The chief was a fine looking man about fifty years old.  He was clad in a loose fitting tunic of soft dark green cloth, confined at the waist by a broad leathern band with silver clasp and ornaments, and reaching to his knees.  His arms were bare; on his feet he wore sandals, and a heavy sword rested against the wall near his hand.  The ladies wore dresses of similar material and of somewhat similar fashion, but reaching to the feet.  They wore gold armlets; and the chief’s wife had a light band of gold round her head.  The chief rose when Archie entered; and upon the seneschal informing him of the rank and mission of his visitor he stepped from the dais, and advancing, greeted him warmly.  Then he led him back to the dais, where he presented to him the ladies of his family, ordering the retainers, of whom about a score were gathered in the hall, to place two piles of sheepskins near the fire.  On one of these he sat down, and motioned to Archie to take his place on the other —­ his own chair being removed to a corner.  Then, through the medium of Ronald, the conversation began.

Archie related to the chief the efforts which the Scotch were making to win their freedom from England, and urged in the king’s name that a similar effort should be made by the Irish; as the forces of the English, being thereby divided and distracted, there might be better hope of success.  The chief heard the communication in grave silence.  The ladies of the family stood behind the chief with deeply interested faces; and as the narrative of the long continued struggle which the Scots were making for freedom continued it was clear, by their glowing cheeks and their animated faces, how deeply they sympathized in the struggle.

The wife of the chief, a tall and stately lady, stood immediately behind him with her two daughters, girls of some seventeen or eighteen years of age, beside her.  As Ronald was translating his words Archie glanced frequently at the group, and thought he had never seen one fairer or more picturesque.  There was a striking likeness between mother and daughters; but the expression of staid dignity in the one was in the others replaced by a bright expression of youth and happiness.  Their beauty was of a kind new to Archie.  Their dark glossy hair was kept smoothly in place by the fillet of gold in the mother’s case, and by purple ribbons in that of the daughters.  Their eyebrows and long eyelashes were black, but their eyes were gray, and as light as those to which Archie was accustomed under the fair tresses of his countrywomen.  The thing that struck him most in the faces of the girls was their mobility, the expression changing as it seemed in an instant from grave to gay —­ flushing at one moment with interest at the tale of deeds of valour, paling at the next at the recital of cruel oppression and wrong.  When Archie had finished his narrative he presented to the chief a beautifully wrought chain of gold as a token from the King of Scotland.