When Hamish MacTavish entered his mother's
hut, it was only to throw himself on the bed he
had left, and, exclaiming, ``Undone, undone!'' to
give vent, in cries of grief and anger, to his deep
sense of the deceit which had been practised on
him, and of the cruel predicament to which he was
reduced.
Elspat was prepared for the first explosion of
her son's passion, and said to herself, ``It is but the
mountain torrent, swelled by the thunder shower.
Let us sit and rest us by the bank; for all its present
tumult, the time will soon come when we may
pass it dryshod.'' She suffered his complaints and
his reproaches, which were, even in the midst of
his agony, respectful and affectionate, to die away
without returning any answer; and when, at length,
having exhausted all the exclamations of sorrow
which his language, copious in expressing the feelings
of the heart, affords to the sufferer, he sunk
into a gloomy silence, she suffered the interval to
continue near an hour ere she approached her son's
couch.
``And now,'' she said at length, with a voice in
which the authority of the mother was qualified by
her tenderness, ``have you exhausted your idle
sorrows, and are you able to place what you have
gained against what you have lost? Is the false
son of Dermid your brother, or the father of your
tribe, that you weep because you cannot bind yourself
to his belt, and become one of those who must
do his bidding? Could you find in yonder distant
country the lakes and the mountains that you leave
behind you here? Can you hunt the deer of Breadalbane
in the forests of America, or will the ocean
afford you the silver-scaled salmon of the Awe?
Consider, then, what is your loss, and, like a wise
man, set it against what you have won.
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