noon
The precarious track through the morass , the dizzy path along the edge of the precipice or by the banks of the gulfing river , were the roads which , far from avoiding , she sought with eagerness , and traversed with reckless haste . But the courage arising from despair was the means of saving the life which -LRB- though deliberate suicide was rarely practised in the Highlands -RRB- she was perhaps desirous of terminating . Her step on the verge of the precipice was firm as that of the wild goat . Her eye , in that state of excitation , was so keen as to discern , even amid darkness , the perils which noon would not have enabled a stranger to avoid . Elspat 's course was not directly forward , else she had soon been far from the bothy in which she had left her son . It was circuitous , for that hut was the centre to which her heartstrings were chained , and though she wandered around it , she felt it impossible to leave the vicinity . With the first beams of morning she returned to the hut .