ht news that in a hut a mile eastward of the castle a man had
been found, who had been brought up from the shore, dead; and that,
further east still, the bodies of--

Here Sorley Boy smote his fist on the table, and ordered the fellow to
hold his peace.

"I want no news of the dead," said he, wrathfully, "but of the living.
Where is my son Ludar?"

The man slunk off chapfallen.

The maiden knelt beside the old man's chair, and laid her white cheek on
his rough sleeve. Jeannette drew me gently to a bench at the far corner
of the hall, and bade me rest there beside her.

Thus, while the afternoon slowly wore into evening, and the storm
without moaned itself to sleep, we sat there in silence.

About sundown, just as--despite the sweet presence at my side--I was
growing drowsy with weariness and pain, Sorley Boy suddenly uttered an
exclamation and rose to his feet. The maiden rose too. And as she
stood, motionless but for the heaving of her bosom, the slanting rays of
the sun caught her and kindled her face into a wondrous glow.

Jeannette's gentle hand restrained me, as the old man, taking a step or
two down the room as far as the end of the table, stood there facing the
door. Then there fell on my ears a voice and the ring of a footstep in
the courtyard without. Next moment, the door swung open and Ludar
walked quietly in.

Jeannette led me softly from the place, and kept me cruelly pacing in
the outer darkness for half-an-hour before she said:

"Art thou not going in to welcome thy friend, Humphrey?"

Need I say what passed, when at last we stood all four together in that
great hall?

The old chief had taken his seat again at the table, and sat there
solemn and impassive, as if all that had passed had been but the
ordinary event of an afternoon. But the fire in his eye betrayed him,
as now and again he half turned his head to the window where Ludar and
the maiden stood gazing out across the waves.

"Humphrey, my brother," said Ludar, when at last Jeannette and I drew
near, "'tis worth a little storm to be thus in port at last, and to find
you there too."

"Ay, indeed," said I. "And, as you see, there are more than I here to
greet you."

Then he stepped up to Jeannette and gazed in her face a moment, and
kissed her on the brow.

"Thou art welcome to Dunluce, sister Jeannette," said he.

Jeannette told me afterwards that she never felt so proud in her life as
when Ludar's lips touched her forehe