept her in existence, notwithstanding the
anguish of her mind prevented her being sensible of her personal
weakness.  Her dwelling at this period was the same cottage near
which I had found her, but then more habitable by the exertions
of Hamish, by whom it had been in a great measure built and
repaired.

It was on the third day after her son had disappeared, as she sat
at the door rocking herself, after the fashion of her
countrywomen when in distress, or in pain, that the then unwonted
circumstance occurred of a passenger being seen on the highroad
above the cottage.  She cast but one glance at him.  He was on
horseback, so that it could not be Hamish; and Elspat cared not
enough for any other being on earth to make her turn her eyes
towards him a second time.  The stranger, however, paused
opposite to her cottage, and dismounting from his pony, led it
down the steep and broken path which conducted to her door.

"God bless you, Elspat MacTavish!"  She looked at the man as he
addressed her in her native language, with the displeased air of
one whose reverie is interrupted; but the traveller went on to
say, "I bring you tidings of your son Hamish."  At once, from
being the most uninteresting object, in respect to Elspat, that
could exist, the form of the stranger became awful in her eyes,
as that of a messenger descended from heaven, expressly to
pronounce upon her death or life.  She started from her seat, and
with hands convulsively clasped together, and held up to Heaven,
eyes fixed on the stranger's countenance, and person stooping
forward to him, she looked those inquiries which her faltering
tongue could not articulate.  "Your son sends you his dutiful
remembrance, and this," said the messenger, putting into Elspat's
hand a small purse containing four or five dollars.

"He is gone!  he is gone!"  exclaimed Elspat; "he has sold
himself to be the servant of the Saxons, and I shall never more
behold him!  Tell me, Miles MacPhadraick--for now I know you--is
it the price of the son's blood that you have put into the
mother's hand?"

"Now, God forbid!"  answered MacPhadraick, who was a tacksman,
and had possession of a considerable tract of ground under his
chief, a proprietor who lived about twenty miles off--"God forbid
I should do wrong, or say wrong, to you, or to the son of
MacTavish Mhor!  I swear to you by the hand of my chief that your
son is well, and will soon see you; and the rest he will tell you
himself."  So saying, MacPhadraick hastened back up the pathway,
gained the road, mounted his pony, and rode upon his way.



CHAPTER III.

Elspat MacTavish remained gazing on the money as if the impress
of the coin could have conveyed information how it was procured.

"I love not this MacPhadraick," she said to herself.  "It was his
race of whom the Bard hath spoken, saying, Fear them not when
their words are loud as the winter's wind, but fear them when
they fall on you like the sound of the thrush's song.  And yet
this riddle can be read but one way:  My son hath taken the sword
to win that, with strength like a man, which churls would keep
him from with the words that frighten children."  This idea, when
once it occurred to her, seemed the more reasonable, that
MacPhadraick, as she well knew, himself a cautious man, had so
far encouraged her husband's practices as occasionally to buy
cattle of MacTavish, although he must have well known how they
were come by, taking care, however, that the transaction was so
made as to be accompanied with great profit and absolute safety.
Who so likely as MacPhadraick to indicate to a young cateran the
glen in which he could commence his perilous trade with most
prospect of success?  Who so likely to convert his booty into
money?  The feelings which another might have experienced on
believing that an only son had rushed forward on the same path in
which his father had perished, were scarce known to the Highland
mothers of that day.  She thought of the death of MacTavish Mhor
as that of a hero who had fallen in his proper trade of war, and
who had not fallen unavenged.  She feared less for her son's life
than for his dishonour.  She dreaded, on his account, the
subjection to strangers, and the death-sleep of the soul which is
brought on by what she regarded as slavery.

