“My lord,” said she, “it is little Ronald Campbell that I seek, and his sister Rachel.  We cannot find them, and they have not been seen by anyone since evensong.  Methinks they must have crept under the gate and so wandered into the grove.”

“Are there no men who could seek the children as well as you?  Go back, Ailsa, and let me seek.”

But as he spoke, he heard the sound of children’s laughter from among the birch trees, and, believing that Ailsa was turning back, he ran forward towards the woods.

Now little Ronald Campbell was the same who had picked up Earl Kenric’s gauntlet on the day of his throning on the Great Plain.

Scarcely had Kenric entered the grove when the laughter he had heard was changed into a scream of terror.  Little Ronald, dragging his sister by the hand, came running towards him, pursued by a score of savage Norsemen.  Kenric was about to snatch up the children in his arms when he saw it was too late.  The Norsemen were upon him.  He gripped his sword and stood his ground.  At the same moment Ailsa Redmain brushed past him and took the little Ronald by the hand.  One of the men of Colonsay darted forward, levelling his spear, and with its sharp point caught the little Rachel.  The child fell down, and the spear was but caught in her woollen frock.  In an instant Kenric had leapt forward, swinging his sword in air.  His heavy blade crashed into the man’s skull.  Then other twenty men surrounded Kenric, menacing him and pressing forward to reach the children he defended.  A man of Colonsay caught Ailsa by her hand, and with his dagger was about to take her life.  With a great cry of furious rage Kenric sprang upon him and felled him.

Closer still the Norsemen pressed in upon him.  But Ailsa lay down at his feet with the two little ones clasped tightly in her arms, protecting them as a moor hen protects her chicks under the cover of her spreading wings.  Kenric, sweeping his blade from right to left, felled every man who came within a couple of paces of Ailsa, until at last the yelling warriors drew back, leaving the young earl standing in the midst of a circle of dead men, with Ailsa and the two children still unscathed.

Then as the enemy, reinforced by many of their comrades from among the trees, and ranking themselves shoulder to shoulder, drew in again, suddenly a shower of arrows poured upon them, and a troop of the men of Bute rushed forward from their ambush.

From another direction a warrior on horseback appeared and crashed in among the Norsemen, felling them with mighty strokes of his heavy battle-axe.  Then followed such a slaughter of the Norsemen that in a few minutes not one was left alive.

The warrior on horseback threw his battle-axe upon the ground, and drawing rein, sat upon his saddle with folded arms, and Kenric saw by his armour that he too was one of the enemy, and he marvelled much.

The men of Bute were now eager to make an end of that stranger, for they thought that he was the leader of the men who had thus attempted to surprise the guard and make inroads upon the abbey.  But, seeing the man sitting so calm upon his horse and unarmed, they lowered their weapons.