Presently he yawned, stretched his arms aloft, and stood up, walking to and fro about the apartment with his thumbs stuck in his belt.  In person he was majestic, and although his figure was too tall and his bones over-large and ill-covered, yet his limbs were well formed, and he bore himself gracefully.  His countenance was handsome, and it beamed with a manly and sweet expression, which corresponded with the sincerity of his character.

Pausing abruptly in his pacing, he addressed the English page.

“We will now see this young lord of Bute,” he said.  “Go, Edwin, and bid him enter, and with him our friend Sir Piers de Currie.”

Edwin went out.  His companion of the flaxen hair fixed his blue eyes upon the doorway, nervously expectant.

“Ah, my young Harald,” said the King in Gaelic.  “So, then, you heard the name of Bute, eh?  Are you already weary of courtly life that you so prick up your ears at the name of an island?”

The youth blushed and looked ashamed, but still furtively watched the door as it was reopened to admit Earl Kenric.  Sir Piers de Currie entering with him, remained within the doorway until the king should be ready to receive him.

Kenric was attired in the same fashion as on the day of his throning, but that he now wore no covering upon his head.  He advanced towards the king, and prostrated himself humbly before him.

“God be your guard, my lord the king,” he murmured in that pure English that his mother had taught him, and raising himself on one knee he took King Alexander’s hand in his own and pressed it to his lips.

“I, your Majesty’s humble vassal of Bute,” he continued, “Kenric by name, and son of your Majesty’s loyal subject, the late Earl Hamish, do now come to pay your Majesty dutiful homage for the lands I hold of the Scottish crown; and on your royal hand I swear to maintain fidelity to your Majesty as my liege lord and sovereign, and not to enter into any league with the enemies of Scotland, saving only in the case of unjust oppression.  In token of my loyalty I agree, as the old custom of my fathers hath ordained, to deliver once every year at the castle of Dumbarton —­ as I have this day delivered —­ two well-trained gerfalcons, and —­ and —­”

Kenric faltered, for he heard the rustling of a woman’s dress very near him.  The young queen had entered.

“Enough,” said the king.  “And say, now, how does your sweet mother, the Lady Adela, and how bears she her grief at the sad loss that hath befallen her?  The lord warden of this castle hath already acquainted us of the treachery of the man Roderic.”

“So please you, sire, she is now passing well recovered, and bears her sorrows most nobly,” said Kenric.

“And now,” said the King, “how happens it that Roderic of Gigha was allowed to leave your island alive?  Had such a crime as his been committed within the realms of Scotland it is not thus that the criminal would have escaped.”