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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77880 ***
+  TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
+
+  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold is denoted by =equals=.
+
+  Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE DRUID PATH]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Una]
+
+
+[Music: _Traditional Air_]
+
+
+
+
+                 The Music More Lasting
+                       Than Voice of the Birds
+
+  [Music:_Poem by A. P. Graves_
+
+
+  1. I’ve heard the lark’s cry thrill the sky o’er the
+  meadows of Lusk, And the first joyous
+  gush of the thrush from Adare’s April
+  wood, At thy lone music’s spell, Philomel,
+  magic stricken I’ve stood, When in Espan a-far
+  star on star trembled out of the dusk.
+
+
+                                 2.
+   Yet as bright shadows pass from the glass of the darkening lake
+    As the rose’s rapt sigh must die when the zephyr is stilled;
+   In oblivion grey sleeps each lay that those birds ever trilled,
+  But the songs Erin sings from her strings shall immortally wake.]
+
+
+
+
+                                 THE
+                              DRUID PATH
+
+
+                                  by
+                           MARAH ELLIS RYAN
+
+                [Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+                             DECORATED BY
+                            WILL VREELAND
+
+                [Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+                          A.C. McCLURG & CO.
+                               CHICAGO
+
+
+
+
+                              Copyright
+                         A. C. McCLURG & CO.
+                                 1917
+
+                       Published January, 1917
+
+                     Copyrighted in Great Britain
+
+
+                 W. F. HALL PRINTING COMPANY, CHICAGO
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                                  Page
+
+  The Druid Path                                                     1
+
+  The Enchanting of Doirenn                                         35
+
+  Liadan and Kurithir                                              101
+
+  Dervail Nan Ciar                                                 141
+
+  Randuff of Cumanac                                               229
+
+  The Dark Rose                                                    267
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE DRUID PATH]
+
+
+                           THE DRUID PATH
+
+
+Phadraig, son of Nihil of the Ua Dinan, held silent his white hound
+on the hill of Cromm Cru, and looked down the far valley of blue
+mists where the sea of the west rolled in.
+
+Back beyond the sweet-smelling reaches of the heather he could hear
+the bay of the hounds of his uncle Kieran, Tiern over North Tormond.
+He could no longer hear the clink of their silver bridles, nor the
+laughter of their ladies, nor the scream of hawk on dove.
+
+But the hill of the ancient god was a sweet place in the silence, and
+he rested there, and made him a pillow of fern—and listened to the
+soft breath of the wind in the rowan tree. Its sigh of love for the
+green earth was a sweet song, and he slept there to that music, while
+the sun rushed beyond the wide seas of the west, and soft-footed dusk
+crept after, filling all the hollows with the gray web in which the
+night is held.
+
+A curious dream of white birds came to him there; the dream had come
+to him before, yet not with clearness—and in the dream was a dusk
+path in an ancient wood, and a well there—a well rising and sinking
+with the tide, and a vision of a maid moving before him into the
+shadows—a vision swathed in a white cloud, with hidden face but a
+voice in which was held all the music of beauty of life in all the
+world. His soul was as a harp on which that music played, and his
+body was but as a shell left behind while the wings of harmony
+lifted him—lifted until he was borne as a cloud far from the touch
+of the earth—and he heard a word over and over in his ear, until he
+strove with might to echo it, and then, in the striving, the smell of
+the heather was again in his nostrils, and the forefeet of the white
+hound were on his breast, and above him a star shone in the soft rose
+of the sky.
+
+He lay entranced, thrilled by the ecstasy of the perfect dream, and
+somewhere from the very earth came a song to his ear and an earth
+echo of the word he had striven for and missed. And this was the song
+he heard—
+
+      Make strong your charms against Danaan,
+        Danaan of the snowy breast,
+      Who lured the souls of the Gods of Old
+        To the land of the mystic west.
+
+The voices were those of two boys, and with them was an old shepherd
+who bore fire in a strange bowl of thin carven stone, and in the arms
+of the boys were dry heather and branches of yew. And in fear they
+let fall the yew at sight of Phadraig, and at sight of his white
+hound beside him.
+
+“Peace to you,” spake Phadraig. “And who be you to sing here a song
+of charms? And who is Danaan?”
+
+“A blessing of all saints on you from Jerusalem to Innis Gluair,”
+spake the ancient who bore the fire. “We bear here boughs for the
+puring fires of Beltain, and the mothers of these boys bade them make
+a prayer and sing the song ere they crossed the three magic circles
+of the Tor of Cromm Cru.”
+
+“And is this that hill?” asked Phadraig. “As a childling they tell me
+I was nursed in sight of it, but never before have I stood on it, and
+who made the song of the charm?”
+
+“One of the anointed of the saints who loved every plain and black
+crag and forest dell between us and the sea. It was no other than
+Nihil of the Deep Wood.”
+
+“Strange, that is,” said Phadraig, the son of Nihil, “other songs of
+that singer I have been taught, but never this one until I hear it as
+in a dream in this strange place; and look, there are white sea birds
+against the stars—and they also were of the dream.”
+
+“On the night of Beltain strange power is abroad—and strange dreams!
+And what is the name of you who venture to sleep on the hill of the
+ancient gods in the dusk of this day?”
+
+And when Phadraig told him, the old herdsman would have knelt, but
+Phadraig took his hand and spoke to him in kindness, yet could get
+from him no other word as to the song of Danaan.
+
+“Go to Roiseen of the Glen, the wise woman down by the sea,” he said.
+“She was nurse to you and knows all your father Nihil would have had
+you know of the names of the ancient gods of the land.”
+
+“But Danaan was the name of a people—the old, old people, soul
+brothers to the fairies!”
+
+“Ay—it may be. And may not a people have a spirit, as has a person?
+Have we not our own this day in Erinn, our Mother of the Land? Ask me
+no more, O Lord of the Ua Dinan, but go you down to Roiseen of the
+Glen, and peace go with you.”
+
+And with his white hound at his heels and one of the shepherd boys
+as guide, Phadraig took trail to the sea glen and would have gone
+through a deep wood in the valley, but the boy drew back.
+
+“Not there, my lord,” said he.
+
+“Yet it is the shorter way.”
+
+“No way is shorter if you never come out alive, O Lord of the Ua
+Dinan.”
+
+“What abides within the wood?”
+
+“No living thing, my lord, but the water in the Druid’s well, and it
+pulses there as if it might be the heartbeat of the ocean beyond, yet
+the water is not salt.”
+
+“This is a land of strange riddles I am coming back to this day,”
+said Phadraig, “but do you not hear music in the wood—or is it the
+wind through the new buds?”
+
+“The priest tells us it is the winds, or the waves, or the night
+birds in their shelter, and that is the thing we must say,” said the
+boy, and neither of them spoke of the white birds above them against
+the sky.
+
+To Phadraig it was as if he had walked into a new life from the hour
+he slept on the western hill of Cromm Cru. And all the path of it
+held music to make the heart glad of life—yet sad with inarticulate
+yearnings. The life of the halls of Kieran was left behind, and he
+trod the heath as an exile returned.
+
+In the cot of Roiseen of the Glen there was a rabbit stewing on the
+hearth, and Roiseen herself spinning the silver flax at the open door
+in the starlight.
+
+“Oh, is it yourself come back on your own feet to greet me this day?”
+she said, and wept with very gladness, and kissed the young hand of
+him. But he kissed her brown cheek instead, and they talked long
+after the shepherd boy was asleep in the forest leaves in the byre.
+
+But it was not that night of Beltain that Phadraig asked of the
+unknown things, for he had noted the salt sprinkled on the threshold
+to bar out influences of the old gods; so that night they talked of
+Nihil, dead ere he had seen his son, and Kreda, his wife, dead at the
+birthing, and all the grandeurs of the house of the Ua Dinan where
+Phadraig had lived his life of training for the work of a chief. Yet
+out of it all he had come back with the heart of a boy, and sat on a
+three-legged stool at the door of Roiseen, and fashioned a flute of
+alder-wood, and piped on it in the sunshine of the morning.
+
+Then, when the milk was put away, and Roiseen settled with the
+distaff and the whirling strands, he spoke the name singing in his
+heart.
+
+“Mother Roiseen, it is to you I am coming with a thing to ask: who is
+Danaan of the birds of white?”
+
+“That you should ask it, and you with the name of a saint on you!
+Get you to your hawking or hunting the deer! And see that you pluck
+primroses to scatter at your door this night that the Ancient People
+send you no call of Danaan—the men who follow the call wander far.”
+
+“To the land of the mystic west do they wander?”
+
+“Ay, that they do; far over the green meadows of the waters where the
+horses of Lir have their pastures. From the cliff below you can see
+them running in races endlessly to the shore.”
+
+“I see the waves run in,” said Phadraig, but she was not to be fooled.
+
+“Ay, and more than the waves to you, as to your father! But you are
+idling in thought, Phadraig, son of Nihil.”
