"
Hamish Bean took the gun which his mother offered, but did not
stir from the door of the hut. He was soon visible to the party
on the highroad, as was evident from their increasing their pace
to a run--the files, however, still keeping together like coupled
greyhounds, and advancing with great rapidity. In far less time
than would have been accomplished by men less accustomed to the
mountains, they had left the highroad, traversed the narrow path,
and approached within pistol-shot of the bothy, at the door of
which stood Hamish, fixed like a statue of stone, with his
firelock in his band, while his mother, placed behind him, and
almost driven to frenzy by the violence of her passions,
reproached him in the strongest terms which despair could invent,
for his want of resolution and faintness of heart. Her words
increased the bitter gall which was arising in the young man's
own spirit, as he observed the unfriendly speed with which his
late comrades were eagerly making towards him, like hounds
towards the stag when he is at bay. The untamed and angry
passions which he inherited from father and mother, were awakened
by the supposed hostility of those who pursued him; and the
restraint under which these passions had been hitherto held by
his sober judgment began gradually to give way.
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