Step back within the hut, my son, and shoot from the loophole beside the door.

Two you may bring down ere they quit the highroad for the footpath--there will remain but three; and your father, with my aid, has often stood against that number." 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.