l and unreserved acquiescence might have
seemed to her son constrained and suspicious, and induced him to watch
and defeat the means by which she still hoped to prevent his leaving
her. Her ardent though selfish affection for her son, incapable of being
qualified by a regard for the true interests of the unfortunate object
of her attachment, resembled the instinctive fondness of the animal race
for their offspring; and diving little farther into futurity than one of
the inferior creatures, she only felt that to be separated from Hamish
was to die.

In the brief interval permitted them, Elspat exhausted every art which
affection could devise, to render agreeable to him the space which they
were apparently to spend with each other. Her memory carried her far
back into former days, and her stores of legendary history, which
furnish at all times a principal amusement of the Highlander in his
moments of repose, were augmented by an unusual acquaintance with the
songs of ancient bards, and traditions of the most approved
seannachies and tellers of tales. Her officious attentions to her son's
accommodation, indeed, were so unremitted as almost to give him pain,
and he endeavoured quietly to prevent her from taking so much personal
toil in selecting the blooming heath for his bed, or preparing the meal
for his refreshment. "Let me alone, Hamish," she would reply on such
occasions; "you follow your own will in departing from your mother,
let your mother have hers in doing what gives her pleasure while you
remain."

So much she seemed to be reconciled to the arrangements which he had
made in her behalf, that she could hear him speak to her of her removing
to the lands of Green Colin, as the gentleman was called, on whose
estate he had provided her an asylum. In truth, however, nothing could
be farther from her thoughts. 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.
Whether she looked to any farther probable consequences of her unhappy
scheme cannot be known; but the partner of MacTavish Mhor, in all
his perils and wanderings, was familiar with an hundred instances of
resistance or escape, by which