“He is not far away, sir,” said I; “of that I am sure.”
“I know that,” said the old chief, half angrily. “The Banshee has been dumb since Alexander McDonnell fell. Why comes not Ludar? I grow impatient.”
Even as he spoke there came a knocking on the door, and a Scot entered hastily.
He brought news that in a hut a mile eastward of the castle a man had been found, who had been brought up from the shore, dead; and that, further east still, the bodies of—
Here Sorley Boy smote his fist on the table, and ordered the fellow to hold his peace.
“I want no news of the dead,” said he, wrathfully, “but of the living. Where is my son Ludar?”
The man slunk off chapfallen.
The maiden knelt beside the old man’s chair, and laid her white cheek on his rough sleeve. Jeannette drew me gently to a bench at the far corner of the hall, and bade me rest there beside her.
Thus, while the afternoon slowly wore into evening, and the storm without moaned itself to sleep, we sat there in silence.
About sundown, just as—despite the sweet presence at my side—I was growing drowsy with weariness and pain, Sorley Boy suddenly uttered an exclamation and rose to his feet. The maiden rose too. And as she stood, motionless but for the heaving of her bosom, the slanting rays of the sun caught her and kindled her face into a wondrous glow.