Earl Hamish and his brother stood side by side, looking into the fire, while Sweyn the Silent and Erland the Old sat them at either corner of the hearth.  The two brothers were much alike in stature, both being tall and broad; but Hamish was gentler, and his every movement showed that he was accustomed to the company of those who deemed a courtly bearing of more account than mere bodily prowess, though in truth he lacked not that either.  His hair and beard, too, were dark, touched here and there with the frost of age; while his brother’s long hair was red as the back of the fox.

“Well, Hamish,” began Roderic, moving uneasily on his feet, “you have, as I have heard, won your way into the good graces of our lord the King?”

“I trust,” said Hamish, “that I may never be accused of disloyalty.  I am ever at my sovereign’s service in whatsoever he commands me to do.”

“What, even though the doing of that service be to your own great disadvantage?” said Roderic, looking aside at Earl Sweyn and smiling grimly.

“Naught can be to my disadvantage that is done in dutiful service of my country and King,” answered the lord of Bute proudly.

Roderic laughed scornfully, and his laugh was echoed by Sweyn and Erland.

“There may be two thoughts as to that,” returned Roderic.  “As for myself, I’d snap my fingers in the King’s face ere I would go on a journey such as you have newly undertaken, my brother.  Think not that we have no eyes nor ears in the outer isles, Earl Hamish; for it is known in every castle between Cape Wrath and the Mull of Kintyre that you have but now returned from a mission to King Hakon of Norway.”

“And what though it were yet more widely known?” said Hamish in surprise.  “Am I, then, the only lord in all the isles who remains true to his oaths of fealty?  And are they all as you are, Roderic, who have failed these many years to pay due tribute to the King of Scots?”

“You are the only one among us,” croaked Erland the Old, “who pays not homage to our rightful lord and sovereign the good King Hakon.”

“I owe no sort of fealty to Norway,” said Hamish.  “Nor do I know by what right Hakon claims sovereignty over any one of the isles south of Iona.”

“Methinks,” said Sweyn the Silent, looking up under his dark brows, “that Harald Fairhair settled that matter a good four hundred years ago.”

“Right well am I aware that at such time Harald did indeed conquer the Western Isles —­ ay, even to Bute and Arran” —­ returned Earl Hamish.  “But methinks, my lord of Colonsay, that my own ancestor the great king Somerled (God rest him!) did at least wrest the isles of Bute, Arran, and Gigha from the power of Norway.  Those three island kingdoms do to this day owe truage to no overlord saving only the King of Scots, and to Alexander alone will I pay homage.”

At that Earl Roderic’s eyes found their way to the shelf that was above the hearth, and his two friends, following his glance, saw the knife upon the shelf and smiled.  From the halls below, where the guards and servitors were feasting, came the strains of the minstrel’s harp and a henchman’s joyous song of triumphant battle.