"Let me alone,
Hamish," she would reply on such occasions; "you follow your own
will in departing from your mother, let your mother have hers in
doing what gives her pleasure while you remain."
So much she seemed to be reconciled to the arrangements which he
had made in her behalf, that she could hear him speak to her of
her removing to the lands of Green Colin, as the gentleman was
called, on whose estate he had provided her an asylum. In truth,
however, nothing could be farther from her thoughts. From what
he had said during their first violent dispute, Elspat had
gathered that, if Hamish returned not by the appointed time
permitted by his furlough, he would incur the hazard of corporal
punishment. Were he placed within the risk of being thus
dishonoured, she was well aware that he would never submit to the
disgrace by a return to the regiment where it might be inflicted.
Whether she looked to any farther probable consequences of her
unhappy scheme cannot be known; but the partner of MacTavish
Mhor, in all his perils and wanderings, was familiar with an
hundred instances of resistance or escape, by which one brave
man, amidst a land of rocks, lakes, and mountains, dangerous
passes, and dark forests, might baffle the pursuit of hundreds.
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