no weapons, for it was held in
custom that none should sit armed at table in the presence of strangers.

"Tell me, Earl Roderic," said Alpin, running his fingers through his
long hair -- "you have, you say, been in far-off Iceland -- tell me, is
it true that in that land there be many mountains that shoot forth fire
and brimstone?"

"Ay, that is quite true, my lad," said his much-travelled uncle, "for I
have myself seen such mountains. Higher than Goatfell they are, with
streams of fire pouring down their glens."

"A most marvellous country!" exclaimed Alpin. "I wonder much if I shall
ever behold that land."

"There you will have no such lordly feast as that we have just risen
from," added Roderic, picking his teeth with his broad thumbnail.

Alpin and Allan watched him, hoping he would tell them something of his
roving life. Roderic, finding that he could not easily dislodge the
piece of meat from betwixt his teeth, picked up a twig of pine wood from
the hearth, and took from the table the large knife with which his
brother had carved the venison, and as he began to sharpen the little
twig to a point he continued:

"No roasted beef there nor venison, but good tough whale flesh, black as
a peat, or else a few candle ends -- for the Icelanders are fond of fat.
Once when I was ship-broken on their coasts naught could my shipmates
find to eat but reasty butter. Disliking that alone, we took our ship's
cable, that was made of walrus hide, and smearing the cable with butter
we bolted morsels of it, by which means we managed to exist for fourteen
days.

"There," he said, finishing his toothpick, "that will serve. 'Tis
strange, is it not, Master Alpin, what a piece of steel can do?"

And then, first looking at its point, he laid the long knife carelessly
upon the shelf above the hearth.

"Why, in Norway, where I have also been, your man can take his knife and
two slips of wood nine ells long, and he will so shape the wood that
when the two slips are fitted to his feet he can outstrip a bird, a
hound, or a deer."

"Does he, then, fly with them in the air, as a witch on her broom?"
asked Allan Redmain.

"Why, no; he skates along the ice or snow," returned Roderic. "With such
instruments and a snowy ground, master Redmain, you might be back at
your castle of Kilmory in two flickers of a rush light. Go you to
Kilmory tonight?"

"Yes," said Allan, "we go at once, for now I see my father is ready.
Give you goodnight,