+
+“What other task when there is peace in Tormond? And the Ua Dinan, as
+you mayhaps have heard, cannot abide the sight of me near his ailing
+son, and Kethlen his wife, bitter as gall because she has borne a
+weakling.”
+
+“True that is. You stand in their eyes as a threat at the crowns they
+wear.”
+
+“To me a pipe on the hills instead, and the songs of my father to
+sing! Roiseen, why has the song of Danaan never been given me?”
+
+“That name has been through the ages a hated word to the women of
+your house and in each generation they try to smother it out.”
+
+“And why is that?”
+
+“It gave a youth the seeking eye and the wandering foot, and it
+was said to keep young the heart of a man when all his mates went
+tottering under the sod. No—the women could not abide the thought
+of that, and they smother it out. Ay, that is the way with the
+woman-heart.”
+
+“Mother Roiseen, there is a deer for you in the forest. Shall Snard
+and I bring it in tomorrow’s morn?”
+
+And the white hound, hearing his name spoken, flailed the floor with
+his tail and rose up and waited.
+
+“To what would you bribe me, Phadraig, my heart?”
+
+“To peace and content while I tell you I heard the song of Danaan on
+the hill of Cromm Cru in the dusk of Beltain—and I felt the music
+that all the songs of Nihil, my father, could not give voice to, and
+in my dream I looked in that Druid well of the wood, and saw the
+heart of the ocean beat there under the stars! All this came to me by
+chance in the place of fire to Beltain, so mine is the right to ask
+what I ask.”
+
+And Roiseen, the wise woman, looked on him and made the sign and
+plucked primroses for her door.
+
+“Yours is the right,” she said, “come you away from the house and
+out under the hawthorn tree and what I can say with no hurt to the
+saints and their faith, that I will. It is said that while many a
+family trace in pride their fathers to the ancient barbarians, few
+trace their descent from yon Wise Ones who took themselves into the
+air with their own enchantment sooner than be conquered. This I heard
+when I was a girl in the home of the king, your father’s father. But
+Nihil of the songs learned much from a master of tricks, an aged man
+who said he had lived on the earth in other days when the sea covered
+all this valley, and that this was the last edge of the land where
+the Danaan lived on the earth as people, and ate the honey of bees,
+and drank the water of the Druid well in the wood beyond.”
+
+“Ay,” said Phadraig, and he looked over the green velvet of the
+valley running down to meet the white foam of the sea, white as the
+hawthorn bloom above them, and from the dark hills he looked to the
+islands beyond, and it was all a sweet picture of summer under the
+blue sky. “Ay, Mother Roiseen, of all places in the whole world where
+would they find another spot so fair? In truth, I believe your word
+that it is the last corner of the land they could let go to the hard
+people of the iron pikes.”
+
+“So it was, the last place they let go of—and they lingered long
+after the stranger-people swept over the land to the east. And to
+your father, Nihil, came a ‘sending’ of sight through fasting, and
+enchantments of music, until he spoke aloud the word no other dared
+ever to speak for them.”
+
+“And what was that word, Mother of the Glen?”
+
+“It was of a bond of birth and blood between the Ua Dinan and the
+Tuathe de Danaan, but the legend of it is against all christian
+teachings—and we are christian now in Erinn.”
+
+Phadraig looked up to the mount of the Druid god where fires of
+propitiation had burned but a night agone.
+
+“Ay, so we say,” he agreed, “but tell me more of Nihil and his song
+of Danaan.”
+
+“He all but had the ban of the Bishop of Clare put on him—and it was
+backed by some of his own blood whose names I will not speak, for
+it is evil to speak against the dead! They were mortal shamed to be
+thought of the blood or the spirit of enchanters, the while Nihil
+was so proud of it that church itself was called to the question.
+That was a time of trial! For there was your mother, the Lady Kreda
+of Kilfernora, not yet either wife or mother, but loving him and
+holding him to church, and there was the bishop with his power to
+bless or ban, and there was Nihil stout in rebellion against all but
+the sweet Lady Kreda. For his word was this: that if all the mothers
+for a thousand years could not stamp out the call of Danaan in the
+heart of a man, was it not proof that it was a bond of the spirit,
+and was for good and not for evil?”
+
+“And then?”
+
+“He was banished to a forest cell for a year and a day for expiation,
+and that was the time the Lady Kreda chose to ride beside him and
+do penance beside him. And, at the last, to pleasure her, he made
+the song of warning against Danaan, and he went into the forest away
+from the sea, but he was never the same man after! A true singer
+sings only the songs in his heart, and that was the song made at the
+word of another, for he, Nihil, had walked the Druid Path to the
+well over back of beyond, and the white sea birds of Danaan had come
+to him there, and he heard music of sweetness in the closed hills
+where the Ancient People are waiting to this day and holding secret
+the sacred things shut in for the people of the future who will see
+as your father Nihil saw. That was his word of it many a day as he
+walked above yon cliff, or up to the hill of Cromm Cru. And the
+priests beyond could do naught with him, though your mother hated the
+thoughts he spoke, as did all the women of your race of the Ua Dinan.”
+
+“Mayhaps they were but jealous of a knowledge not for them.”
+
+“Mayhaps, for true it is the Lady Kreda loved well his songs when he
+was wooing under her window there in Kilfernora but turned away her
+head when the songs were of things not of her ken.”
+
+“I have had few years, yet I have lived to see that with other
+lives,” said Phadraig. “What power may a man gain for the world if he
+only sing songs of love to a mistress who only smiles from a window?”
+
+“You are older than your years, Phadraig, my heart, else it would not
+be myself sitting here under the hawthorn telling you the ancient
+things that the priests tell us are false things.”
+
+“I do not think in my heart they are false,” said Phadraig, son of
+Nihil. “Into the forest I am going now for your deer, Mother of the
+Glen, and then, till the next day of Samhain, I will live in the open
+to give proof to my own heart that Nihil, my father, saw true, and
+spoke true.”
+
+And thus did he, though his kinsmen raged and their women told the
+priests, and the Ua Dinan tore down the stone of Cromm Cru from the
+mount and broke it into pieces with iron chisels—for it is well known
+that spirits of the Tuathe de Danaan hate the touch of the iron
+brought into the land by the barbarians.
+
+But Phadraig with his pipe of alder was somewhere in the deep wood
+with only the white hound and his dreams and his calls to the tamed
+sea birds on the cliffs, and never a sight could kindred get of him
+unless it was in a boat, dancing on the far waves toward Inis Mor—or
+high on the hill where the forest veiled him if any tried to follow.
+
+And a wail went up from the shepherds that year, for the murrain got
+the sheep despite of all, and some wells went dry, and the herders
+gave sullen looks to the virtuous lords and ladies who had done that
+pious work in tearing down Cromm Cru of the Tor.
+
+And one day there came to Roiseen of the Glen a lady riding on a
+white horse with golden trapping. Her eyes were dark with desire and
+her braided hair had the gold of the sun glinting its brown shadows.
+With her came a priest of the south whose looks were down and ill.
+
+“I am Yva of Kilfernora,” said the maid, with a blush sweeping her
+face. “Have you, O woman, speech with Phadraig of the Wilds?”
+
+“That was the place his mother came from,” said Roiseen of the Glen,
+“and I have seen no sign of him this seven days, barring the white
+sea birds hovering over the forest of the Druid well.”
+
+“Woman,” said the priest, “what would drive sea birds to the forest
+on days like this?”
+
+“Ay, it is a big question, your holiness, and a thousand years have
+not given us the answer.”
+
+“Do you mean the blasphemy of enchantment too strong for church to
+conquer?”
+
+“I would not dare, your holiness; mayhaps it is that the church has
+not striven. Sea birds are a small thing to take note of after all.”
+
+“O woman,” said Yva the brown-eyed, “will you tell him I have ridden
+the horse he loved to these wilds he loves, that he may know my
+message is a true message, and that I watch from my window ever to
+these hills of the north?”
+
+“That he may find the way to that window, O Lady?”
+
+“Ay, that he may find the way. The Ua Dinan and the head of my clan
+have clasped hands and emptied bowls of mead on the pact, and I bring
+my own message to his hills.”
+
+“How great is your patience, Yva of Kilfernora?” asked old Roiseen of
+the Glen, and the priest frowned at the forwardness of the peasant,
+but Yva of the dark tresses leaned forward in the saddle.
+
+“What mean you?” she asked, her lips red and parted over white teeth.
+
+“Would you take him as Nihil, his father, was taken, with his quest
+not finished, nor his heart content?”
+
+“Nihil, the Singer, died,” said Yva, her eyes staring.
+
+“Ay, he died! With love beside him—earthly love keeping step, yet not
+understanding, he died! Would you fain have Phadraig, son of Nihil,
+dead by your side or alive and free to choose after he has made the
+circle that was broken for Nihil?”
+
+“Woman—are you taking on yourself the weighing of a soul?” demanded
+the priest in anger. “What blasphemy is this of lives in circles and
+like enchantments? Is it evil craft of Druid witcheries by which the
+young lord of the Ua Dinan is held here in the wilds?”
