ck, 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 wo