To her Hamish was the eagle who had only to soar aloft and resume his native place in the skies, without her being able to comprehend how many additional eyes would have watched his flight--how many additional bullets would have been directed at his bosom.

To be brief, Elspat was one who viewed the present state of society with the same feelings with which she regarded the times that had passed away.

She had been indigent, neglected, oppressed since the days that her husband had no longer been feared and powerful, and she thought that the term of her ascendence would return when her son had determined to play the part of his father.

If she permitted her eye to glance farther into futurity, it was but to anticipate that she must be for many a day cold in the grave, with the coronach of her tribe cried duly over her, before her fair-haired Hamish could, according to her calculation, die with his hand on the basket-hilt of the red claymore.
His father's hair was grey, ere, after a hundred dangers, he had fallen with his arms in his hands.

That she should have seen and survived the sight was a natural consequence of the manners of that age.