+
+“I have not dared to ask him that myself,” said Roiseen of the Glen.
+“But I am an old woman, and I know the men of the Ua Dinan—and their
+women, too! By bell and book and candle their women have driven out
+or smothered a wild Something in the blood of the Ua Dinan of the
+west land, until the clan is weak this day because of it! They have
+not dared dream their own dreams lest they range beyond the church
+rules and the women they wive; and what man does any great thing
+without the Dream—or woman, either? O Lady of Kilfernora, you are
+beautiful as the wild rose on the heath, and there are many chiefs to
+break a lance at your nod; better to give your glove to any one of
+them, than enchain an Ua Dinan before he has followed the Dream till
+it makes the circle.”
+
+The priest was prone to chide such speech, as was his duty, but Yva
+of Kilfernora put out her ringed hand.
+
+“She speaks truly, and I see it,” she said. “No one has ever spoken
+thus to me before today. Think back, reverend father, over the years:
+Nihil dead with his songs half written; the king, his brother, a man
+of gloom with a crippled child; the old king, his father, tired of
+rule and in a monastery ere his time; yet, all these men were strong
+in youth and to the fore in wild beauty. Not until now has anyone
+dared read me that riddle of the Ua Dinan. Woman, you are wise and
+you have Yva of Kilfernora for your friend. I ride back and dream my
+own dream, and leave him all the freedom of his. Fare you well!”
+
+“Now indeed may a great day come again to the children of the Ua
+Dinan,” said Roiseen of the Glen. She went back to the spinning of
+her flax, with a great jewel hidden in her bosom, let fall there by
+Yva of the dark hair and the burning eyes.
+
+And in the green-gray dusk of the twilight there was the flash of
+white wings against streaks of yellow sky, and the white hound came
+down the glen by the sheep path, and Phadraig the wanderer, with a
+hare of the hills ready for the twigs over the roasting fire.
+
+“Art tired of the quest, Phadraig?”
+
+“Nay, not that, Mother of the Glen. I am no longer alone, though I
+cannot tell you what walks beside me.”
+
+“None of us can, and for lack of faith few can feel them,” agreed
+Roiseen.
+
+“But Nihil, my father, spoke truth, we do belong,” said Phadraig.
+“Once I saw the shadow of her in the Druid well in the moon’s light,
+but the face was still veiled for me, but the music is piercing
+sweet, and I would I had my father’s gift to catch and hold it.”
+
+He would eat not any of the hare, but drank fresh milk from the cow
+and stood at the door looking tired and white in the starlight.
+
+“May I let stay Snard, the hound, with you?” he asked. “He is weary
+of my trail, and will not walk in my paths; only today did I learn I
+was cruel to him; and tomorrow is the feast of Samhain, and where I
+go I cannot say, but I think it is not for Snard to follow me.”
+
+“Phadraig, my heart, do you ever think of someone there in the south,
+who—”
+
+“Ay, Roiseen. I thought of them all today when a storm cloud swept
+in from the sea with a clammy cold in it. For it was not so cold as
+the welcome in my kinsman’s home lest the day come when I claim rule
+there.”
+
+“Ay,” said Roiseen of the Glen. “That is a picture we all see some
+days in life, but Time is a good story-teller, Phadraig aroon, and
+I’ll wait the other day when the sun shines for you and the human
+call comes.”
+
+“You are the only human thing, Roiseen,” he said, and touched her
+hair. “You understand.”
+
+“How did you tame the sea birds of Danaan, Phadraig, my heart?” she
+asked, but he shook his head.
+
+“I only spoke to them as I would to Snard—some souls have the gift of
+taming—that is all.”
+
+“Ay, your father had it before you,” she said. Then, as he turned
+into the darkness, she spoke again as she held back the white hound.
+“Do you look to come back to me here, Phadraig, son of Nihil?”
+
+“I do, Mother of the Glen, though I cannot see clearly the path I may
+come—or when.”
+
+“I thought as much,” she said, “but Phadraig, take this from me ere
+you go: for all ills of youth and life there grows somewhere an herb;
+find it, Phadraig aroon; search till you find!”
+
+But he went across through the night to the hill of Cromm Cru,
+singing the song of his father—
+
+      O white Danaan of the sea birds,
+        Danaan of the snowy breast!
+      O sweet the song on the Druid Path
+        To lead me to her nest!
+
+      She takes my hand at the sea marge,
+        She whispers low on the wind,
+      She sets her sail for Tir-nan-Ogue
+
+“Ay,” said Roiseen, twirling the spindle,
+
+      And leaves dear Life behind!
+
+Then, as a muttering of thunder came on the wind from the sea and a
+flash of flame cut the gray of the sky, she took the hound within,
+closing the door on the night, and chanted the song of Nihil, as a
+prayer, in the dim light of the peat blaze.
+
+      Make strong your charms against Danaan,
+        Danaan of the snowy breast,
+      Who lured the souls of the Gods of Old
+        To the land of the mystic west.
+
+The feast of Samhain in that year was a time of wonder, for the yew
+branches on the old altar place of Cromm Cru were struck afire by the
+lightning, or so it was said. All the people, fearful of the crashing
+thunder, yet clasped hands in a circle below the mount, while the
+man with fire made his way to the top and bent to place it when the
+stroke came. The blaze from the sky flashed down, and flamed upward
+again, and the stunned man fell downward among his mates and was
+borne in fear across the valley, and all knew that night that the
+vengeance of Cromm Cru of the Tor could be a thing to put the fear of
+death on any man. Let the churchmen say their say ’neath every bell
+in Erinn, it would not change any man’s mind. And all had known it as
+a sign of evil to come when the altar of the Ancient People had been
+defaced.
+
+And there were those, fleeing under the lightning flashes, who vowed
+they passed Phadraig, son of Nihil, running before the wind with
+eager gladness in his face, and looking neither to right nor left,
+and chanting the song of his father as he went down to the sea.
+
+      O white Danaan of the sea birds,
+        Danaan of the snowy breast!
+
+And the white birds were screaming and circling above him in the
+storm as he sang—
+
+      She takes my hand at the sea marge,
+        She whispers low on the wind,
+      She sets her sail for Tir-nan-Ogue—
+
+And then a great wave caught the currach he launched and tossed it
+out on the night, and the white foam made the curtain and hid him
+from all of life.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Ages on the bosom of the ocean seemed to pass over him after that
+storm. There was light, and then again there was darkness, but he
+knew it only through closed eyes in a trance-like dream. He was
+conscious ever of the whir of wings sweeping over his face and knew
+the sea birds were there, and then he heard voices, and the laughter
+of a woman, high and sweet and mocking.
+
+The movement of the boat ceased as it grated on sand. There was a
+sudden silence, and the sound of running feet.
+
+“But what use to try?” said a sweet, tired voice. “All white things
+go to Danaan, and look: every bird is white!”
+
+“Danaan comes not out of the forest, and the youth is fair. He is
+treasure of the sea on our shore; if for her, the birds should have
+borne him into the lake of the pulsing heart. My hand shall give him
+to drink.”
+
+Then a cup was held to his lips, a drink of sweet-smelling fruits was
+offered him. He did not drink. He was no longer in a boat; but in a
+lady’s bower where bloom was on every bough, and the air heavy with
+the sweetness of orchards.
+
+“Where am I?” he asked, and out from a shadowy doorway of stone a
+tall and wondrous woman smiled on him.
+
+“You are in the Summer Land of the Long Day,” she said. “The birds
+of the sea brought you, and what thing do you seek? For your wishing
+must be great to win your way here.”
+
+“I do not know the thing I seek,” said Phadraig, whose mind was
+veiled from the things that had been lived. “I only feel that I shall
+know again when I find it.”
+
+“Then we will wander, a-seeking,” said the woman of beauty, and took
+his hand.
+
+Whereupon, without seeming to take a step, he passed through and was
+a part of a wonderful people. Their slightest cup was of gold, and
+many wore crowns at will, and held court and ordered games at which
+all played merrily, and then the crowns were tossed aside as a part
+of the game no longer amusing. He moved with his mistress, whose name
+was Una, along the seashore where pleasure boats were held without
+rope, and he found himself sitting there alone, wondering how the
+boats were held together, for there was no iron in them, and that
+word “iron” was the first word his mind had as a link with the old
+life and changing skies.
+
+For the skies never changed in the Summer Land of the Long Day,
+and all the people laughed and played games as if to pass the time
+while waiting. No one told him for what, and when he asked, Una the
+beautiful would laugh her sweet mocking laugh and bid him to her
+bower.
+
+“Other earth lovers have come our way, but none like you,” she
+whispered. “Do you never know you are fairer than blossom on the
+bough—or golden fruit of living trees?”
+
+“Whence came your orchards where no one labors?” he asked, and she
+laughed again.
+
+“They are the fair memory of the sunken world to the south—as is this
+castle of stone by the water’s edge, for what need is there here now
+for walls of stone?”
+
+“Whose hands made it thus strong here by the sea marge?” he asked,
+and she took his hand and held it.
