Wait here, and receive your taskmasters, and abide your chastise-
ment at their hands ; but do not think your mother's eyes will be-
hold it. I could not see it and live. My eyes have looked often
upon death, but never upon dishonour! Farewell, Hamish ! — We
never meet again."



THE HIGHLAND WIDOW. 4,7

She dashed from the hut like a lapwing, and perhaps for the
moment actually entertained the purpose which she expressed, of
parting with her son for ever. A fearful sight she would have been
that evening to any who might have met her wandering through
the wilderness like a restless spirit, and speaking to herself in
language which will endure no translation. She rambled for hours,
seeking rather than shunning the most dangerous paths. The pre-
carious 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 (though deliberate suicide was
rarely practised in the Highlands) 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.
