ever at his heels hobbled Elspeth Blackfell.

When Earl Roderic had entered the holy place to open his heart in
confession to the abbot, Elspeth waited on the headland above the bay of
Dunagoil. In that bay there was a ship, and the shipmen were unloading
her of a cargo of English salt and other commodities of the far south.
Presently the old woman went downward to the beach, and there held
speech with the shipmaster, who, as it chanced, being a man of Wales,
could make shift to understand the Gaelic tongue, and from him she
learned that the ship was to leave at the ebb tide for England.

Now Elspeth had seen young Ailsa Redmain as the girl was passing to her
father's castle, and Ailsa had told her how the wicked lord of Gigha had
been made an outlaw. So Elspeth questioned the shipmaster, asking him if
he would be free to carry this man away from Bute.

"My good dame," said the mariner, "that will I most gladly do, for your
holy bishop or abbot, or whatever he be, hath already paid me the sum of
four golden pieces in agreeing that I shall do this thing -- though for
the matter of that, this man is a king in his own land, and methinks the
honour were ample payment without the gold; so if the winds permit, and
we meet no rascally pirates by the way, I make no doubt that ere the
next new moon we shall be snug and safe against the walls of our good
city of Chester."

So ere the curtain of night had fallen over the Arran hills the outlawed
earl of Gigha had left behind him the little isle of Bute, and it was
thereafter told how he had in secret confessed his manifold sins to the
abbot of St. Blane's, and how in deep contrition he had solemnly sworn
at the altar to make forthwith the pilgrimage of penance to the Holy