Kenric looked up at Elspeth in surprise.

“You are young, my lord,” she continued, and you know not the things that have been.  But I am old.  Not always has it been with me as you see me now.  Time was, my lord, when I, who am now a poor infirm woman, decried as a witch, despised of men, was a fair and joyous young maid.  My father was a king —­”

“A king?” echoed Kenric.

“Even so.  And he had his castle under the Black Fell that is in far-off Iceland.  Men named me Elspeth White Arm, and my lord and husband was also a king.  He was the noblest and truest of all the monarchs of the North, and he was the lord over the Westermann Islands.  We had one child, and we named her Sigrid the Fair.”

“Elspeth, Elspeth, What is this that you are saying?” cried Kenric, partly guessing what was to come.

“Sigrid was a wild and self-willed child,” the old woman continued, fixing her blue eyes on Kenric, “but I loved her well.  And on a time —­ ’tis a full score and four years ago —­ she disappeared, and we could find her nowhere, until my lord went out upon his ship and boarded the galley of a bold viking of the south whose name was Rudri Alpinson, or, as the Scots called him, Roderic MacAlpin.  On Roderic’s galley was Sigrid found; but she would not return, for she loved this man Roderic passing well, knowing little of his evil heart.  My lord, in trying to win her back, was slain by Roderic’s hand, and thereupon Roderic carried away my child as his willing captive to his island home in Gigha.  There he made her his wedded wife.  But not long had my lord been dead, not long had his younger brother taken his place as ruler in our land, when my heart so yearned for my fair Sigrid that I took ship and came south in search of her.  By chance I landed upon your father’s isle of Bute, for it was of Bute that Roderic had spoken as the home of his fathers.

“The ship that brought me hither was the ship of my brother, Rapp the Icelander.  Him I bade go over to Gigha and fulfil for me my vengeance upon my enemy Roderic, and rescue my daughter.  But the people secretly told him that Roderic had been cruel to Sigrid, and that her love for him had vanished as the morning mist.  My child had lost her reason, and in her mad despair she had gone out one day and cast herself from the cliffs into the sea.  Now Sigrid had left two children, and it was said that they were unhappy.  So Rapp, searching for them, with intent to carry them off and bring them to me that I might be revenged upon their father, found them one day playing in a great rock tunnel in Gigha.”

“I know the place,” said Kenric; “’twas there that Aasta —­”

“’Twas there that Rapp the Icelander found Earl Roderic’s bairns, and from thence he carried them off.  Those bairns, my lord, were Aasta the Fair and the boy Lulach.”

“Aasta?  Lulach?” cried Kenric in astonishment, as he rose and began to pace the rocky floor.  “And they were brother and sister?  And they were the children of Roderic —­ my own cousins?  This is a strange thing that you are telling me, Elspeth, and I can scarce believe it!”