“Do you hear THAT, mother?” said Hamish, turning himself as much towards her as his bonds would permit; but the mother heard nothing, and saw nothing. She had fainted on the floor of her hut. Without waiting for her recovery, the party almost immediately began their homeward march towards Dunbarton, leading along with them their prisoner. They thought it necessary, however, to stay for a little space at the village of Dalmally, from which they despatched a party of the inhabitants to bring away the body of their unfortunate leader, while they themselves repaired to a magistrate, to state what had happened, and require his instructions as to the farther course to be pursued. The crime being of a military character, they were instructed to march the prisoner to Dunbarton without delay. The swoon of the mother of Hamish lasted for a length of time--the longer perhaps that her constitution, strong as it was, must have been much exhausted by her previous agitation of three days’ endurance. She was roused from her stupor at length by female voices, which cried the coronach, or lament for the dead, with clapping of hands and loud exclamations; while the melancholy note of a lament, appropriate to the clan Cameron, played on the bagpipe, was heard from time to time. Elspat started up like one awakened from the dead, and without any accurate recollection of the scene which had passed before her eyes. There were females in the hut who were swathing the corpse in its bloody plaid before carrying it from the fatal spot. “Women,” she said, starting up and interrupting their chant at once and their labour--“Tell me, women, why sing you the dirge of MacDhonuil Dhu in the house of MacTavish Mhor?” “She-wolf, be silent with thine ill-omened yell,” answered one of the females, a relation of the deceased, “and let us do our duty to our beloved kinsman. There shall never be coronach cried, or dirge played, for thee or thy bloody wolf-burd. [Wolf-brood--that is, wolf-cub.] The ravens shall eat him from the gibbet, and the foxes and wild-cats shall tear thy corpse upon the hill. Cursed be he that would sain [Bless.] your bones, or add a stone to your cairn!” “Daughter of a foolish mother,” answered the widow of MacTavish Mhor, “know that the gibbet with which you threaten us is no portion of our inheritance. For thirty years the Black Tree of the Law, whose apples are dead men’s bodies, hungered after the beloved husband of my heart; but he died like a brave man, with the sword in his hand, and defrauded it of its hopes and its fruit.” “So shall it not be with thy child, bloody sorceress,” replied the female mourner, whose passions were as violent as those of Elspat herself. “The ravens shall tear his fair hair to line their nests, before the sun sinks beneath the Treshornish islands.”