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Sit down: it's you that's unreasonable now." This was Mistress Elspat Smith, the wife of a farmer "no' that ill aff," as he cautiously expressed it a far more important person in the parish than Janet, the minister's maid-of-all-work.
"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.
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.
There were no sleepers there that day, even old Donald and Elspat Smith were awake and eager. Every face was turned upward towards the minister. Many of them were unknown to Shenac; but on those that were familiar to her an earnestness, new and strange, seemed to rest as they listened. What could it be?
These expressions made it plain that poor Hamish was unconscious that two nights and a day had passed since he had drained the fatal quaigh, and Elspat had now to venture on what she felt as the almost perilous, as well as painful, task of explaining her machinations.
As she advanced towards him, the light flashed upon his eyes he started up in an instant, made a stride forward with his naked dirk in his hand, like a man armed to meet a mortal enemy, and exclaimed, "Stand off! on thy life, stand off!" "It is the word and the action of my husband," answered Elspat; "and I know by his speech and his step the son of MacTavish Mhor."
With the throbbing glee of one who has brought to an end a difficult and troublesome enterprise, Elspat proceeded tenderly to arrange the plaid of the unconscious slumberer, to whom her extravagant affection was doomed to be so fatal, expressing, while busied in her office, her delight, in tones of mingled tenderness and triumph.
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.
"At your pleasure, my son," said Elspat, haughtily, and began, with much apparent assiduity, the various domestic tasks which had been interrupted during the preceding day. Whatever was at her heart, all anxiety seemed banished from her looks and demeanour.
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."
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