+
+“Weary would you fare in this our land if I gave you all the words of
+that building, for it is ancient as the very earth of which you came.
+There was no sea at the walls in that day, and the Great White Land
+of the South was in the midst of waters, and ruled the world. Then
+the lands broke away and the waters covered it, and only little lands
+of it kept above the waters or kept the old gods. Your Inis Erinn
+to the sun side of the world was one, and another one far on the
+sun-path beyond the waters is one, but the links between have been
+forgot by the people of Earth. It all lives here because we are the
+People of Memory. We went out from your Earth Land proudly, letting
+the body and the soul go that we might hold memory alone, and in that
+memory we hold only Day and only Summer.”
+
+“Ay,” said Phadraig, and he sat a long time in the tower looking
+across the moat where the tides of the sea swirled in, “but in all
+your games and pleasuring, is it not that memory holds you instead,
+and makes you as endless slaves to the Great Past? Would it not be
+rest to forget?”
+
+Upon which she drew away from him and screamed at him to begone, for
+his earth thoughts were cruel as is the iron of the stranger-people
+in the heart.
+
+He wandered away from that place, and into a wood—and her cries came
+after him calling him back, but he could find no gate to the moat and
+he could not go back.
+
+Gay companions danced about him, and made jeweled crowns for him in
+the games they played, but he looked at the white birds circling
+above him, and looked at the sea, and wondered whence they had led
+him, and at times he could close his eyes and see them circling above
+the black cliffs of Erinn though he had no memory of that place.
+
+And the day was heavy in the Summer Land for the reason that a quest
+was in his heart, but the mind kept no record.
+
+But white deer came to a lake in the wood to drink, and after them
+gay fays with shepherds’ staves; and they danced and sang their songs
+of the woodland things, and that touched his heart more than the
+games of crowns and castles.
+
+“Make me a shepherd, too,” he said, “for you herd the white things,
+and the things of white are dear to me.”
+
+“Why is that?” asked a maid of the wood.
+
+But he did not know, and they laughed at him because he did not know,
+and as they laughed, all suddenly Una, gorgeous and jeweled, flashed
+in their midst and caught at his hand.
+
+“Not yet have you seen her?” she asked. “Then come with me; I weary
+for your voice.”
+
+“I am a shepherd of the wood, and herd the deer.”
+
+“The deer need no shepherds; it is only a game to play. Come! I will
+sing my music and dance you a dance in the woods alone, see! Is the
+dance not a fair dance?”
+
+“Ay, but I would you could give me the word of why I wander here
+where this lake wells with the tides of the sea.”
+
+“Come! We will hunt in a forest far away. This lake in the wood is a
+place we never seek.”
+
+“Yet the white birds come—and the white deer.”
+
+“It is a place where earth life is remembered, and the dread
+enchantment of night may fall.”
+
+“And the stars?” he asked, for all suddenly he thought of the night
+as a thing dearly beloved and to be desired more than the Ever Day of
+the changeless sun. The night stars had been dear to him.
+
+“Ay, and the moon and their mistress. Come out of the dusk of the
+wood!”
+
+“But I hear music of sweetness here!”
+
+“Come, and I will sing beyond sweetness of woman!”
+
+“I listen.”
+
+“By this lake of Danaan, I may not sing.”
+
+“And that is best,” said Phadraig, for out of the rockwall by the
+lake, or up from the water, there came the music of dreams on the
+hill of Cromm Cru, and to an altar of stone by the lake-side came a
+figure of a maid, and before her and after her swept the white birds
+of the sea. Her face was veiled as by a cloud circling her to her
+white feet—and it was the white cloud maid he had visioned in the
+well where the heart of the sea throbbed as it throbbed here in the
+lake of the wood.
+
+“Come with me now for pleasure,” said Una of the gold crown and jewel
+eyes.
+
+And he looked deep into her wondrous eyes and read there the shadow
+things of some forgotten past.
+
+“Somewhere, in some life, your music of Life has held me, and I
+followed after. Was I lost in some forest through that following, O
+Woman of the Memory? And do the white birds of the sea lead me at
+last out from the shadows of that? This pulse of the lake beats more
+close to me than the pulse of your heart, O Una, most beautiful!
+And—I follow my dream!”
+
+And at that the white cloud fell away from the maid, and he saw the
+white hands of her make new fire in the ancient way on the stone
+of the altar place, and maids and men in green clasped hands and
+circled her, and chanted a song he had sometime known of.
+
+      Samhain! Samhain! Samhain!
+      Take the new fire! Send the rain!
+      Banish care and banish pain!
+      Speed the ghosts who ban the sheep,
+      Light the path to spirit sleep!
+      This our fire to light the way
+      This eve:
+                Samhain!
+
+And as he heard them he saw again the hill of Cromm Cru and the
+circled bands there, but never on Cromm Cru or in all the world had
+he seen such a priest at an altar, for she was all of white and
+silver and in her hair of gold was a fillet of silver with a crescent
+moon. And he broke through the circle to kneel by her.
+
+“O new moon of the world!” said Phadraig as he unclasped the strong
+hand of Una.
+
+“I hear your voice but may not look on you until the prayer is
+worked. The Lords of Flame send thus the strength of altars to the
+sun! ’Tis Summer Days’ farewell!”
+
+“The day is endless here—and no farewell!” came the whispered
+music-sweet voice of Una. “’Tis witchery of Earth, her mother’s
+earth! I beg you come with me!”
+
+But he made no answer, so thrilled was he by the enchantment of the
+music of the white maid who gave fire to her men and maids, and bade
+them to the four ways.
+
+Then she turned and smiled upon him, and in her smile was the glory
+of dawn.
+
+“You have followed the quest, O King Phadraig, soul of Nihil?” she
+said.
+
+“Not king, O Wonder Maid! You have given back the name I had lost,
+but no king am I. I am the son of Nihil, and am your shepherd of the
+white deer, or knight of yours if fighting men are called.”
+
+“Danaan calls no more battles these many thousand days.”
+
+And with the name came the strange witchery by which he had been held
+in thrall since the night of Beltain on the heights.
+
+“Danaan—Danaan!” he whispered. “I have followed the quest. Your white
+birds led the way, O snowy-breasted maid! I am in bond to you these
+many days!”
+
+“We all are bound by links forged by the gods. What quest was yours?”
+
+“I never knew till now. I thought it but the music of the past—I
+sought to find it through your magic name—and now—”
+
+“Ay! Wishful human hearts,” she said, and rested her hand on his hair
+where he knelt beside her. “Come you, and tell me of your life on
+other shores.”
+
+“I have forgotten all,” he said, and in truth he had; only flashes of
+vision came to him as she spoke, but they went again.
+
+She laid her hand on his. “Now look again,” she said.
+
+And he looked. And there was the great cliff and the glen by the
+sea and the sheep on the far moors. And at the door of the cot sat
+Roiseen spinning the flax, and the white hound at her feet looking
+out to sea. It was as if he was looking into the eyes of Phadraig,
+and seeing him, yet taking no note, and Phadraig felt a longing for
+the shore. He had loved well Roiseen and the hound. And Danaan beside
+him laughed, and clapped her hands as a child would do.
+
+“I saw it, too!” she said. “And that is the shore my mother loved!
+Once she made me to see her honeysweet hills. She died with the
+sickness of longing for them, but never could I see it alone. Oh,
+lend me your eyes, and look for the deep well in the wood in the
+valley below the altar—it was there he, my father, found her, and
+drew her from her people. And she trod with him the Druid Path and
+came from the pulsing well here to the pulsing lake. Did you know
+that each is a mirror for all that reflects in the other? It is the
+path of dreams—and the guide is the living sea. It has led you as it
+led my mother from the land of Inis Erinn.”
+
+“And when was this?” asked Phadraig, after he had looked with her
+into the pulsing well and over the cliffs, and in all the places she
+had been told of and longed to see.
+
+“I only know it is so long ago that the sea is changed there. For the
+water ran in where you showed me the sheep in the valley. Ay, always
+I wanted to see that earth life again, and I wished it till you came
+to me.”
+
+“And I wished for the voice of Danaan out of all the world till my
+wish met yours somewhere between the shores, and only the sea birds
+knew!”
+
+She looked at him long, and sighed.
+
+“My mother came for such a wish—and for love, but she could not stay
+alive with us, and her spirit went out on the wings of the wind to
+find her way back to the primrose dawns and the purple dusks. How
+will you go out, O Phadraig the king, when the time comes?”
+
+“Why am I here but to do your will?” he asked. “And since you name me
+king, then a king’s way must I go out when the time comes; but bear
+you with me I will, Danaan, my soul.”
+
+“Ay, if that might be,” she said, and played with the girdle of sea
+pearls about her. “My mother left with me the earth longings else
+I never had wished you here”—and then she put her hand on his once
+more and had him look back to the land, and softly she crooned over
+to herself the charms it held for her through the sick longings of
+the mother. And when he thought of the night there, and the stars
+circling above and shining in the still water of the well, she arose
+and paced the grove.
