And Ronald then, in bitter case,
Thought of his own sweet lady's face,
Which upon this very night

Should have blushed with bridal light,
And of her downward eyelids meek,
And of her voice, just heard to speak,
As at the altar, hand in hand,
On ceasing of the organ grand,
"Twould have bound her, for weal or woe,
With delicious answers low.

And more he thought of, grave and sweet,
That made the thin tears start, and meet
The wetting of the insolent wave;
And Ronald, who though all so brave,
Had often that hard day before
Wished himself well housed on shore,
Felt a sharp impatient start

Of home-sick wilfulness at heart,

And steering with still firmer hand,

As if the boat could feel command,

Thrilled with a fierce and forward motion,

As though 'twould shoot it through the ocean.

"Some spirit," exclaimed Duth Maruno, "must pursue us, and perpetually urge the boat out of it's way, or we must have arrived by this time at Inistore."* Ronald took him at his word, and turning hastily round, thought he saw an armed figure behind the stern. His anger rose with his despair; and with all his strength he dashed his arm at the moveless and airy shape. At that instant a fierce blast of wind half turned the boat round. The chieftains called out to Ronald to set his whole heart at the rudder; but the wind beat back their voices, like young birds into the nest; and no answer followed it. The boat seemed less and less manageable, and at last to be totally left to themselves. In the intervals of the wind they again called out to Ronald, but still received no answer. One of them crept forward, and felt for him through the blinding wet and darkness. His place was void. void." It was a ghost," said they, "which came to fetch him to the spirits of his fathers. Ronald of the Perfect Hand is gone, and we shall follow him as we did in the fight. Hark! The wind is louder and louder: it is louder and many-voiced. Is it his voice which has roused up the others? Is he calling upon us, as he did in the battle, when his followers shouted after his call?"

It was the rocks of an isle beyond Inistore, which made that multitudinous roaring of the wind. The chieftains found that they were not destined to perish in the mid ocean; but it was fortunate for them that the wind did not set in directly upon the island, or they would have been dashed to pieces upon the rocks. With great difficulty they stemmed their way obliquely; and at length were thrown violently to

*The old name for the Orkneys.

shore, bruised, wounded, and half inanimate. They remained on this desolate island two days, during the first of which the storm subsided. On the third, they were taken away by a boat of seal-hunters.

The chiefs, on their arrival at home, related how Ronald of the Perfect Hand had been summoned away by a loud-voiced spirit, and disappeared. Great was the mourning in Inistore for the Perfect Hand; for the Hand that with equal skill could throw the javelin and traverse the harp; could build the sudden hut of the hunter; and bind up the glad locks of the maiden tired in the dance. Therefore was he called the Perfect Hand; and therefore with great mourning was he mourned; yet with none half as great as by his love, his betrothed bride Moilena; by her of the Beautiful Voice; who had latterly begun to be called the Perfect Voice, because she was to be matched with him of the Perfect Hand. Perfect Hand and Perfect Voice were they called; but the Hand was now gone, and the Voice sang brokenly for tears.

A dreary winter was it, though a victorious, to the people of Inistore. Their swords had conquered in Lochlin; but most of the hands that wielded them had never come back. Their warm pressure was felt no more. The last which they had given their friends was now to serve them all their lives. "Never, with all my yearning," said Moilena, "shall I look upon his again, as I have looked at it a hundred times, when nobody suspected. Never." And she turned from the sight of the destructive ocean, which seemed as interminable as her thoughts.

But winter had now passed away. The tears of the sky at least were dried up. The sun looked out kindly again; and the spring had scarcely re-appeared, when Inistore had a proud and a gladder day, from the arrival of the young prince of Lochlin with his bride. It was a bitter one to Moilena, for the prince came to thank Ronald for sparing his life in the war, and had brought his lady to thank him too. They thanked Moilena instead; and proud, in the midst of her unhappiness, of being the representative of the Perfect Hand, she lavished hundreds of smiles upon them from her pale face. But she wept in secret. She could not

bear this new addition to the store of noble and kind memories respecting her Ronald. He had spared the bridegroom for his bride. He had hoped to come back to his own. She looked over to the north; and thought that her home was as much there as in Inistore.

