CHAPTER X. AASTA’S CURSE.

Roderic of Gigha, for all that he had been absent from Bute for a score of years, had not forgotten the old landmarks that had been familiar to him in boyhood.  After swimming across Loch Fad he found himself among the tall pine trees of the forest of Barone.  Wet and weary after his escape from his pursuers, and smarting sorely of his many wounds, he passed through the forest glades and emerged at the point where, on the evening before, Kenric had entered.

As he skirted the lands of Kilmory he saw a herd of shaggy long-horned cattle browsing there, with many sheep and goats.  He looked about for their shepherd that he might ask him concerning the earls of Jura and Colonsay.  He began to regret that he had so lightly dismissed his friends, who might better have waited to carry him in their ship to Gigha.

Presently he heard voices from behind a great rock.  A young sheepdog appeared, but when it saw him it turned tail and slunk away as if it were afraid of him.  Then from behind the rock came young Lulach the herd boy, and with him a most beautiful girl.  Lulach stood for a moment looking at the strange man.

“Ah, ’tis he!  ’Tis he whom we were but now speaking of!” he cried, and dropping the brown bread cake that he had been eating he ran away down the hill in terror.

But the girl stood still, with her hand resting on the rock.

Now this girl was the same strange maiden who had appeared so mysteriously before Kenric on his night journey through the forest.  Tall she was and very fair —­ tall and graceful as a young larch tree, and fair as the drifted snow whose surface reflects the red morning sun.  Her eyes were blue as the starry sky, and her long hair fell upon her white skin like a dark stream of blood.  Men named this wondrous maiden Aasta the Fair.

Earl Roderic started back at sight of her great beauty as she stood before him in her gray and ragged garments, for she was but a poor thrall who worked upon the lands of Kilmory, minding the goats upon the hills or mending the fishermen’s nets down on the shore.

“Fair damsel,” said he, “tell me, I pray you, if you have seen pass by an aged man and his companion towards the bay of Scalpsie?”

“’Tis but an hour ago that they passed hence,” said Aasta.  “Cursed be the occasion that brought both them and you into this isle!”

Then she pointed across the blue moor of the sea where, under the shadow of the high coast of Arran, a vessel appeared as a mere speck upon the dark water.

“Yonder sails their ship into the current of Kilbrannan Sound.”

“Alas!” said Roderic, “and I am too late.”

“Alas, indeed!” said Aasta.  “Methinks they had better have tarried to take away with them the false traitor they have left upon our shores.  What manner of foul work detained you that you went not hence with your evil comrades?  But the blood that I now see flowing from your wounds tells its own tale.  You have slain Earl Alpin in the fight.  Woe be upon you!”