+
+“Look you,” she said, “the others who abide with me gave up Earth
+and Spirit in an ancient day that they might live ever in the strong
+memory of joys that were. My heritage is different—as my spirit is.
+They never weary for the dusks of the night; I do, because of the
+bond with earth in me. Thus I make my own world, and do the moon
+prayers my mother knew, and make the Festivals of the Age of Youth,
+and here for love of it I have my night all alone where it gives
+dread to Una lest I plunge them all in shadow—they are in fear of
+earth enchantings. You are stronger than I, O Phadraig, for you have
+the soul of the Danaan and the strong earth body. You have fared
+forth on the quest of Nihil, though you know it not! But Nihil was
+not a king and the gods decide, Phadraig, that you are to be that.
+Wearily one more life must you serve ere you win the right to rest.”
+
+“With you, O Danaan?”
+
+“If you will it so, for you are stronger than I, Phadraig.”
+
+“What pledge may I keep?”
+
+She gave him the sharp flint spear from the altar.
+
+“Cut there in the wall of the rock something sacred to you and to the
+land of my mother.”
+
+He did so, and cut the central star of the north, and the wheel of
+the wings of it at the four seasons.
+
+“It is the most steadfast sign in our skies,” he said, “and every
+circling dance of prayer to the gods, old or new, is built on it.”
+
+Then Danaan, holding his hand, stood beside him at the edge of the
+lake of the tide, and with her finger drew a circle around the symbol
+there.
+
+“The forest will wither, and the heart of the lake will be still,
+ere the bond of that circle dies for you and for me,” she said. “If
+ever you doubt, O Phadraig the king, fare you forth again from your
+own shores of Inis Erinn and look on the wall and my pledge here. But
+never look back to it but once in your lifetime, and now—come away!”
+
+He followed where she led, and in a grotto by the sea they sat with
+clasped hands and she told him what she might of the People of
+Memory. Yet often she seemed to tell him without words. The music of
+a wondrous life swept over him in great floods of light unspeakable,
+and again he could hear an undercurrent of a lament ever dying away,
+and coming again, and he felt what that meant, too.
+
+“We will not be parting,” he said as he held her. “I say it!”
+
+“That is as may be,” she answered. “I am free of the wood and rule
+there, yet I belong to the Tuathe de Danaan, and there are bonds of
+this life.”
+
+“I broke them to find you,” he said.
+
+“So you did. But you have the wonderful earth body, and the doubled
+strength of Nihil and the others who have longed through the ages to
+prove the bond they felt. I will be alone. There will be no one to
+help me.”
+
+“I will help,” he said.
+
+“You have your will, and you see no content till you try,” she said.
+“But this is the time of trial, and I will not see you linger till
+your soul goes out on the restless winds crying for the blue of the
+heather on the hill and the primrose dawns after the sweet nights! It
+may be a long farewell you are to give me here, Phadraig, O King!”
+
+But he lifted her in his arms as if she had been but an armful of the
+fragrant blossoms above them, and he strode down to the shore with
+the white sea birds screaming.
+
+She uttered no word as he placed her in the currach and set it on
+the waves, and from the castle walls no face looked out. It was as if
+all the land there, and her heart as well, had been made quiet by the
+strength of his will to bear her away.
+
+But only the whispered lament of the music was heard, and the world
+was very still. The birds had ceased whirling above but swept
+steadily onward as if drifting on the wind, and it was a world of
+green water and green sky they went into.
+
+But the cold came down, and the birds flew low. He touched the hand
+of Danaan; it was very cold, and his heart was sick with fear for
+her. He lifted her to his breast that his body might give her warmth.
+But it did not, and his very soul seemed frozen with unearthly cold
+as he lay beside her and held her close.
+
+And then she smiled, the most wonderful smile in the world, into
+his eyes, and whispered, “I did not know how it would be coming,
+Phadraig, O King. But it is the farewell—and it is sweet as honey on
+the hills in your land of love.”
+
+But he could not speak; he could only look on her face until his own
+eyes closed, and the currach went steadily on through icy air. There
+was no longer any thought left in him as to where they were borne,
+for he felt the sleep of death was over them both.
+
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+And on the day of Samhain, as the sun went into the western mists
+and left a path of glory behind, the white hound at the feet of old
+Roiseen of the Glen stood up looking out to the sea, and the whine
+of him was like a chained soul in travail. Roiseen looked the way
+he looked, and in the path of the sun on the water a currach came
+in to the shore, and over it a white cloud hovered. Yet when it came
+nearer, the cloud was only white birds flying low on the sea.
+
+“The strength of the saints to us—and Saint Brighde to the fore!”
+she prayed, for no mortal currach ever came in like that against the
+tide. And to shepherds bearing yew to the mount of Cromm Cru, she
+made a call.
+
+“Come you who bear cheer to the ghosts who walk on the night of
+Samhain,” she said, “come you down to the sea where the ghost of
+Phadraig, son of Nihil, is waiting on the waves!”
+
+In fear they came, and, led by the white hound, they went down to the
+sea, and there was Phadraig in the white sleep. But the hound crept
+near to him and gave tongue in joy, and Roiseen of the Glen lifted
+his head to her.
+
+“The luck is on him that he yet holds breath,” she said. “Men, take
+him up. Fiann, make you the fire. Erard, go you for the priest in the
+cave of the hills, for he is a holy man. Ay! Achone! Phadraig, that
+you should come back to us with the ice in your blood like this!”
+
+And only the bravest of the men would bear Phadraig, for the others
+stayed on their knees in fear of the white birds whirling wearily
+over.
+
+And the night fires of Samhain were sending their flames to the sky
+when he spoke.
+
+“Danaan, Danaan, it is again I have lost you?”
+
+“He dreams,” said the holy man of the cave where Saint Colman had
+lived his seven blessed years, and ever after that time the monks
+lived there in retreat.
+
+“Nay, father, call it not a dream, for it is a part of the life of
+his people—and he has been bold to go forth to find.”
+
+And that was the time she told, under confession, the legend of the
+race of Ua Dinan.
+
+He was very aged, and had seen many things on earth, and in hearts,
+and he did not chide.
+
+“What is the blaze on the night sky?” asked Phadraig. “Do they burn
+today the yew wet by the rain last night of Samhain?”
+
+The monk looked at the woman.
+
+“Ay, Phadraig, my heart,” she said. “It is the feast fire of
+Samhain.” But she did not tell him he had gone out with the ghosts of
+Samhain a year agone, and came back with them!
+
+Then there was sound of horses’ feet, and voices of men of degree,
+and a chief of Tormond entered the cot and bent the knee to Phadraig,
+and beyond the door stood many chiefs.
+
+“We have guarded your claim till you came, Phadraig, son of Nihil,
+son of Ua Dinan,” he said, and the chiefs lifted their lances, and
+one by one entered the cot and spoke fealty and passed out.
+
+And thus he learned that Danaan spoke true in Tir-nan-Ogue of the
+Long Day, for Kieran the king had fallen in a raid of the south, and
+his frail cousin had gone out like a rushlight in the wind.
+
+“Come another day, and I will hearken to you,” he said, “other cares
+await me this night.”
+
+They went away at that, and Phadraig asked again for Danaan, and was
+told that the currach was empty but for himself, and was so old that
+it fell to pieces as the men drew it ashore, and that not lately
+could it have ever borne the burden of two bodies.
+
+This he knew was not true, and he said it, and the fever of him ran
+hot, and he talked of the trees of magic where white flower and fruit
+of gold grew on the same branch, and where music was achingly sweet,
+and spoke without words! Back there to Tir-nan-Ogue would he go for
+Danaan, despite all, and he bade them as their king that they bring
+him a boat for the journey!
+
+And so prayerful were the eyes of Roiseen that the holy man of the
+cave bade him sleep in peace, for with the rising of the sun the boat
+would be ready.
+
+“Achone! Ay, father! But what shall we do if he wakens alive and
+holds you to that?” asked Roiseen, making the sign.
+
+“What is there to do with god or man but to keep the faith?” said the
+priest. “He is not to be bound or held to life for the cares of this
+land except he be rowed to some island in the sea, and have the dream
+blown away on the wind.”
+
+And it was so.
+
+The chiefs waited on his word while he walked the hills with the
+priest and listened to the music unheard by all but him, and called
+on Danaan to come alive to him.
+
+Strange tales went abroad that the king walked with angels, and the
+chiefs were patient, but to the holy man they said he must wear the
+crown or forfeit it, also that he must wed with a maid of degree,
+else no chief could bring wife or daughter to the halls of Ua Dinan,
+as was the custom in Tormond.
+
+Phadraig, the king, listened and laughed with bitter thoughts.
+
+“How may I wed a warm maid of the clans when my arms are yet chilled
+with the icy bosom of Danaan?” he asked. “The heart of me craves only
+a boat, and strength to fare forth to the shores where I held her.”
+
+“And if we find a shore and no waiting maids, will you then take up
+the work waiting here to your hand?”
+
+“That, if I cannot find her,” said Phadraig.
