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"Mother," said Hamish, relapsing from his tone of desperate firmness into one of melancholy expostulation "oh, dearest mother, wherefore have you returned hither?" "Ask why the hind comes back to the fawn," said Elspat, "why the cat of the mountain returns to her lodge and her young. Know you, Hamish, that the heart of the mother only lives in the bosom of the child."
From what he had said during their first violent dispute, Elspat had gathered that, if Hamish returned not by the appointed time permitted by his furlough, he would incur the hazard of corporal punishment. Were he placed within the risk of being thus dishonoured, she was well aware that he would never submit to the disgrace by a return to the regiment where it might be inflicted.
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.
While the misjudging mother thus exulted in the success of her stratagem, we may mention to the reader that it was founded on the acquaintance with drugs and simples which Elspat, accomplished in all things belonging to the wild life which she had led, possessed in an uncommon degree, and which she exercised for various purposes.
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.
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.
And Miss Marian is near as ill as the laddies; and poor, wee Rosie, growing langer and thinner every day, till you would think the wind would blow her awa. Master Arthur is awa at his eddication: the best thing for a' concerned. I wish they were a' safe unto man's estate," and Janet sighed. "And is Miss Graeme good at her seam?" asked Mistress Elspat. "Oh ay; she's no' that ill.
He took the cloak, however, and proceeding with the provident caution of a spaniel hiding a bone, concealed it among some furze, and carefully marked the spot, observing that, if he chanced to return that way, it would be an excellent rokelay for his auld mother Elspat.
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?"
Others less superstitious supposed, that had it been possible to search the gulf of the Corri Dhu, the profound deeps of the lake, or the whelming eddies of the river, the remains of Elspat MacTavish might have been discovered as nothing was more natural, considering her state of body and mind, than that she should have fallen in by accident, or precipitated herself intentionally, into one or other of those places of sure destruction.
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