hey were a
species of militia, who had no conception of a camp as their only home.
If a battle was lost, they dispersed to save themselves, and look out
for the safety of their families; if won, they went back to their glens
to hoard up their booty, and attend to their cattle and their farms.
This privilege of going and coming at pleasure, they would not be
deprived of even by their chiefs, whose authority was in most other
respects so despotic. It followed as a matter of course, that the
new-levied Highland recruits could scarce be made to comprehend the
nature of a military engagement, which compelled a man to serve in the
army longer than he pleased; and perhaps, in many instances, sufficient
care was not taken at enlisting to explain to them the permanency of the
engagement which they came under, lest such a disclosure should induce
them to change their mind. Desertions were therefore become numerous
from the newly-raised regiment, and the veteran general who commanded
at Dunbarton saw no better way of checking them than by causing an
unusually severe example to be made of a deserter from an English corps.
The young Highland regiment was obliged to attend upon the punishment,
which struck a people, peculiarly jealous of personal honour, with equal
horror and disgust, and not unnaturally indisposed some of them to the
service. The old general, however, who had been regularly bred in the
German wars, stuck to his own opinion, and gave out in orders that
the first Highlander who might either desert, or fail to appear at the
expiry of his furlough, should be brought to the halberds, and punished
like the culprit whom they had seen in that condition. No man doubted
that General -- would keep his word rigorously whenever severity was
required, and Elspat, therefore, knew that her son, when he perceived
that due compliance with his orders was impossible, must at the same
time consider the degrading punishment denounced against his defection
as inevitable, should he place himself within the general's power. [See
Note 10.--Fidelity of the Highlanders.]

When noon was well passed, new apprehensions came on the mind of the
lonely woman. Her son still slept under the influence of the draught;
but what if, being stronger than she had ever known it administered, his
health or his reason should be affected by its potency? For the first
time, likewise, notwithstanding her high ideas on the subject of
parental authority, she began t