+
+“And will you wed the lady who waits in the south, and hold court as
+of old for the good of your race?”
+
+“Rather with her than another,” said Phadraig. “She is a fair and
+honest lady, and sweetly kind.”
+
+And the holy man kept his word. He bore sacred symbols and a church
+bell, and sailed away with Phadraig to the west, and the chiefs on
+the shore were told it was a vow, and waited as they might and made
+prayers. The bells were rung from every tower that day to pray that
+Phadraig, the king, come again in health and safety.
+
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+No one ever knew what island in the sea they came to, but come to
+an island they did, and it was far away. The wood grew down to the
+shore, and there were mighty trees cast down as by a great wind,
+and the desolation of it was so great that no living thing moved or
+fluttered a wing, and out beyond the shore rested the white birds of
+Phadraig, the king, and they rocked on the waves there, and by no
+effort could be made follow.
+
+“This is the farthest unknown land,” said the holy man. “By faith and
+prayer have we found it, and by the grace of God only shall we ever
+fare safely home or see again the faces of your clans. Look about
+you, Phadraig of the Dream, where are the ever-blossoming boughs and
+the castle of stone with the many towers?”
+
+“Hear you not the music?”
+
+“I hear only the sea wind moaning through the branches of dead trees.”
+
+“Smell you not the fragrance of orchards?”
+
+“I smell only the twists of seaweed cast up on the shore,” and
+the priest pushed aside a branch of wild thorns with green leaves
+reaching out from a gnarled and ancient bole.
+
+But Phadraig caught the thorn branch, and under the scant green
+leaves was one tiny blossom, white and thick-petaled and with the
+fragrance of all sweetness of all the orchards in the world.
+
+“See! Of this I told you, and it is alive here!”
+
+“Then it is the sole live thing on the shore, for there is not even
+fish in this sea.”
+
+But Phadraig led him over stones of great size piled high. Broken
+stone was there covered by sands—and other stone not broken, but
+squared on the four sides and grown over with lichens and wild vines.
+
+“This is like the place of the tower where the sea tide swept into
+the moat,” he said.
+
+And the holy man went over the stone, and stood on a broken wall. And
+beyond was a great place of sand piled high where the walls of a moat
+once stood.
+
+“Come away,” he said, and crossed himself in fear. “This is no place
+of living things. No life has been here for a thousand years.”
+
+But Phadraig held the blossom and heard the music of Danaan and would
+not.
+
+“Come out first, as by your vow, to the forest,” he said, “for it was
+there I found her. Once only in my lifetime I was to come back if I
+had doubt. I have no doubt, yet I am here with you. Come you in.”
+
+It was a wilderness beyond words, and the twisted thorn trees were
+gray and dead there, with neither green leaf nor white bloom.
+
+“I am sorrowful to bring you through them,” said Phadraig, the king,
+for the priest was old and the way hard. “But over beyond the hill
+is the great forest—and there by the blue lake the pulse of the sea
+is—”
+
+But the forest was a jungle with no path, and the lake was not there;
+only a bog stretched from the gray wood to a cliff of gray rock, and
+Phadraig could say no word but sat there on a crumbling stone and
+covered his eyes with his hands.
+
+“Now, O Phadraig, will you come back to the warm blood of your own
+clans?” asked the priest. “For here is the end of the dream.”
+
+But Phadraig, the lover, stood up and walked to the wall of gray rock
+at the edge of the bog.
+
+“Not yet—O holy father,” he said. “Once only I was to come for proof
+in one lifetime, and here am I! Come you and look.”
+
+He tore away from the rock wall the gray and green lichen and placed
+his fingers into the carving made there for the star of the north,
+and its circling seven, which makes both cross and wheel in the night
+sky.
+
+“See! I drilled them deep as the flint knife would burrow the stone,”
+he said, “and the storm has beaten away the face of the rock until
+only the traces are here. But Danaan took one finger of her white
+hand and drew a circle as her bond, and it has eaten deep into the
+rock as if carved with tools of iron this day. Father, what should
+that tell to me?”
+
+And the holy man looked in the face of Phadraig, the king, and made a
+prayer against enchantments, and rang the sacred bell of church there
+in the gray wood before he would speak.
+
+“Since written bond it is, O Phadraig, rest your soul with the
+thought that it was a bond with a forbear of yours a thousand summers
+agone! You have only dreamed the dream that was born in your blood of
+that bond. You have kept the tryst for your ancestors, and risked
+your life and soul in the keeping. No more of duty for your race will
+be required of you in this life—naught but to wear the crown and rule
+in the ways of the clans.”
+
+So Phadraig knelt there by the written bond of union, to the harmony
+of the circling stars, and he touched the circle of Danaan while he
+made his prayer, and then they went out again from the wilderness
+to the sea, and the white birds flew silently ahead of them on the
+sun-path to the home land of Erinn.
+
+“Look not behind you,” said the priest, “but follow the birds and
+pray for all lost souls.”
+
+For well he knew what would come of the church bell, and the
+Christian prayer in the gray wood. And come it did, for when he
+looked back the ancient island of enchantment was no more to be seen.
+And no living man has seen it to this day except its shadow every
+seven years far across the gold haze of the sunset path, and then the
+gray wood is glorified and young again—but there are those who can
+still hear the music of Danaan across the water in dusks and dawns.
+
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+And Roiseen of the Glen went to the great hall of Phadraig, the Ua
+Dinan, and nursed his children there, and gave comfort to Yva of
+Kilfernora, who was wife to him, and counseled her never to hedge in
+a child of the Ua Dinan from the open life and the old faiths; for
+in strange and dangerous ways they would cross the barriers, and it
+was safest to let them range free till they made the circle and came
+back to bide at the hearthstone and under the bell of the church.
+
+The holy man of the cave of Saint Colman was given merit by the
+bishop for saving the soul of Phadraig, the king, who was known to
+have won a strange power through some holy source.
+
+His hair whitened but his eyes were ever young, and his strength and
+wisdom grew, and his children’s children could not keep pace with him
+on the moors. He trained his eldest son to rule, and when the times
+were safe, he gave up the crown and wore the monk’s robe of white,
+and crossed over to Dun Aengus of the Isles of Arran. The singers of
+three centuries sang the songs of Nihil, his father, and the poets
+wrote of Phadraig, the king, as of a holy man by whom the white birds
+were tamed. Also he loved the stars and learned wisdom of them in the
+night, and in the blessed Isle of Arran he was always out under the
+sky when the wind blew from the west—and the music he heard then made
+him walk in beauty with the glad eyes of a lover who is beloved.
+
+And when the Time came, he laid him down in the white robe and bade
+all doors be open, and all windows, that the west wind come over him!
+And the white birds came on the wind and circled the room and hovered
+there. While the brother monks lit candles and chanted the words for
+the dying, he smiled in content and whispered the music of the song
+of Nihil—
+
+      She takes my hand at the sea marge,
+        She whispers low on the wind,
+      She sets her sail for Tir-nan-Ogue
+        And leaves worn Life behind!
+
+No pain was with him, and no sickness, but he went out on the wind as
+the birds went, and the monks who knelt by him, waiting some vision
+of his patron saint, heard him say at the last:
+
+“Danaan, the star stands steady these thousand years and the circle
+closes. I come back on the breath of the gods!”
+
+There was much learned discussion over this saying of his. Some
+thought he spoke of Daniel of the Hebrews, who was never a saint but
+was once a strong prophet. Others thought it was David, the king, of
+whom he spoke, for David was once a shepherd—and such were ever wise
+in the ways of the stars of night.
+
+As to the “breath of the gods”—they could by no means make out the
+meaning of that, which would have been blasphemy had it been said
+by anyone, high or low, and in their charity the monks united to
+disbelieve their own ears and content their souls with the miracle of
+the white birds—which was a beautiful miracle indeed—and, of course,
+a holy one.
+
+So Phadraig, the king, was buried in consecrated ground, and only two
+souls had lived in his day to read the riddle of his life. One was
+the Wise Woman of the Glen and the other a holy man of the cave of
+Saint Colman in the hills.
+
+But each had passed on, long years before, and made their choice
+between heaven and Tir-nan-Ogue.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE ENCHANTING OF DOIRENN]
+
+[Illustration: Love’s Story]
+
+[Music]
+                      THE ENCHANTING OF DOIRENN
+
+
+Not lucky is it for a man when his own clan gives him low looks, and
+Ruadan of Ardsolais saw how the wind blew in the rath of Fethna in
+Meath when his kinsmen brought there a counting of cattle, and they
+grudged that payment of cattle and grudged twice over the twelve
+white cows, for the white cows were the darlings of the herd, and his
+kinsmen were coveting them for their own fields. And to Fethna, who
+was lord of the judgments in that place, they spoke.
+
+“What is this debt to Cairell?” asked Donn, of his clan. “Far from
+Deasmond is the dun of Cairell; far to drive cattle, and waste of
+time coming.”
+
+Fethna would have been a cloak for Ruadan had he dared, but justice
+must have light of the sun.