The moral principle which so naturally and so justly occurs to
the mind of those who have been educated under a settled
government of laws that protect the property of the weak against
the incursions of the strong, was to poor Elspat a book sealed
and a fountain closed.  She had been taught to consider those
whom they call Saxons as a race with whom the Gael were
constantly at war; and she regarded every settlement of theirs
within the reach of Highland incursion as affording a legitimate
object of attack and plunder.  Her feelings on this point had
been strengthened and confirmed, not only by the desire of
revenge for the death of her husband, but by the sense of general
indignation entertained, not unjustly, through the Highlands of
Scotland, on account of the barbarous and violent conduct of the
victors after the battle of Culloden.  Other Highland clans, too,
she regarded as the fair objects of plunder, when that was
possible, upon the score of ancient enmities and deadly feuds.

The prudence that might have weighed the slender means which the
times afforded for resisting the efforts of a combined
government, which had, in its less compact and established
authority, been unable to put down the ravages of such lawless
caterans as MacTavish Mhor, was unknown to a solitary woman whose
ideas still dwelt upon her own early times.  She imagined that
her son had only to proclaim himself his father's successor in
adventure and enterprise, and that a force of men, as gallant as
those who had followed his father's banner, would crowd around to
support it when again displayed.  To her Hamish was the eagle who
had only to soar aloft and resume his native place in the skies,
without her being able to comprehend how many additional eyes
would have watched his flight--how many additional bullets would
have been directed at his bosom.  To be brief, Elspat was one who
viewed the present state of society with the same feelings with
which she regarded the times that had passed away.  She had been
indigent, neglected, oppressed since the days that her husband
had no longer been feared and powerful, and she thought that the
term of her ascendence would return when her son had determined
to play the part of his father.  If she permitted her eye to
glance farther into futurity, it was but to anticipate that she
must be for many a day cold in the grave, with the coronach of
her tribe cried duly over her, before her fair-haired Hamish
could, according to her calculation, die with his hand on the
basket-hilt of the red claymore.  His father's hair was grey,
ere, after a hundred dangers, he had fallen with his arms in his
hands.  That she should have seen and survived the sight was a
natural consequence of the manners of that age.  And better it
was--such was her proud thought--that she had seen him so die,
than to have witnessed his departure from life in a smoky hovel
on a bed of rotten straw like an over-worn hound, or a bullock
which died of disease.  But the hour of her young, her brave
Hamish, was yet far distant.  He must succeed--he must conquer
--like his father.  And when he fell at length--for she
anticipated for him no bloodless death--Elspat would ere then
have lain long in the grave, and could neither see his death-
struggle nor mourn over his grave-sod.

With such wild notions working in her brain, the spirit of Elspat
rose to its usual pitch, or, rather, to one which seemed higher.
In the emphatic language of Scripture, which in that idiom does
not greatly differ from her own, she arose, she washed and
changed her apparel, and ate bread, and was refreshed.

She longed eagerly for the return of her son, but she now longed
not with the bitter anxiety of doubt and apprehension.  She said
to herself that much must be done ere he could in these times
arise to be an eminent and dreaded leader.  Yet when she saw him
again, she almost expected him at the head of a daring band, with
pipes playing and banners flying, the noble tartans fluttering
free in the wind, in despite of the laws which had suppressed,
under severe penalties, the use of the national garb and all the
appurtenances of Highland chivalry.  For all this, her eager
imagination was content only to allow the interval of some days.

From the moment this opinion had taken deep and serious
possession of her mind, her thoughts were bent upon receiving her
son at the head of his adherents in the manner in which she used
to adorn her hut for the return of his father.

The substantial means of subsistence she had not the power of
providing, nor did she consider that of importance.  The
successful caterans would bring with them herds and flocks.  But
the interior of her hut was arranged for their reception, the
usquebaugh was brewed or distilled in a larger quantity than it
could have been supposed one lone woman could have made ready.
Her hut was put into such order as might, in some degree, give it
the appearance of a day of rejoicing.  It was swept and
decorated, with boughs of various kinds, like the house of a
Jewess upon what is termed the Feast of the Tabernacles.  The
produce of the milk of her little flock was prepared in as great
variety of forms as her skill admitted, to entertain her son and
his associates whom she, expected to receive along with him.

