"
"Silly woman," answered the female who had maintained the
dialogue with the departed Elspat, "thinkest thou that there is a
worse fiend on earth, or beneath it, than the pride and fury of
an offended woman, like yonder bloody-minded hag? Know that
blood has been as familiar to her as the dew to the mountain
daisy. Many and many a brave man has she caused to breathe their
last for little wrong they had done to her or theirs. But her
hough-sinews are cut, now that her wolf-burd must, like a
murderer as he is, make a murderer's end."
Whilst the women thus discoursed together, as they watched the
corpse of Allan Breack Cameron, the unhappy cause of his death
pursued her lonely way across the mountain. While she remained
within sight of the bothy, she put a strong constraint on
herself, that by no alteration of pace or gesture she might
afford to her enemies the triumph of calculating the excess of
her mental agitation, nay, despair. She stalked, therefore, with
a slow rather than a swift step, and, holding herself upright,
seemed at once to endure with firmness that woe which was passed,
and bid defiance to that which was about to come.
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