+
+“It is no debt, and I could wish you made me no asking,” he said. “It
+is a fine, and it had to be paid when Cairell brought witness and
+made oath.”
+
+“Why not give to them the tale?” asked Ruadan, and laughed. “If
+Cairell and his wife Luaine care so little to have songs of us going
+round the fire, what is it to me? Luaine of the white hands can be
+queen of cattle for all I am caring. That is the comfortable kind of
+wife to have for old age, and she is a fair, sweet body.”
+
+“It would serve you better,” said Donn, of his clan, “to take a wife
+of your own, that your kinsmen could bring their women folk to your
+dun, as is fitting. Neither monk’s robe nor wife will you take or
+will you keep.”
+
+“I am not yet brave enough in spirit to pledge my name for every
+man’s child a woman may take fancy to bring; it takes a brave man for
+that. Until I find the right woman it is cheaper to pay trespass in
+cattle.”
+
+“You talk heresy; for marriage is called sanctified.”
+
+“So the priests are telling, but it takes more than their words to
+prove it so. Make not your quarrel here, because there is no wife in
+my dun, when all these coveted cattle are paid by me because there
+was a wife in my camp in the forest—ill-luck on that night!”
+
+His kinsmen stared darkly, feeling they were laughed at, but Fethna
+spoke.
+
+“It is the truth: the woman followed him, he makes no denial.”
+
+“What good of it?” laughed Ruadan. “I left his dun and asked no
+company. Every jester in Erinn would have a song of me if I took
+flight from the same woman twice. And where would there be profit in
+it to anyone?”
+
+“There would be profit in that you would not lose the love of Niall,
+the king,” said Fethna sorrowful, and Donn changed looks with the
+others.
+
+“True enough,” agreed Ruadan, “but if Niall was pleased to give me
+love himself, why should he be in anger for the reason that his
+uncle’s cousin’s daughter should have followed after to do the same?
+How was I to know? Does a man waste time to ask about grandsires when
+a lovely woman would creep under his cloak? Out on you for a lot of
+cold-blooded fish! Niall Caille will show temper for a year perhaps,
+and I’ll be keeping my distance till he has need of a spear.”
+
+“Is the favor of a king so small a matter that you pick it up and put
+it aside as you will?” asked Donn jealously. “Strange tales have come
+to us of other heads with crowns and other friendships of yours.”
+
+Ruadan looked at his hand on which a foreign ring shone—a ring of
+deep gold and a red jewel in it.
+
+“Rest you easy on that. There will be no cattle to pay there! I was
+on the business of the king; and the jewel was given only to the
+king’s messenger.”
+
+“Ask of Niall another gille next time,” said Fethna, “for the last
+one had tales to tell of Queen Ota and that ring of yours! Turgesius
+of the Danes needs two eyes for her alone. Since kings and queens do
+not come to me to set fines for loves, I can laugh at that, and leave
+it to Niall. But the bards do be making songs of that and even the
+maids are singing them in their chamber.”
+
+Back of the arras there was a movement and a scuttling of feet; maids
+were there listening because the drive of cattle had made talk.
+
+Bevind, daughter of Fethna, was there, and held by the hand Doirenn,
+of the deep voice, to listen.
+
+“Do you have wonder that I give him my looks when queens have given
+him love?” she asked, but the girl Doirenn looked her gloom and her
+scorn.
+
+“How is it that you give looks to him whom they call ‘God’s Dastard’
+when your eyes have looked on goodness in Geroid who has no blemish?”
+she asked. “This man has much blemish, and is not in shame because of
+it.”
+
+“You are as hard on him as the monks, for it was the monks that
+put that name on him. It is heavy to carry, Doirenn. To put an ill
+name to a boy and hope he walks the white path is much to hope for,
+Doirenn.”
+
+Doirenn looked at her, frowning.
+
+“I have not seen his face, yet I am thinking ill of him,” she said.
+“Geroid would have no light word of women and cattle such as this
+man speaks. Give him no looks, Bevind, and no words. It is said that
+monks learn holy ghostly things, and, if turned dastard to God, they
+can use power for enchantments. If a queen, even a pagan queen,
+looked love on him, and a king’s cousin followed him, what can it
+mean but enchantings?”
+
+Bevind gasped and rolled her eyes.
+
+“I did hear old Aillve tell a tale of enchantment by love, and the
+man was old as the world, yet looked young, and he snared maids and
+took them to his rath where they were changed to white cats. His
+forest was full of beautiful white cats, waiting for a brave and pure
+youth to ride their way and make prayers there; and that would free
+them, and nothing else would free them.”
+
+“Geroid could be that one,” said Doirenn. “All his verses on the
+tablets are against enchantments in these days. Here is one—
+
+      _Against incantations of false prophets,
+      Against craft of idolatry, against spells
+      Of women, and smiths, and druids, I bind
+      Myself to the strong strength._
+
+The prayer of a saint is that prayer, Bevind, and with
+it he could ride safe to free all enchanted souls.”
+
+“But would he?” asked Bevind. “He is my kinsman more than yours, and
+the safe side of a good wall was ever the choice of Geroid when the
+play was getting rough. My brothers are wild to fight out the Danes
+when the time comes, but Geroid casts no spear for that practice.”
+
+Doirenn sulked and frowned.
+
+“Your brothers have not souls of religion,” she said, “they have
+jealous hearts because of the high words of Geroid.”
+
+“They have jealous hearts because of your own beauteous eyes, and
+because not one of them would shut himself away with the monks,
+and feed a maid like yourself on letters and on the prayers of the
+old-time saints, and that is what Geroid is doing to you.”
+
+“The tongue of you is bitter from some poison herb you have chewed
+on,” declared Doirenn, “you have no good word for the godly, but many
+good words for that swaggering lover of queens and other men’s wives.
+The more shame to you!”
+
+Bevind laughed again. “Alanna,” she said, “he has no love, else he
+would have kept Luaine who followed his road. He would be fighting
+for her and not paying cattle for her—no—Ruadan of Ardsolais has not
+yet found Love, he has only found many fond women. Achone! That I was
+promised in troth before I was seeing him, for his kinsmen are saying
+it is a wife he should have, far away there, back of beyond where his
+dun is in the mountains.”
+
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+But Doirenn cared not where he lived, nor when he wived. She carried
+the last tablet of Geroid out through the arbor where she could read
+over again and again the written words of the lad who was dear and
+was far. She unbraided the red gold of her hair, and let it fall
+about her as a shimmering curtain. She had days in that sixteenth
+year of hers when the veil of a nun would have seemed to her a sweet
+thing to wear in sanctuary, but the cutting of that golden shower was
+a thing to shrink from; and the thought of Geroid was another reason!
+
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+It was there in the arbor Ruadan saw her, while his kinsmen fed and
+Fethna did a host’s duty.
+
+At first he could see little but the glory of her hair and the bare
+feet under the striped skirt of white and brown. He was above her
+on the wall, and stood waiting some movement that her face might be
+uncovered.
+
+Fethna found him thus, for she had not moved and he had watched her
+long.
+
+“Who is that?” he asked, “or do I dream of magical gold in the shape
+of a maid?”
+
+“It is Doirenn, daughter of no man now, for Marvan that was her
+father, and all his household, were swept into death by the men of
+Lochlann, and the gold of her hair is all the dower the child brings.”
+
+“What does she there?”
+
+“She is devoted these days because a queer twist of a lad is devoted,
+and hours she reads the prayers he is sending on tablets. It is a
+game of young years and is on the love path. She grows tall and
+nearing time to wed.”
+
+“And she reads the writings?”
+
+“She does, and who wants a cleric in a wife? Marvan taught her as a
+scribe ere he went the way—cows and slaves would be a better portion.”
+
+“I do not say that,” said Ruadan. “Ten years I worked on letters
+alone in Cluain-mac-noise and books I made were gifts to kings. There
+is a joy in that. If in this life I found no house, I may go back to
+the pen and color pot after I have covered my circle.”
+
+Then the voice of Bevind called from somewhere, and Doirenn stood up
+and shook back her golden mane.
+
+“She has dower in plenty,” said Ruadan.
+
+He listened to her voice and remembered its deep music, and he rode
+west with his kinsmen, who planted his fields and counted his herds.
+
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+A month went by, and again he stood at the gate of Fethna.
+
+“Does that maid know me, Ruadan, from Donn or the others of my clan?”
+he asked, and Fethna looked at him and laughed loud.
+
+“The last time it was a cattle-fine for a wife you paid, and now you
+are coming to ask of a maid and no name to her!”
+
+“There is only one in the world,” said Ruadan. “She is Doirenn na
+Marvan, and I would have speech with her.”
+
+“Sorrow the day,” lamented Fethna, “it is not now you would be seeing
+that one; grief of the world is on her, for Geroid who was her lover
+has gone into the ‘Solitary’—far west has he gone down the Sionan to
+the ancient cell of Saint Senan on the shores of Lough Dearg. She
+thinks the sorrow of the world is hers.”
