Roderic came slowly towards him, blowing his warm breath into his cold, crisped fists. Kenric's face was in shadow, and the outlaw did not recognize him.
"So," said Roderic, "Elspeth Blackfell has not this time deceived me, eh? 'Twas she who sent you here, young man?"
"It was," Kenric replied.
"And how happens it that she sent not the maid Aasta?"
"'Twas beyond her power, Earl Roderic," answered Kenric in a quivering voice.
"What?" cried Roderic surlily, "beyond her power? Tell me no lies. The old crone is but playing some witch's trick upon me. Where is my daughter, I say? where is my child?"
"Aasta the Fair, Heaven rest her soul! now sleeps beneath the cold ice of Ascog Loch," said Kenric solemnly; "she is dead."
A sudden hoarse cry from Roderic followed these words.
"Dead?" he echoed, "dead, you say, and under the ice of the loch?"
"Even so," replied the youth, keeping his eye fixed upon Roderic's movements. "'Tis but a little time since that I saw her lying in the frozen waters."