ain 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. But when she was beyond
the sight of those who remained in the hut, she could no longer suppress
the extremity of her agitation. Drawing her mantle wildly round her,
she stopped at the first knoll, and climbing to its summit, extended
her arms up to the bright moon, as if accusing heaven and earth for her
misfortunes, and uttered scream on scream, like those of an eagle whose
nest has been plundered of her brood. Awhile she vented her grief
in these inarticulate cries, then rushed on her way with a hasty
and unequal step, in the vain hope of overtaking the party which was
conveying her son a prisoner to Dunbarton. But her strength, superhuman
as it seemed, failed her in the trial; nor was it possible for her, with
her utmost efforts, to accomplish her purpose.

Yet she pressed onward, with all the speed which her exhausted frame
could exert. When food became indispensable, she entered the first
cottage. "Give me to eat," she said. "I am the widow of MacTavish
Mhor--I am the mother of Hamish MacTavish Bean,--give me to eat, that
I may once more see my fair-haired son." Her demand was never refused,
though granted in many cases with a kind of struggle between compassion
and aversion in some of those to whom she applied, which was in others
qualified by fear. The share she had had in occasioning the death of
Allan Breack Cameron, which must probably involve that of her own son,
was not accurately known; but, from a knowledge of her violent passions
and former habits of life, no one doubted that in one way or other she
had been the cause of the catastrophe, and Hamish Bean was considered,
in