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