Meantime, Ronald was not drowned. A Scandinavian boat, bound for an island called the Island of the Circle, had picked him up. The crew, which consisted chiefly of priests, were going thither to propitiate the deities, on account of the late defeat of their countrymen. They recognized the victorious chieftain, who on coming to his senses freely confessed who he was. Instantly they raised a chorus, which rose sternly through the tempest. "We carry," said they," an acceptable present to the Gods. Odin, stay thy hand from the slaughter of the obscure. Thor, put down the mallet with which thou beatest, like red hail, on the skulls of thine enemies. Ye other feasters in Valhalla, set down the skulls full of mead, and pledge a health out of a new and noble one to the King of Gods and Men, that the twilight of heaven may come

late. We bring an acceptable present: we bring Ronald of the Perfect Hand." Thus they sang in the boat, labouring all the while with the winds and waves, but surer now than ever of reaching the shore. And they did so, by the first light of the morning. When they came to the circle of sacred stones, from which the island took it's name, they placed their late conqueror by the largest, and kindled a fire in the middle. The warm smoke rose thickly against the cold white morning." Let me be offered up to your gods," said Ronald, "like a man, by the sword; and not like food, by the fire." "We know all," answered the priests: "be thou silent.' "Treat not him," said Ronald, “who spared your prince, unworthily. If he must be sacrificed, let him die as your prince would have died by this hand." Still they answered nothing, but "We know all: be thou silent." Ronald could not help witnessing these preparations for a new and unexpected death with an emotion of terror; but disdain and despair were uppermost. Once, and but once, his cheek turned deadly pale in thinking of Moilena. He shifted his posture resolutely, and thought of the spirits of the dead whom he was about to join. The priests then encircled the fire and the stone at which he stood, with another devoting song; and Ronald looked earnestly at the ruddy flames, which gave to his cold body, as in mockery, a kindly warmth. The priests however did not lay hands on him. They respected the sparer of their prince so far as not to touch him themselves; they left him to be dispatched by the supernatural beings, whom they confidently expected to come down for that purpose as soon as they had retired.

Ronald, whose faith was of another description, saw their departure with joy; but it was damped the next minute. What was he to do in winter-time on an island, inhabited only by the amphibious creatures of the northern sea, and never touched at but for a purpose hostile to his hopes? For he now recollected, that this was the island he had so often heard of, as the chief seat of the Scandinavian religion; whose traditions had so influenced countries of a different faith, that it was believed in Scotland as well as the continent, that no human being could live there many hours. Spirits, it was thought, appeared in terrible superhuman shapes, like the bloody idols which the priests worshipped; and carried him off.

The warrior of Inistore had soon too much reason to know the extent of this belief. He was not without fear himself, but disdained to yield to any circumstances without a struggle. He refreshed himself with some snow-water; and after climbing the highest part of the island to look for a boat in vain (nothing was to be seen but the waves tumbling on all sides after the storm) he instantly set about preparing a habitation. He saw at a little distance, on a slope, the mouth of a rocky cave. This he destined for his shelter at night; and looking round for a defence for the door, as he knew not whether bears might not be among the inhabitants, he cast his eyes upon the thinnest of the stones which stood upright about the fire. The heart of the warrior, though of a different faith, misgave him as he thought of appropriating this mystical stone,

very

carved full of strange figures; but half in courage, and half in the despair of fear, he suddenly twisted it from it's place. No one appeared. The fire altered not. The noise of the fowl and other creatures was no louder on the shore. Ronald smiled at his fears, and knew the undiminished vigour of the Perfect Hand.

He found the cavern already fitted for shelter; doubtless by the Scandinavian priests. He had bitter reason to know how well it sheltered him; for day after day he hoped in vain that some boat from Inistore would venture upon the island. He beheld sails at a distance, but they never came. He piled stone upon stone, joined old pieces of boats together, and made flags of the sea-weed; but all in vain. The vessels, he thought, came nearer, but none so near as to be of use; and a new and sickly kind of impatience cut across the stout heart of Ronald, and set it beating. He knew not whether it was with the cold or with misery, but his frame would shake for an hour together, when he lay down on his dried weeds and feathers to rest. He remembered the happy sleeps that used to follow upon toil; and he looked with double activity for the eggs and shell-fish on which he sustained himself, and smote double the number of seals, half in the very exercise of his anger: and then he would fall dead asleep with fatigue.

