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."

"Mother," said Hamish, "it signifies little to what a criminal may be
exposed, if a man is determined not to be such. Our Highland chiefs used
also to punish their vassals, and, as I have heard, severely. Was it not
Lachlan MacIan, whom we remember of old, whose head was struck off by
order of his chieftain for shooting at the stag before him?"

"Ay," said Elspat, "and right he had to lose it, since he disho