The completeness of the peace and content which reigned on Fiara was only equalled by the fierceness of the storm of passion and hellish anger which broke over Suliscanna on the day after the chief's arrival. It was already late in the forenoon when a messenger, haggard and half blind with terror and the dying out of the drink in his brain, brought to the house of the chief the news of the destruction of the boats and the flight of the prisoners. Barra rose to his feet. His hand instinctively groped for a dagger, and not finding it, he struck the man to the ground with his clinched fist. During the night he had probably been the only sober man on the island. When he went out he found a pale and terror-stricken population. Women peered anxiously at him from their hovels or scudded among the scattered bowlders on the hill, with children tagging wearily after them and clinging to their skirts. As he came near the landing-place a woman skirled suddenly from the back of a rock. The wild voice startled him. It was like the crying of the death-keen. "Who is that?" demanded Barra of his nearest henchman. "'Tis the wife of the watchman, Misfortunate Colin," replied Alister McAlister, who this morning had somehow accomplished the gravity of a judge on circuit. He had been all night in attendance outside the chief's door--so that, although he had carried out his declared intentions to the letter, he was yet wholly guiltless of the damning negligence which the Lord of Barra was now about to investigate and punish. Presently the Calf and the Killer were discovered, sleeping the sleep of the greatly intoxicated. They still lay with Wat's rope about them, clasped in fraternal arms, their breaths combining to make one generous steam of Hollands gin. Misfortunate Colin lay as he had fallen, with the keys of the dungeon tucked under his belt. The chief turned him over with his foot. "Nail him up to that door by the hands and feet!" he ordered, briefly, looking at the man with cold, malevolent eyes. A woman's shriek rang out, and like a mænad she came flying down the hill, loose-haired, wild-eyed, and flung herself down, grovelling bestially at Barra's feet. "Mercy, master of life and death!" she cried, clasping him firmly by the knees; "all misfortunes fall on my man. And this is not his fault. All the island was even as he is." "But all the island had not the charge of a prisoner," cried Barra. Then without further question men approached to seize the man of fated fortunes, and he would doubtless have been immediately crucified on the door which he had failed to guard but for the interference of Mistress McAlister.