She soon grew tired of watching the sails that now and then appeared in the narrow strait between Rousay and Westeray. At first she had been wont to hail them with delight, and to watch their approach with a beating heart, full of hope that each successive one might be his returning to her; but hope and exultation died away together, when the ship passed on towards her Scandinavian home; and then she thought of old Sir Erick Rosenkrantz, sitting lonely in his hall at Bergen; and bitter were the tears she wept, at the memory of that kind old face she might never behold again.
The walrus and the sea-dog, that at times arose in droves from the waves, with their round heads breasting the foam; the vast whale that floundered in the shallows, and blew clouds of water in the air; the shoals of finless porpoises, that rushed through the surge like a flock of ocean devils, failed, after a time, to interest or amuse her. Week succeeded week;--there were days of storm, when the grey clouds and the white mists came down from the Arctic circle; when the waves roared and foamed through the narrow strait, and the lightning flashed afar off among the heath-clad hills of Rousay--days of cloudless sunshine, or of listless calm, succeeded each other; and nothing marked the time, which passed by unmarked, even as the wind that swept over the pathless ocean,--but there came no word of Bothwell. The spring of 1566 approached, and all hope in the bosom of Anna began to die away.
Konrad still preserved his incognito most rigidly; but though life seemed to stagnate on the little Isle of Westeray, and in its great but dreary baronial castle, the world beyond it was busy as ever. One night a messenger arrived from the lieutenant-governor of Kirkwall, bearing despatches for Sir Gilbert, who, without taking leave of Anna, but merely giving strict orders to his bailie, that "she was to be kept in sure ward, and treated with every respect," had thrown himself on board a small crayer, and sailed for the mainland of Orkney.
Then passing fishermen brought rumours of civil war and bloodshed--of battles fought and castles stormed; and Anna, when she heard the name of Bothwell, looked anxiously in the faces of those around her, to read in their expression those tidings she was dying with eagerness to learn, but which it was impossible for her to gather from the barbarous, and half Gaelic half Pictish, jargon of the speakers.