In the meantime the luckless Paul was conducted to the residence of the Earl of Atholl by his captor Sweyne Asleifason, a powerful nobleman of Caithness at feud with the earl on account of his banishment from the Orkneys. Here he was treated with the most ceremonious courtesy. The chair of state was resigned to him by Madach; the beautiful Margaret, surrounded by her ladies, received him with the cordial welcome of a sister; mummers and jesters relieved the monotony of the hour; and in the true spirit of northern hospitality the evening was devoted to drinking. Thus passed the leisure time of a Scottish nobleman in the twelfth century, when he was not engaged in the more stirring pursuits of war, or of the chase. One thing alone reminded the deposed earl of the real position in which he stood--the doors were invariably locked.[463] Paul long maintained his reputation for taciturnity, but at length he appears to have spoken, and to the purpose; [Sidenote: A. D. 1137.] for two years after the accession of Rognwald, whilst that earl was celebrating with his friends some festive occasion in the month of July, their attention was attracted by the arrival of a vessel from the south with a venerable personage on board, whose purple cloak and quaintly trimmed beard aroused the curiosity of the Orkneymen, until the earl’s chaplain pronounced the mysterious stranger to be a Scottish bishop.[464] He was received with every mark of respect, and subsequently escorted to Egillsey, the residence of William, Bishop of the Orkneys; and the result of a conference between Rognwald and the two prelates was the admission of the claim of Harald Mac Madach to his uncle’s share in the earldom, in virtue of the resignation of Paul. The rights of Harald, then a child between four and five years of age, were confirmed at an amicable meeting, held in Caithness, by the leading chieftains of Atholl and the Orkneys, representing “the communities” of the respective earldoms;[465] [Sidenote: A. D. 1138.] and, in the following spring, he was consigned to the charge of Earl Rognwald, though his real supporters appear to have been Sweyne Asleifason and Thorbiorn, a grandson of Frakarka, married to the sister of Sweyne, and guardian to the youthful earl.[466] [Sidenote: A. D. 1153.]