bloodstained floor. "Father? father? It is I, Kenric -- your son. Tell
me, I beseech you, tell me, what foul villain has done this thing?"

Then he took hold of the earl's cold right hand and chafed it tenderly,
as he still tried to arouse him. But there was no response. He knelt
down closer and bent his head to his father's bare throat, and, putting
out his tongue, he felt with its sensitive touch if there was sign of
breathing, or if the pulses were beating in the veins.

As he rested his hand on the dead earl's chest he touched the haft of
the weapon that had worked this cruel deed. He knew the knife and
guessed how all had happened. He grasped the handle in his fingers and
tried to withdraw the long blade; but the blood gushed out from the
terrible wound, and the lad grew faint at the sight.

"Dead! dead!" he moaned, rising to his feet, and then from the halls
below came the shouts of the retainers as they pledged "waes hael" to
the lord of Bute.

Kenric hastened out of the hall and crept down the stairs to summon the
guard and station them in the corridor, that none of the three
traitorous guests might escape. He met Duncan the seneschal at the foot
of the stairs carrying the food that he had ordered, and by the light of
a lamp in the lower passage Duncan saw the lad's pale and terrified face.

"God assoil me!" cried Duncan, "what has happened?"

"A terrible thing, Duncan. My dear father has been brutally slain under
his own roof tree."