In this way he bore up against the violences of the winter season, which had now past. The sun looked out with a melancholy smile upon the moss and the poor grass, checquered here and there with flowers almost as poor. There was the buttercup, struggling from a dirty white into a yellow; and a faint-coloured poppy, neither the good nor the ill of which was then known; and here and there by the thorny underwood a shrinking violet. The lark alone seemed chearful, and startled the ear of the desolate chieftain with it's climbing triumph in the air. Ronald looked up. His fancy had been made wild and wilful by strange habits and sickened blood; and he thought impatiently, that if he were up there like the lark, he might see his friends and his love in Inistore.

Being naturally however of a gentle as well as courageous disposition, the Perfect Hand found the advantage as well as necessity of turning his violent impulses into noble matter for patience. He had heard of the dreadful bodily sufferings which the Scandinavian heroes underwent from their enemies with triumphant songs. He knew that no such sufferings, which were fugitive, could equal the agonies of a daily martyrdom of mind; and he cultivated a certain humane pride of patience, in order to bear them.

His only hope of being delivered from the island now depended on the Scandinavian priests; but it was a moot point whether they would respect him for surviving, or kill him on that very account, out of a mixture of personal and superstitious resentment. He thought his death the more likely; but this at least was a termination to the dreary prospect of a solitude for life; and partly out of that hope, and partly from a courageous patience, be produced as many pleasant thoughts and objects about him as he could. He adorned his cavern with shells and feathers; he made himself a cap and cloak of the latter, and boots and

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a vest of seal-skin, girding it about with the glossy sea-weed; he cleared away a circle before the cavern, planted it with the best grass, and heaped about it the mossiest stones: he strung some bones of a fish with sinews, and fitting a shell beneath it, the Perfect Hand drew forth the first gentle music that had ever been heard in that wild island. He touched it one day in the midst of a flock of seals, who were basking in the sun; they turned their heads towards the sound; he thought he saw in their mild faces a human expression; and from that day forth no seal was ever slain by the Perfect Hand. He spared even the huge and cloudy-visaged walrusses, in whose societies he beheld a dull resemblance to the gentler affections; and his new intimacy with these possessors of the place was completed by one of the former animals, who having been rescued by him from a contest with a larger one, followed him about, as well as it's half-formed and dragging legs would allow, with the officious attachment of a dog.

But the summer was gone and no one had appeared. The new thoughts, and deeper insight into things, which solitude and sorrowful necessity had produced, together with a diminution of his activity, had not tended to strengthen him against the approach of winter; and autumn came upon him like the melancholy twilight of the year. He had now no hope of seeing even the finishers of his existence before the spring. The rising winds among the rocks and the noise of the whales blowing up the spouted water till the hollow caverns thundered with their echoes, seemed to be like heralds of the stern season which was to close him in against all approach. He had tried one day to move the stone at the mouth of his habitation a little further in, and found his strength fail him. He laid himself half reclining on the chilly ground, full of such melancholy thoughts as half bewildered him. Things by turn appeared a fierce dream and a fiercer reality. He was leaning and looking on the ground, and idly twisting his long hair, when his eyes fell upon the hand that held it. It was livid and emaciated. He opened and shut it, opened and shut it again, turned it round, and looked at it's ribbed thinness and laid-open machinery; many thoughts came upon him, some which he understood not, and some which he recognized but too well; and a turbid violence seemed rising at his heart, when the seal his companion drew nigh, and began licking that weak memorial of the Perfect Hand. A shower of self-pitying tears fell upon the seal's face and the hand together.

On a sudden, he heard a voice. It was a deep and loud one, and distinctly called out, Ronald! He looked up, gasping with wonder. Three times it called out, as if with peremptory command; and three times the rocks and caverns echoed the word with a dim sullenness.Sonde

Recollecting himself, he would have risen and answered, but the sudden change of sensations had done what all his sufferings had not been able to do; and he found himself unable either to rise or to speak. The voice called again and again, but it was now more distant; and Ronald's heart sickened as he heard it retreating. His strength seemed to fail him in proportion as it became necessary. Suddenly the voice