e shipmen were unloading
her of a cargo of English salt and other commodities of the far south.
Presently the old woman went downward to the beach, and there held
speech with the shipmaster, who, as it chanced, being a man of Wales,
could make shift to understand the Gaelic tongue, and from him she
learned that the ship was to leave at the ebb tide for England.

Now Elspeth had seen young Ailsa Redmain as the girl was passing to her
father's castle, and Ailsa had told her how the wicked lord of Gigha had
been made an outlaw. So Elspeth questioned the shipmaster, asking him if
he would be free to carry this man away from Bute.

"My good dame," said the mariner, "that will I most gladly do, for your
holy bishop or abbot, or whatever he be, hath already paid me the sum of
four golden pieces in agreeing that I shall do this thing -- though for
the matter of that, this man is a king in his own land, and methinks the
honour were ample payment without the gold; so if the winds permit, and
we meet no rascally pirates by the way, I make no doubt that ere the
next new moon we shall be snug and safe against the walls of our good
city of Chester."

So ere the curtain of night had fallen over the Arran hills the outlawed
earl of Gigha had left behind him the little isle of Bute, and it was
thereafter told how he had in secret confessed his manifold sins to the
abbot of St. Blane's, and how in deep contrition he had solemnly sworn
at the altar to make forthwith the pilgrimage of penance to the Holy
Land, there to spend the three years of his exile in the service of the
Cross.

CHAPTER XI. THE SWORD OF SOMERLED.

Now when Kenric, following sadly behind the body of his brother, came
within sight of the castle of Rothesay his heart sank heavy with the woe
that was upon him. He thought of how his mother had pressed upon Alpin
the charge of vengeance, and of how that charge had ended. He would far
rather have given up his own life than face his mother and tell her the
terrible tale of how the man whom Alpin had sworn to slay had himself
slain Alpin. And he was sorrowful beyond measure.

They bore the body of their dead young king into the great hall, and
laid him on a bier beside the body of his father, the good Earl Hamish,
and the curtains were drawn and many candles and torches were lighted
and set round the two biers, while two of the friars of St. Blane's
knelt there in solemn prayer.

Then Kenric went to the door of hi