ken joists, and, lest the evening should be chill, there was a fire of
fragrant pine logs blazing on the open hearth. Round the walls of the
hall, that were panelled with black oak boards, there were many
glittering shields and corselets, with hunting horns and various
trophies of the chase.

At the fireside there sat an aged minstrel, whose duty it was to fill in
the intervals of the feast with the music of his harp, or, if need were,
to recite to the company the saga of King Somerled and other great
ancestors of the kings of Bute.

Earl Hamish -- a tall, courtly Highlander, with sad eyes and a long
brown beard -- sat at the head of the board, that with his own strong
hands he might carve the steaming venison. At his right hand sat the
earl of Jura, Erland the Old, and at his left Earl Sweyn the Silent. His
beautiful wife, the Lady Adela -- attired in a rich gown inwoven with
many devices of silk, and spun by the Sudureyans -- sat facing him at
the far end of the board. At her right hand sat Earl Roderic of Gigha;
and at her left Alpin, her son.

So the feast began, with much merry discourse of how the men had fared
that day at the hunting in Glen More.

Now Erland and Sweyn, kinglings of Jura and Colonsay, though owing
yearly tribute to their overlord, Alexander the Third of Scotland, were
both men of the North, and they spoke with Earl Hamish in the Norse
tongue. Their discourse, which has no bearing upon the story, was mainly
of cattle and sheep, and of the old breast laws of the Western Isles.
But Roderic of Gigha spoke in the Gaelic, which the Lady Adela, though
an Englishwoman born, could well understand.

"Ah, but," said he, addressing young Alpin, who had been boasting of the
manly sports that might be enjoyed in his father's dominions, "you
should one day come to Gigha, for there, I do assure you, we have
adventure such as you never dream of in Bute."

"I marvel, my lord, how that can be," said Allan Redmain scornfully,
"for the kingdom of which you boast is but a barren rock in the mid sea,
and methinks your beasts of the chase are but vermin rats and shrew mice."

"The sports of which I speak, young man," said Roderic, frowning and
wiping his red beard with his broad hand, "are not such bairns' play as
you suppose. Our beasts of the chase are burly men, and our hunting
ground is the wide ocean. I and my gallant fellows carry our adventures
far into the north to Iceland and Scandinavia, or southward ev