I was then eighteen years old, I am now over eighty-six; and the straits of Time have widened and widened with every year, so that many things appear to have been carried away into forgetfulness by the stress and flow of full waters. But not so! They are only lying in out-of-the-way corners of consciousness, and can easily be recalled by some word that has the potency of a spell over them. "Kirkwall!" I said softly, and then I began to read what the _Times_ had to say about Kirkwall. The great point appeared to be that as a rendezvous for ships it had been placed fifty miles within the "made in Germany" danger zone, and was therefore useless to the British men-of-war. And I laughed inwardly a little, and began to consider if Kirkwall had ever been long outside of some danger zone or other. All its myths and traditions are of the fighting Picts and Scots, and when history began to notice the existence of the Orkneys it was to chronicle the struggle between Harold, King of Norway, and his rebellious subjects who had fled to the Orkneys to escape his tyrannical control. And of the danger zones of every kind which followed--of storm and battle and bloody death--does not the Saga of Eglis give us a full account? This fight for popular freedom was a failure. King Harold conquered his rebellious subjects, and incidentally took possession of the islands and the people who had sheltered them. Then their rulers became Norwegian jarls--or earls--and there is no question about the danger zones into which the Norwegian vikings carried the Orcadeans--quite in accord with their own desire and liking, no doubt. And the stirring story of these years--full of delightful dangers to the men who adventured them--may all be read today in the blood-stirring, blood-curdling Norwegian Sagas. In the middle of the fifteenth century, James the Third, King of Scotland, married Margaret of Denmark, and the Orcades were given to Scotland as a security for her dowry. The dowry was never paid, and after a lapse of a century and a half Denmark resigned all her Orcadean rights to Scotland. The later union of England and Scotland finally settled their destiny.