“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.”