But if you remain
here, then I will depart on the seventh by daybreak--then, as at
the last moment, I MUST set out for Dunbarton, for if I appear
not on the eighth day, I am subject to punishment as a deserter,
and am dishonoured as a soldier and a gentleman."
"Your father's foot," she answered, "was free as the wind on the
heath--it were as vain to say to him, where goest thou? as to
ask that viewless driver of the clouds, wherefore blowest thou?
Tell me under what penalty thou must--since go thou must, and go
thou wilt--return to thy thraldom?"
"Call it not thraldom, mother; it is the service of an honourable
soldier--the only service which is now open to the son of
MacTavish Mhor."
"Yet say what is the penalty if thou shouldst not return?"
replied Elspat.
"Military punishment as a deserter," answered Hamish, writhing,
however, as his mother failed not to observe, under some internal
feelings, which she resolved to probe to the uttermost.
"And that," she said, with assumed calmness, which her glancing
eye disowned, "is the punishment of a disobedient hound, is it
not?"
"Ask me no more, mother," said Hamish; "the punishment is nothing
to one who will never deserve it.
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