During the minority of Alexander the Third all efforts to reduce the
isles were abandoned. But now that the king was no longer a boy, he was
resolved to compel all these vassals of Norway to renounce their
allegiance and acknowledge their adherence to the Scottish crown.

On the appointed day Sir Piers de Currie crossed over to Bute. He was a
man of middle age, tall and strong. His gigantic limbs were hard and
stout as the trunk of an oak sapling. He wielded the longest sword and
the heaviest battle-axe in Bute and Arran, and he was the best bowman in
all the lands of the Clyde. His life among the mountains of Arran had
given him a mighty power of endurance, for it was his habit to rove for
many days over the craggy heights of Goatfell, climbing where none else
could climb, slaying deer, spearing salmon, following the wild wolf to
his lair, sleeping on the bare heather, drinking naught save the crystal
water of the mountain burns, and eating the simplest food. His band of
retainers, though scarcely less strong of limb than their master, were
wont to say that their labours were even as those of the mythical
Sigmund, who was condemned to make a new island in the ocean of the
rocks that he clove from the topmost peaks of the Mountain of the Winds.

And yet they loved their master by reason of his strength and power, for
he was the king's nephew in Arran, and would some day be the lord of
that isle and of the great castle of Brodick.

Landing on the shores of St. Ninian's Bay, he strode with great strides
towards Rothesay, and Lulach the herd boy, seeing him, thought him the
most gallant warrior in all the world, and wondered what his business
might be in Bute, and why he should have come over without a train of
attendants.