and a stalwart youth came bounding towards her. In his right hand he
bore a longbow, and at his belt were hung a dead hare and a brace of
wild moor fowl, whose dripping blood trickled down his sturdy legs.

"Ailsa!" he cried in surprise, seeing the girl as he came to secure the
bird he had just killed. "You here so late, and alone?"

Ailsa's fair cheeks grew rosy as the evening sky, for the youth was he
whom she had wished for, Kenric, the son of the brave Earl Hamish of
Bute, and now that he was so near her she felt suddenly timid.

He was a lad of sixteen years, not tall, but very thickset and stout
built, broad shouldered, deep chested, and strong limbed. His long silky
locks were a rich nut-brown, and his sparkling eyes were dark and gentle
as those of a fallow deer. The sun and the bracing sea air had made
ruddy his fair skin, even to his firm, round throat and his thick arms,
that were left bare by his rough coat of untanned buckskin.

"You have been weeping, Ailsa," said he, looking into her tearful eyes.

"Sir," said she, speaking, as he did, in the guttural Gaelic tongue,
"come, I beseech you, to the help of two poor ouzels, whose nest is far
in under the roots of yonder birch tree. If you help not quickly, their
little fledglings will be eaten up by a thieving stoat that has but a
few moments ago entered their nest."

"Youmake needless dole, Ailsa, over a pair of worthless birds and their
chicks," said he scornfully. "Why, I have this day slain a full
half-score of birds! Ay, and right willingly would I have doubled their
number."