But the principal decoration, which she sought with the greatest
toil, was the cloud-berry, a scarlet fruit, which is only found
on very high hills; and these only in small quantities.  Her
husband, or perhaps one of his forefathers, had chosen this as
the emblem of his family, because it seemed at once to imply, by
its scarcity, the smallness of their clan, and, by the places in
which it was found, the ambitious height of their pretensions.

For the time that these simple preparations of welcome endured,
Elspat was in a state of troubled happiness.  In fact, her only
anxiety was that she might be able to complete all that she could
do to welcome Hamish and the friends who she supposed must have
attached themselves to his band, before they should arrive and
find her unprovided for their reception.

But when such efforts as she could make had been accomplished,
she once more had nothing left to engage her save the trifling
care of her goats; and when these had been attended to, she had
only to review her little preparations, renew such as were of a
transitory nature, replace decayed branches and fading boughs,
and then to sit down at her cottage-door and watch the road as it
ascended on the one side from the banks of the Awe, and on the
other wound round the heights of the mountain, with such a degree
of accommodation to hill and level as the plan of the military
engineer permitted.  While so occupied, her imagination,
anticipating the future from recollections of the past, formed
out of the morning mist or the evening cloud the wild forms of an
advancing band, which were then called "Sidier Dhu" (dark
soldiers), dressed in their native tartan, and so named to
distinguish them from the scarlet ranks of the British army.  In
this occupation she spent many hours of each morning and evening.



CHAPTER IV.

It was in vain that Elspat's eyes surveyed the distant path by
the earliest light of the dawn and the latest glimmer of the
twilight.  No rising dust awakened the expectation of nodding
plumes or flashing arms.  The solitary traveller trudged
listlessly along in his brown lowland greatcoat, his tartans dyed
black or purple, to comply with or evade the law which prohibited
their being worn in their variegated hues.  The spirit of the
Gael, sunk and broken by the severe though perhaps necessary
laws, that proscribed the dress and arms which he considered as
his birthright, was intimated by his drooping head and dejected
appearance.  Not in such depressed wanderers did Elspat recognise
the light and free step of her son, now, as she concluded,
regenerated from every sign of Saxon thraldom.  Night by night,
as darkness came, she removed from her unclosed door, to throw
herself on her restless pallet, not to sleep, but to watch.  The
brave and the terrible, she said, walk by night.  Their steps are
heard in darkness, when all is silent save the whirlwind and the
cataract.  The timid deer comes only forth when the sun is upon
the mountain's peak, but the bold wolf walks in the red light of
the harvest-moon.  She reasoned in vain; her son's expected
summons did not call her from the lowly couch where she lay
dreaming of his approach.  Hamish came not.

"Hope deferred," saith the royal sage, "maketh the heart sick;"
and strong as was Elspat's constitution, she began to experience
that it was unequal to the toils to which her anxious and
immoderate affection subjected her, when early one morning the
appearance of a traveller on the lonely mountain-road, revived
hopes which had begun to sink into listless despair.  There was
no sign of Saxon subjugation about the stranger.  At a distance
she could see the flutter of the belted-plaid that drooped in
graceful folds behind him, and the plume that, placed in the
bonnet, showed rank and gentle birth.  He carried a gun over his
shoulder, the claymore was swinging by his side with its usual
appendages, the dirk, the pistol, and the SPORRAN MOLLACH.  [The
goat-skin pouch, worn by the Highlanders round their waist.]  Ere
yet her eye had scanned all these particulars, the light step of
the traveller was hastened, his arm was waved in token of
recognition--a moment more, and Elspat held in her arms her
darling son, dressed in the garb of his ancestors, and looking,
in her maternal eyes, the fairest among ten thousand!

