Though all these events happened before a stone of the cathedral was laid, they may help to give the meaning of its story, and on that account they are worth, perhaps, a rough telling here. Earl Hakon had died, and his son Paul ruled in his stead. He was a silent, brave, unlucky man, upright and honourable in his dealings, but the shadow of his father’s crime lay over the land. It brought old age and prosperity and repentance to the doer of the deed; and on his son the punishment fell. [Illustration: _St. Magnus Cathedral, interior._ 1. South aisle. 2. North aisle. 3. Nave.] Rognvald claimed the half of the earldom. Paul answered that there was no need for long words, “For I will guard the Orkneys while God grants me life so to do.” And then the contest began. Rognvald attacked from north and south. Paul vanquished the southern fleet, and hurrying north drove his rival back to Norway; and so the winter came on, and the peace that in those days men kept in winter. All had gone well with Paul, but his luck was to change with a little thing. He was keeping Yule with his friends and kinsmen, when upon a winter’s evening, a man, wet with the spray of the Pentland Firth, came out of the dusk and knocked upon the door. He was hardly the instrument, one would think, a departed saint would choose to build a cathedral with—a Viking with his sword ever loose in its sheath, and his lucky star obscured, coming here for refuge, from the ashes of his father and his home. He was known as Sweyn Asleifson (a name to be famous in the islands), and was welcomed for his family’s sake; they brought him in to the feast, and the drinking went on. In a little while there arose a quarrel over the cups; Sweyn killed his man, and fled into the night again. He was a landless outlaw this time, for the dead man had been high in favour, and the earl was stern. Meanwhile men went on drinking over the hall fires; but Paul’s luck had departed, and St. Magnus had a weapon in his hand. In the spring the war began again, and suddenly in the midst of it Earl Paul disappeared—his bodyguard cut down upon the beach, himself spirited clean away. Sweyn Asleifson had come for him, and carried him to a fate that was never more than rumoured. So Rognvald won the earldom, and the first stones of his church were laid. The saint had certainly struck for him. That is the true story of the vow and the building of the cathedral, a tale too old for even the venerable church to remember. But all the long history of the seven centuries since it knows; and indeed it has played such a part in scene after scene and act after act, that a memory would have to be of some poorer stuff than hewed sandstone to forget a past so stirring. And who can be so far behind every scene as the house which during men’s lives listens to their prayers, and at last upon a day takes them in for ever?