She rambled for hours,
seeking rather than shunning the most dangerous
paths. 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, (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.
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.
Awhile she paused at the wattled door, as if ashamed
that lingering fondness should have brought
her back to the spot which she had left with the
purpose of never returning; but there was yet
more of fear and anxiety in her hesitation---of anxiety,
lest her fair-haired son had suffered from
the effects of her potion---of fear, lest his enemies
had come upon him in the night.
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