The first outpouring of affection it would be impossible to
describe.  Blessings mingled with the most endearing epithets
which her energetic language affords in striving to express the
wild rapture of Elspat's joy.  Her board was heaped hastily with
all she had to offer, and the mother watched the young soldier,
as he partook of the refreshment, with feelings how similar to,
yet how different from, those with which she had seen him draw
his first sustenance from her bosom!

When the tumult of joy was appeased, Elspat became anxious to
know her son's adventures since they parted, and could not help
greatly censuring his rashness for traversing the hills in the
Highland dress in the broad sunshine, when the penalty was so
heavy, and so many red soldiers were abroad in the country.

"Fear not for me, mother," said Hamish, in a tone designed to
relieve her anxiety, and yet somewhat embarrassed; "I may wear
the BREACAN [That which is variegated--that is, the tartan.] at
the gate of Fort-Augustus, if I like it."

"Oh, be not too daring, my beloved Hamish, though it be the fault
which best becomes thy father's son--yet be not too daring!
Alas!  they fight not now as in former days, with fair weapons
and on equal terms, but take odds of numbers and of arms, so that
the feeble and the strong are alike levelled by the shot of a
boy.  And do not think me unworthy to be called your father's
widow and your mother because I speak thus; for God knoweth,
that, man to man, I would peril thee against the best in
Breadalbane, and broad Lorn besides."

"I assure you, my dearest mother," replied Hamish, "that I am in
no danger.  But have you seen MacPhadraick, mother?  and what has
he said to you on my account?"

"Silver he left me in plenty, Hamish; but the best of his comfort
was that you were well, and would see me soon.  But beware of
MacPhadraick, my son; for when he called himself the friend of
your father, he better loved the most worthless stirk in his herd
than he did the life-blood of MacTavish Mhor.  Use his services,
therefore, and pay him for them, for it is thus we should deal
with the unworthy; but take my counsel, and trust him not."

Hamish could not suppress a sigh, which seemed to Elspat to
intimate that the caution came too late.  "What have you done
with him?"  she continued, eager and alarmed.  "I had money of
him, and he gives not that without value; he is none of those who
exchange barley for chaff.  Oh, if you repent you of your
bargain, and if it be one which you may break off without
disgrace to your truth or your manhood, take back his silver, and
trust not to his fair words."

"It may not be, mother," said Hamish; "I do not repent my
engagement, unless that it must make me leave you soon."

"Leave me!  how leave me?  Silly boy, think you I know not what
duty belongs to the wife or mother of a daring man?  Thou art but
a boy yet; and when thy father had been the dread of the country
for twenty years, he did not despise my company and assistance,
but often said my help was worth that of two strong gillies."

"It is not on that score, mother, but since I must leave the
country--"

"Leave the country!"  replied his mother, interrupting him.  "And
think you that I am like a bush, that is rooted to the soil where
it grows, and must die if carried elsewhere?  I have breathed
other winds than these of Ben Cruachan.  I have followed your
father to the wilds of Ross and the impenetrable deserts of Y Mac
Y Mhor.  Tush, man!  my limbs, old as they are, will bear me as
far as your young feet can trace the way."

"Alas, mother," said the young man, with a faltering accent, "but
to cross the sea--"

"The sea!  who am I that I should fear the sea?  Have I never
been in a birling in my life--never known the Sound of Mull, the
Isles of Treshornish, and the rough rocks of Harris?"

"Alas, mother, I go far--far from all of these.  I am enlisted in
one of the new regiments, and we go against the French in
America."

"Enlisted!"  uttered the astonished mother--"against MY will--
without MY consent!  You could not!  you would not!"  Then rising
up, and assuming a posture of almost imperial command, "Hamish,
you DARED not!"

"Despair, mother, dares everything," answered Hamish, in a tone
of melancholy resolution.  "What should I do here, where I can
scarce get bread for myself and you, and when the times are
growing daily worse?  Would you but sit down and listen, I would
convince you I have acted for the best."

With a bitter smile Elspat sat down, and the same severe ironical
expression was on her features, as, with her lips firmly closed,
she listened to his vindication.

