But upon that half of Marstrand island which looked westward to the sea, unguarded by isles or skerries, there was nothing but bare and barren rocks and ragged headlands thrust out into the waves. Heather there was in brown tufts and prickly thorn bushes, holes of the otter and the fox, but never a path, never a house or any sign of man.
Torarin's cabin stood high up on the ridge of the island, so that it had the town on one side and the wilderness on the other. And when Elsalill opened her door she came out upon broad, naked slabs of rock, from which she had a wide view to the westward, even to the dark horizon of the open sea.
All the seamen and fishermen who lay icebound at Marstrand used to pass Torarin's cabin to climb the rocks and look for any sign of the ice parting in the coves and sounds.
Elsalill stood many a time at the cottage door and followed with her eyes the men who mounted the ridge. She was sick at heart from the great sorrow that had befallen her, and she said to herself: "I think everyone is happy who has something to look for. But I have nothing in the wide world on which to fix my hopes."
One evening Elsalill saw a tall man, who wore a broad-brimmed hat with a great feather, standing upon the rocks and gazing westward over the sea like all the others.
And Elsalill knew at once that the man was Sir Archie, the leader of the Scots, who had talked with her on the quay.
As he passed the cabin on his way home to the town, Elsalill was still standing in the doorway, and she was weeping.
"Why do you weep?" he asked, stopping before her.
"I weep because I have nothing to long for," said Elsalill. "When I saw you standing upon the rocks and looking out over the sea, I thought: 'He has surely a home beyond the water, and there he is going.'"
Then Sir Archie's heart was softened, and it made him say: "It is many a year since any spoke to me of my home. God knows how it fares with my father's house. I left it when I was seventeen to serve in the wars abroad."