"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."
Roderic staggered back a pace, wildly. He tugged at the neck of his
cloak as though it were stifling him.
"Ah, God forgive me!" he wailed. "Alas, 'twas she -- 'twas then my own
child who so wildly attacked me yesternight! 'Twas my own Aasta who so
boldly fought against me at Largs. 'Twas she whom I took captive in my
ship from Rothesay. And 'twas she also who cursed me over at Barone --
ay, cursed her own father! Great God, the curse has come true! For my
own two children have been slain before my eyes -- first Lulach, then
herself -- and I their father slew them both!"
"What means this?" cried Kenric, growing pale in the moonlight and
grasping his sword. "You slew Aasta? you? Oh, villain!"
"Ah, that voice! methinks I know it," said Roderic, starting in surprise
and turning upon Kenric.
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