About sundown, just as--despite the sweet presence at my side--I was growing drowsy with weariness and pain, Sorley Boy suddenly uttered an exclamation and rose to his feet. The maiden rose too. And as she stood, motionless but for the heaving of her bosom, the slanting rays of the sun caught her and kindled her face into a wondrous glow. Jeannette's gentle hand restrained me, as the old man, taking a step or two down the room as far as the end of the table, stood there facing the door. Then there fell on my ears a voice and the ring of a footstep in the courtyard without. Next moment, the door swung open and Ludar walked quietly in. Jeannette led me softly from the place, and kept me cruelly pacing in the outer darkness for half-an-hour before she said: "Art thou not going in to welcome thy friend, Humphrey?" Need I say what passed, when at last we stood all four together in that great hall? The old chief had taken his seat again at the table, and sat there solemn and impassive, as if all that had passed had been but the ordinary event of an afternoon. But the fire in his eye betrayed him, as now and again he half turned his head to the window where Ludar and the maiden stood gazing out across the waves. "Humphrey, my brother," said Ludar, when at last Jeannette and I drew near, "'tis worth a little storm to be thus in port at last, and to find you there too." "Ay, indeed," said I. "And, as you see, there are more than I here to greet you." Then he stepped up to Jeannette and gazed in her face a moment, and kissed her on the brow. "Thou art welcome to Dunluce, sister Jeannette," said he. Jeannette told me afterwards that she never felt so proud in her life as when Ludar's lips touched her forehead, and she heard him call her sister. 'Twas not in me to complain that it should be so; for the ways of women are beyond my understanding. Presently the old man rose from his seat, and without a word left us to ourselves. Ludar then narrated how, when the _Gerona_ broke up, he had fallen near a broken oar, which held him up and enabled him to reach land almost without a bruise. For a long while he lay in the darkness, not knowing where he was; but when day broke, he found himself in the deep cave that goes under the castle, a prisoner there by the rising tide, and with no means of escape. For to stem the waves at the mouth was hopeless, and by no manner of shouting and calling could he make his presence known to anyone outside. So all day, faint with hunger, he had perched on a ledge just beyond reach of the tide, and not till evening, when the wind, and with it the water, subsided, was he able to swim out and come to land at the foot of the very path up which, long months ago, he had led the party who recovered Dunluce for the McDonnells.