But the courage arising from despair was the means of saving the life which (though deliberate suicide was rarely practised in the Highlands) she was perhaps desirous of terminating.

Her step on the verge of the precipice was firm as that of the wild goat.

Her eye, in that state of excitation, was so keen as to discern, even amid darkness, the perils which noon would not have enabled a stranger to avoid.
Elspat's course was not directly forward, else she had soon been far from the bothy in which she had left her son.

It was circuitous, for that hut was the centre to which her heartstrings were chained, and though she wandered around it, she felt it impossible to leave the vicinity.

With the first beams of morning she returned to the hut.
Awhile she paused at the wattled door, as if ashamed that lingering fondness should have brought her back to the spot which she had left with the purpose of never returning; but there was yet more of fear and anxiety in her hesitation--of anxiety, lest her fair-haired son had suffered from the effects of her potion--of fear, lest his enemies had come upon him in the night.