Hamish went on, without being disconcerted by her expected
displeasure.  "When I left you, dearest mother, it was to go to
MacPhadraick's house; for although I knew he is crafty and
worldly, after the fashion of the Sassenach, yet he is wise, and
I thought how he would teach me, as it would cost him nothing, in
which way I could mend our estate in the world."

"Our estate in the world!"  said Elspat, losing patience at the
word; "and went you to a base fellow with a soul no better than
that of a cowherd, to ask counsel about your conduct?  Your
father asked none, save of his courage and his sword."

"Dearest mother," answered Hamish, "how shall I convince you that
you live in this land of our fathers as if our fathers were yet
living?  You walk as it were in a dream, surrounded by the
phantoms of those who have been long with the dead.  When my
father lived and fought, the great respected the man of the
strong right hand, and the rich feared him.  He had protection
from Macallum Mhor, and from Caberfae, and tribute from meaner
men.  [Caberfae--ANGLICE, the Stag's-head, the Celtic designation
for the arms of the family of the high Chief of Seaforth.]  That
is ended, and his son would only earn a disgraceful and unpitied
death by the practices which gave his father credit and power
among those who wear the breacan.  The land is conquered; its
lights are quenched--Glengarry, Lochiel, Perth, Lord Lewis, all
the high chiefs are dead or in exile.  We may mourn for it, but
we cannot help it.  Bonnet, broadsword, and sporran--power,
strength, and wealth, were all lost on Drummossie Muir."

"It is false!"  said Elspat, fiercely; "you and such like
dastardly spirits are quelled by your own faint hearts, not by
the strength of the enemy; you are like the fearful waterfowl, to
whom the least cloud in the sky seems the shadow of the eagle."

"Mother," said Hamish proudly, "lay not faint heart to my charge.
I go where men are wanted who have strong arms and bold hearts
too.  I leave a desert, for a land where I may gather fame."

"And you leave your mother to perish in want, age, and solitude,"
said Elspat, essaying successively every means of moving a
resolution which she began to see was more deeply rooted than she
had at first thought.

"Not so, neither," he answered; "I leave you to comfort and
certainty, which you have yet never known.  Barcaldine's son is
made a leader, and with him I have enrolled myself.  MacPhadraick
acts for him, and raises men, and finds his own in doing it."

"That is the truest word of the tale, were all the rest as false
as hell," said the old woman, bitterly.

"But we are to find our good in it also," continued Hamish; "for
Barcaldine is to give you a shieling in his wood of Letter-
findreight, with grass for your goats, and a cow, when you please
to have one, on the common; and my own pay, dearest mother,
though I am far away, will do more than provide you with meal,
and with all else you can want.  Do not fear for me.  I enter a
private gentleman; but I will return, if hard fighting and
regular duty can deserve it, an officer, and with half a dollar a
day."

"Poor child!"  replied Elspat, in a tone of pity mingled with
contempt, "and you trust MacPhadraick?"

"I might mother," said Hamish, the dark red colour of his race
crossing his forehead and cheeks, "for MacPhadraick knows the
blood which flows in my veins, and is aware, that should he break
trust with you, he might count the days which could bring Hamish
back to Breadalbane, and number those of his life within three
suns more.  I would kill him at his own hearth, did he break his
word with me--I would, by the great Being who made us both!"

The look and attitude of the young soldier for a moment overawed
Elspat; she was unused to see him express a deep and bitter mood,
which reminded her so strongly of his father.  But she resumed
her remonstrances in the same taunting manner in which she had
commenced them.

"Poor boy!"  she said; "and you think that at the distance of
half the world your threats will be heard or thought of!  But,
go--go--place your neck under him of Hanover's yoke, against whom
every true Gael fought to the death.  Go, disown the royal
Stewart, for whom your father, and his fathers, and your mother's
fathers, have crimsoned many a field with their blood.  Go, put
your head under the belt of one of the race of Dermid, whose
children murdered--Yes," she added, with a wild shriek, "murdered
your mother's fathers in their peaceful dwellings in Glencoe!
Yes," she again exclaimed, with a wilder and shriller scream, "I
was then unborn, but my mother has told me--and I attended to the
voice of MY mother--well I remember her words!  They came in
peace, and were received in friendship--and blood and fire arose,
and screams and murder!"  [See Note 9.--Massacre of Glencoe.]

