"We are Norse folk, cast ashore here by mischance in the gale."
"Norse?" he said. "Yet you speak the tongue of my childhood--the kindly Gaelic of the islands which is not that altogether of the Erse of today. It is full sixty years since I heard it."
"My mother was a Scottish lady," I answered. "My own name is Malcolm."
"Tell me more," he said eagerly. "Let me hear the old tongue again before I die."
Now, it is in no wise easy to be told to talk without a hint in the way of question on which to begin, and I hesitated. Gerda asked me softly what was amiss, and I told her in a few words. The old hermit looked kindly at her, but did not speak.
"Tell him of your home," she said. "Tell him without saying aught of the end of it."
I did so, slowly at first, for the words would not come, and then better as I went on. The old man listened, and the tears came into his eyes.
"Ah, the old days," he said, when I stopped. "Your voice is a voice from the days that are gone, and the old tongue comes back to me, with the sound of the piper on the hill and the harper in the hall, with the sough of the summer wind in the fir trees, and the lash of the waves on the rocks. Oh, my son, my son, I would that you had never come here to make me mind the things that are dead."
Now he was trembling, and I took his white hand and set it on my arm to steady him. His hand felt the cold touch of the great gold bracelet Gerda would have me wear, and he looked at it, and turned it in his fingers.
"Jarl, and son of a jarl," he whispered. "War and flame, and the cry of the victors! Oh, my son, you mind me of bitter things."