“It is false!” said Elspat, fiercely; “you and such like dastardly spirits are quelled by your own faint hearts, not by the strength of the enemy; you are like the fearful waterfowl, to whom the least cloud in the sky seems the shadow of the eagle.”
“Mother,” said Hamish proudly, “lay not faint heart to my charge. I go where men are wanted who have strong arms and bold hearts too. I leave a desert, for a land where I may gather fame.”
“And you leave your mother to perish in want, age, and solitude,” said Elspat, essaying successively every means of moving a resolution which she began to see was more deeply rooted than she had at first thought.
“Not so, neither,” he answered; “I leave you to comfort and certainty, which you have yet never known. Barcaldine’s son is made a leader, and with him I have enrolled myself. MacPhadraick acts for him, and raises men, and finds his own in doing it.”
“That is the truest word of the tale, were all the rest as false as hell,” said the old woman, bitterly.
“But we are to find our good in it also,” continued Hamish; “for Barcaldine is to give you a shieling in his wood of Letter-findreight, with grass for your goats, and a cow, when you please to have one, on the common; and my own pay, dearest mother, though I am far away, will do more than provide you with meal, and with all else you can want. Do not fear for me. I enter a private gentleman; but I will return, if hard fighting and regular duty can deserve it, an officer, and with half a dollar a day.”
“Poor child!” replied Elspat, in a tone of pity mingled with contempt, “and you trust MacPhadraick?”
“I might mother,” said Hamish, the dark red colour of his race crossing his forehead and cheeks, “for MacPhadraick knows the blood which flows in my veins, and is aware, that should he break trust with you, he might count the days which could bring Hamish back to Breadalbane, and number those of his life within three suns more. I would kill him at his own hearth, did he break his word with me—I would, by the great Being who made us both!”
The look and attitude of the young soldier for a moment overawed Elspat; she was unused to see him express a deep and bitter mood, which reminded her so strongly of his father. But she resumed her remonstrances in the same taunting manner in which she had commenced them.
“Poor boy!” she said; “and you think that at the distance of half the world your threats will be heard or thought of! But, go—go—place your neck under him of Hanover’s yoke, against whom every true Gael fought to the death. Go, disown the royal Stewart, for whom your father, and his fathers, and your mother’s fathers, have crimsoned many a field with their blood. Go, put your head under the belt of one of the race of Dermid, whose children murdered—Yes,” she added, with a wild shriek, “murdered your mother’s fathers in their peaceful dwellings in Glencoe! Yes,” she again exclaimed, with a wilder and shriller scream, “I was then unborn, but my mother has told me—and I attended to the voice of MY mother—well I remember her words! They came in peace, and were received in friendship—and blood and fire arose, and screams and murder!”
[See Note 9 Massacre of Glencoe.]
“Mother,” answered Hamish, mournfully, but with a decided tone, “all that I have thought over. There is not a drop of the blood of Glencoe on the noble hand of Barcaldine; with the unhappy house of Glenlyon the curse remains, and on them God hath avenged it.”
“You speak like the Saxon priest already,” replied his mother; “will you not better stay, and ask a kirk from Macallum Mhor, that you may preach forgiveness to the race of Dermid?”
“Yesterday was yesterday,” answered Hamish, “and to-day is to-day. When the clans are crushed and confounded together, it is well and wise that their hatreds and their feuds should not survive their independence and their power. He that cannot execute vengeance like a man, should not harbour useless enmity like a craven. Mother, young Barcaldine is true and brave. I know that MacPhadraick counselled him that he should not let me take leave of you, lest you dissuaded me from my purpose; but he said, ‘Hamish MacTavish is the son of a brave man, and he will not break his word.’ Mother, Barcaldine leads an hundred of the bravest of the sons of the Gael in their native dress, and with their fathers’ arms—heart to heart—shoulder to shoulder. I have sworn to go with him. He has trusted me, and I will trust him.”
At this reply, so firmly and resolvedly pronounced, Elspat remained like one thunderstruck, and sunk in despair. The arguments which she had considered so irresistibly conclusive, had recoiled like a wave from a rock. After a long pause, she filled her son’s quaigh, and presented it to him with an air of dejected deference and submission.
“Drink,” she said, “to thy father’s rooftree, ere you leave it for ever; and tell me—since the chains of a new King, and of a new chief, whom your fathers knew not save as mortal enemies, are fastened upon the limbs of your father’s son—tell me how many links you count upon them?”
Hamish 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 dishonoured the father of the
