The Thirsty Sword | Page 7

the table at Alpin's handsome brown face.
"We had two children," he continued sadly. "The girl would have been of the years of your own son there, the boy was two summers younger than she."
"Oh, do not tell me that they are dead!" cried Adela.
"Alas! but that is so," he sighed. "One sunny day they went out hand in hand from our castle to play, as was their wont, among the rocks and caves that are at the south of our island. Never since then have they returned, and some said that the water kelpie had taken them and carried them away to his crystal home under the sea. Others whispered that the kraken or some other monster of the deep had devoured them. They said these things, believing that Sigrid had no heart for her children, and that she was unkind to them. But many days thereafter I learned that a strange ship had been seen bearing outward between Gigha and Cara; and it was the ship of Rapp the Icelander, the cruellest sea rover that ever sailed upon the western seas. Then did I believe that neither kelpie nor kraken had taken my bairns, but Rapp the Rover.
"So I got ship and followed him. For three long years I followed in his track -- to the frozen shores of Iceland, and into every vic and fiord in Scandinavia. Southward then I sailed to the blue seas of England -- always behind him yet never encountering him. But at last there came a day of terrible tempest. The thunder god struck my ship and we were wrecked. Every man that was on board my ship was drowned saving only myself, for the white sea mew swims not more lightly on the waters than I. So I was picked up by a passing vessel, and it was the vessel of Rapp the Icelander. Instead of killing him I loved him, in that he had saved my life. Then he told me, swearing by St. Olaf, that never in all his time of sea roving had he touched at the little island of Gigha, and that he knew naught soever of the dear children I had lost."
"Greatly do I pity you, Earl Roderic," said Adela, clasping her hands. "And you have not yet found trace of your little ones?"
"No," said Roderic. "And now do I believe that they are still at play in the crystal halls of the water kelpie, whence no man can rescue them."
"And your wife Sigrid, what of her?" asked Sir Oscar Redmain.
"When I got back to Gigha," murmured Roderic, "they told me that in my absence she had gone mad, and that in her frenzy she had cast herself from the cliffs into the sea. Whithersoever I have gone since that sad time, there have I found unhappiness."
The Lady Adela looked upon the man with gentle pity in her dark eyes. She felt how different had been his lot from hers and her dear husband's. For notwithstanding that she dwelt in a country not her own, and among people who spoke a foreign tongue, yet she was very happy. The Earl Hamish loved her well and was ever good to her. And their two sons, Alpin and Kenric, growing up into manhood, were very dear to her heart.
She was the daughter of a proud English baron, who had wide dominions near the great city of York. Twenty years before, Earl Hamish of Bute had been sent with other wise counsellors by King Alexander the Second on a mission to the court of the English king, Henry the Third, concerning the great treaty of peace between England and Scotland, and also to consider the proposal of a marriage between the daughter of the King of England and the son of the King of Scots. The treaty established a peace which had not yet been broken, and the Princess Margaret of England was now the Queen of Scotland. But while on that embassy to York Earl Hamish of Bute won more than the gratitude of his sovereign, for he won the heart of the Lady Adela Warwick, and, making her his wife, he brought her to his castle of Rothesay, where she had lived happily ever since.
She was thinking of these matters as she heard Earl Roderic's story of his great unhappiness, and her eyes were fixed dreamily before her.
Now Roderic, to whom the presence of this sweet and beautiful lady was a new experience, observed her pensiveness and wondered thereat. His roving glance presently fell upon her plate.
"Ah!" said he, "you have no salt, my lady."
And thereupon he took her knife and dug its point into the salt horn.
"Nay, nay!" she cried in alarm; and she grasped his wrist so that he spilled the salt upon the table.
"What have