"Mother," answered Hamish, mournfully, but with a decided tone,
"all that I have thought over.  There is not a drop of the blood
of Glencoe on the noble hand of Barcaldine; with the unhappy
house of Glenlyon the curse remains, and on them God hath avenged
it."

"You speak like the Saxon priest already," replied his mother;
"will you not better stay, and ask a kirk from Macallum Mhor,
that you may preach forgiveness to the race of Dermid?"

"Yesterday was yesterday," answered Hamish, "and to-day is to-
day.  When the clans are crushed and confounded together, it is
well and wise that their hatreds and their feuds should not
survive their independence and their power.  He that cannot
execute vengeance like a man, should not harbour useless enmity
like a craven.  Mother, young Barcaldine is true and brave.  I
know that MacPhadraick counselled him that he should not let me
take leave of you, lest you dissuaded me from my purpose; but he
said, 'Hamish MacTavish is the son of a brave man, and he will
not break his word.'  Mother, Barcaldine leads an hundred of the
bravest of the sons of the Gael in their native dress, and with
their fathers' arms--heart to heart--shoulder to shoulder.  I
have sworn to go with him.  He has trusted me, and I will trust
him."

At this reply, so firmly and resolvedly pronounced, Elspat
remained like one thunderstruck, and sunk in despair.  The
arguments which she had considered so irresistibly conclusive,
had recoiled like a wave from a rock.  After a long pause, she
filled her son's quaigh, and presented it to him with an air of
dejected deference and submission.

"Drink," she said, "to thy father's roof-tree, ere you leave it
for ever; and tell me--since the chains of a new King, and of a
new chief, whom your fathers knew not save as mortal enemies, are
fastened upon the limbs of your father's son--tell me how many
links you count upon them?"

Hamish took the cup, but looked at her as if uncertain of her
meaning.  She proceeded in a raised voice.  "Tell me," she said,
"for I have a right to know, for how many days the will of those
you have made your masters permits me to look upon you?  In other
words, how many are the days of my life?  for when you leave me,
the earth has nought besides worth living for!"

"Mother," replied Hamish MacTavish, "for six days I may remain
with you; and if you will set out with me on the fifth, I will
conduct you in safety to your new dwelling.  But if you remain
here, then I will depart on the seventh by daybreak--then, as at
the last moment, I MUST set out for Dunbarton, for if I appear
not on the eighth day, I am subject to punishment as a deserter,
and am dishonoured as a soldier and a gentleman."

"Your father's foot," she answered, "was free as the wind on the
heath--it were as vain to say to him, where goest thou?  as to
ask that viewless driver of the clouds, wherefore blowest thou?
Tell me under what penalty thou must--since go thou must, and go
thou wilt--return to thy thraldom?"

"Call it not thraldom, mother; it is the service of an honourable
soldier--the only service which is now open to the son of
MacTavish Mhor."

"Yet say what is the penalty if thou shouldst not return?"
replied Elspat.

"Military punishment as a deserter," answered Hamish, writhing,
however, as his mother failed not to observe, under some internal
feelings, which she resolved to probe to the uttermost.

"And that," she said, with assumed calmness, which her glancing
eye disowned, "is the punishment of a disobedient hound, is it
not?"

"Ask me no more, mother," said Hamish; "the punishment is nothing
to one who will never deserve it."

"To me it is something," replied Elspat, "since I know better
than thou, that where there is power to inflict, there is often
the will to do so without cause.  I would pray for thee, Hamish,
and I must know against what evils I should beseech Him who
leaves none unguarded, to protect thy youth and simplicity."