The Thirsty Sword | Page 8

you done?" he exclaimed. "This is the most unlucky thing that could have happened! Alas, alas!"
"Would you, then, have helped my lady to sorrow?" cried Sir Oscar Redmain, rising wrathfully. "By the rood, but you are a thoughtless loon!"
Earl Hamish at the head of the board, hearing his lady's cry, rose hastily and approached her, and saw that she was very pale.
"I will retire," said she, "for the hall is over warm. I am faint and uneasy."
Earl Hamish led her to the door. There he kissed her fondly on her white brow and she went to her chamber.
CHAPTER IV.
THE DARKENING HALL.
The lord of Bute sat not down again, for the feast was at an end. Sir Oscar Redmain, minding that he had to travel all the way to Kilmory that night, went to his master and spoke with him aside. While the earl and his steward were thus engaged, a tall seneschal with his serving men came into the hall to clear away the remains of the banquet; and as the old minstrel left his place at the fireside to continue his harping in the supping room of the guards, the two lads, Alpin of Bute and Allan Redmain, stepped to the hearth to hold converse with the three guests.
Alpin and his young friend were both about nineteen years of age. They were almost full grown, and manly exercise had made them strong. They wore their rough hunting clothes -- loose vests of leather, homespun kilts, and untanned buskins. They carried no weapons, for it was held in custom that none should sit armed at table in the presence of strangers.
"Tell me, Earl Roderic," said Alpin, running his fingers through his long hair -- "you have, you say, been in far-off Iceland -- tell me, is it true that in that land there be many mountains that shoot forth fire and brimstone?"
"Ay, that is quite true, my lad," said his much-travelled uncle, "for I have myself seen such mountains. Higher than Goatfell they are, with streams of fire pouring down their glens."
"A most marvellous country!" exclaimed Alpin. "I wonder much if I shall ever behold that land."
"There you will have no such lordly feast as that we have just risen from," added Roderic, picking his teeth with his broad thumbnail.
Alpin and Allan watched him, hoping he would tell them something of his roving life. Roderic, finding that he could not easily dislodge the piece of meat from betwixt his teeth, picked up a twig of pine wood from the hearth, and took from the table the large knife with which his brother had carved the venison, and as he began to sharpen the little twig to a point he continued:
"No roasted beef there nor venison, but good tough whale flesh, black as a peat, or else a few candle ends -- for the Icelanders are fond of fat. Once when I was ship-broken on their coasts naught could my shipmates find to eat but reasty butter. Disliking that alone, we took our ship's cable, that was made of walrus hide, and smearing the cable with butter we bolted morsels of it, by which means we managed to exist for fourteen days.
"There," he said, finishing his toothpick, "that will serve. 'Tis strange, is it not, Master Alpin, what a piece of steel can do?"
And then, first looking at its point, he laid the long knife carelessly upon the shelf above the hearth.
"Why, in Norway, where I have also been, your man can take his knife and two slips of wood nine ells long, and he will so shape the wood that when the two slips are fitted to his feet he can outstrip a bird, a hound, or a deer."
"Does he, then, fly with them in the air, as a witch on her broom?" asked Allan Redmain.
"Why, no; he skates along the ice or snow," returned Roderic. "With such instruments and a snowy ground, master Redmain, you might be back at your castle of Kilmory in two flickers of a rush light. Go you to Kilmory tonight?"
"Yes," said Allan, "we go at once, for now I see my father is ready. Give you goodnight, my lords."
"Goodnight, boy," said the three guests.
And Allan, with his father and Alpin, then left the hall.
Two of the cruse lamps had by this time spent their oil, and their flames had died out. Earl Hamish was now alone with his guests.
"Shall we," said he, "retire to the smaller hall, Roderic? I have ordered Duncan to take some spiced wine there for us."
"I like the odour of the log fire here," said Roderic, exchanging glances with Erland the Old. "I pray you let us remain here a while."
Earl Hamish and his brother stood side by side, looking into the fire, while Sweyn the Silent and Erland the