+
+“I would lift that load and carry it,” said Ruadan.
+
+“You mean to take her to wed?” and Fethna’s face had a frown on it.
+It was not easy to shift the sails for every wind with Ruadan.
+
+“It would mean war with me, or a race beyond me to the man who would
+offer her less,” he said.
+
+But for all the urging of Bevind, Doirenn would not come where he
+was. She said he was the contrary in all ways to the pious youth who
+had her heart. If she loved Geroid, there could be only hate in her
+thoughts for one so near to the evil one as “God’s Dastard” was said
+and was sung.
+
+“She has not seen me,” said Ruadan when her refusal came. “Let her
+see me and hear me, and let my own ears hear her words.”
+
+It was not a pleasant day of joy for Fethna and the family of Fethna.
+His own sons were asking the same thing, and the girl had only one
+thought, and that was not of marriage.
+
+But after much argument Doirenn put aside Bevind and walked alone
+into the great hall where Ruadan—God’s Dastard and the darling of
+fond women—waited.
+
+White she was, and afraid, but the fear only made darker the blue
+eyes of her. Her hair was braided in long strands over each shoulder.
+Bevind had dressed her in white and the broidered shoes of skin were
+white. She was more lovely than a queen of the Danaan in the ancient
+legends.
+
+But she stood, a pale, proud, frightened child in her loveliness, and
+she looked past Ruadan and not at him.
+
+“I came by the courtesy of Fethna,” she said. “I do not come by my
+wish.”
+
+Ruadan looked at her and saw the fluttering of the white throat and
+the tight clenching of her hand. She looked like a bird trapped.
+
+“And I come despite my wish to go elsewhere,” he said grimly.
+“Child, I saw you once in the arbor and I shall not be forgetting the
+seeing of you. I meant not to see you again, but a dream came to me
+in the forest and it brought me to you, for you were in it.”
+
+She looked at him then and looked away proudly.
+
+“Your dream was false,” she said. “It should have been of Luaine who
+claimed your cattle, or Ota the queen, whose love gift you wear.”
+
+“By the Elements,” he began darkly, but she put out her hand.
+
+“I have no desire for speech with unholy men,” she said. “Priest
+and monk say you are that, and they have a name for it! They tell
+me you speak marriage for me, but I have a choice: If Geroid goes
+into sanctuary I also will go; I am going. The veiled women of
+Cluain-mac-noise will take me without dower. Your dream in the forest
+has no meaning to a veiled maid.”
+
+“It will have in another time,” he said in patience, for her voice
+had the sound of tears, and it made a strange ache in his heart. “I
+dreamed that you were in sorrow and that I was to offer you shelter.
+I did not know your sorrow but I turned and rode back to learn. From
+Fethna I learned.”
+
+“It is not your sorrow,” said Doirenn.
+
+“It may be, and we may live to know it,” Ruadan made answer, and
+strove to gentle his voice to her sadness, “for I dreamed I saw you
+in a very different place—away to the west and in hills I know and by
+a shore you never have seen.”
+
+“The west!” she whispered. “Geroid is there now, a stone cell in the
+mountains of the west!”
+
+“I did not see the cell. I saw you there at a shore I know, and
+Bronach the Lamentable was there—the wraith washing the shrouds of
+mortals. I woke in the night with that dream, and turned in the
+night to take the road here. To the people of my house Bronach does
+not come for naught. You were in that dream, it means a bond with our
+house, and I am here to keep that bond, and offer what I may.”
+
+Doirenn, by the arras, called Bevind and her father.
+
+“You told me of enchantments men make on maids when of evil mind,”
+she said. “The power Ruadan learned as a monk he would turn to much
+usage today. Was it by tales of dreams you witched the ring from a
+queen’s hand? And witched the Lady Luaine to the forest?”
+
+And then she laughed and went out and left them there. But when
+Bevind found her in her chamber she was weeping bitterly and would
+not tell them of the dream or the enchantment.
+
+And within seven days Fethna was glad of heart to take her to
+Cluain-mac-noise for the year of preparing a soul for the veil.
+Between her weeping for Geroid, and the raging of his own sons there
+was no peace for a quiet man in his own house.
+
+Thus it was that the golden tresses of Doirenn were covered by the
+white novice veil and she began life anew in the great school by the
+Sionan, famed for its learning from Gaul even to Egypt.
+
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+But the year of her preparation had not ended when Ruadan again rode
+to the dun of Fethna. He was hollow of eye, and his spent horses were
+glad of rest and fodder.
+
+“Is there aught of Doirenn na Marvan known to you?” he asked, and
+the sons of Fethna, who had taken wives and forgotten the golden maid
+who had flouted them, looked at Ruadan and laughed.
+
+“How is a man to know of a veiled maid?” one asked. “The walls are
+high and the fair ones are well guarded.”
+
+“I was on the south shores and I heard her voice; it was her voice,
+there is none other like that. It was her voice calling—a troubled
+voice.”
+
+“How could you hear a voice from the center of Erinn to the south
+shore?” they said, but Fethna looked in the fierce face of Ruadan and
+bade them be silent.
+
+“Your father Ferdiad had ‘the sight,’” he said, “but my thought has
+been that it did not come to you because the priests were down on
+you. They can take away power if they think of it! What is it you
+would do because of that calling?”
+
+“I would answer it,” said Ruadan. “No gate of a nun’s dwelling would
+open for me, but you have women about you. Take one and make a gift,
+and let me ride beside you. The call was coming to me and the gift I
+will provide. I will pledge them a book more fine than the one of my
+youth made for the abbot’s gift to Clonard. My hand has not lost its
+craft—I vow this thing!”
+
+There was much talk of which wife would go, and the dress to wear,
+and to carry, for Bevind had wed and gone north to Orielle. Also the
+best horses were to bring in, and food to prepare. Hours were wasted
+ere they started on the way.
+
+They would have been as well not starting, for soon they met people
+in fright and with awesome news.
+
+While Turgesius harried the south shore and strengthened the Danish
+holdings there, Queen Ota, the pagan priestess of terrible things,
+had won to the heart of Erinn by the Sionan. She and her brother,
+Amlaf, had a fleet on Lough Rea and Lough Boderg. A fort of theirs
+was over at Rinnduin and the lands were ravaged by them. A battle at
+Cluain-mac-noise had won the churches and monasteries for the queen.
+Monks and nuns were killed, and there was much burning of all houses
+of farmers or herders. Not a handful of thatch was left on a house
+for miles, and runners had been killed with spear and with arrow.
+
+It was too late for help. The warriors of Queen Ota were on the walls
+and in the towers of Cluain-mac-noise. They held the Sionan to north
+and south. It was not for nothing that the great night-sun with the
+tail of fire swept like a besom over the skies of Erinn that year.
+The young had fear on them, and the old went in secret ways to the
+high places of ancient druidcraft and made answering fires that help
+might come their way if the way of the saints failed them. Though
+bishop thundered from the altar, and monk prayed in the cell, yet
+fires did blaze where the temples of ancient faiths remained, but no
+prayer and no spell swept away Ota and her mate—or swept away that
+fiery trailing thing among the stars!
+
+There were those who called it the war warning of the Dane,
+and the worst of all the evils it announced was the sacking of
+Cluain-mac-noise, because great wealth of jeweled books and costly
+gifts was centered in that place.
+
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+“What of Doirenn who was fosterling of Fethna?” asked Ruadan of the
+fleeing host.
+
+“No one is knowing that. Ota likes not women about her except for
+labor to save her men. The young and strong may be taken overseas as
+slaves—no one can know that. West to the sea along the Sionan Ota
+has her swift oarmen as couriers to bring quick warnings, and a fort
+is there at Luimneach for all supplies, cattle and horses are held
+for her, and the people of the land only live by her mercy to harvest
+their own crops for her warriors. It is a sad time under the dreadful
+star for the people of Erinn.”
+
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Ruadan looked about the little huddled group, pale with horror of
+what had been, and in further dread of what might be: with one army
+of the foreigner on the south shore, and one in the very heart of the
+land, and the fearful star of danger sweeping the heavens! He took
+Fethna aside, and when they were alone he spoke as follows:
+
+“Go you back. This is not the game of an old man. Bid your sons keep
+silence as to the call I heard; I had too much of hill and valley to
+cover and have come too late. I will take my gille and go a day’s
+ride farther. I may learn somewhat.”
+
+“It is better not to go, and not to know,” said Fethna. “When I
+was younger than you they stole the maid I was to wed; their ships
+sailed out to sea and no word was ever coming back. What is there
+to do for one man against an army? What is there for you to do at
+Cluain-mac-noise? We can gather men and fight them out, but it will
+take time. While we are getting our clans and arms together they will
+have ravaged the land and sailed away.”
+
+“That is true,” said Ruadan. “Send your couriers to every point
+while I go on and see as I may. I will be back for a spear when the
+time comes, rest you easy on that.”
+
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+So, with his servant, he went on in deep thought and silence,
+striving to find ways to answer that call of Doirenn, who held him in
+bitter disdain.
+
+When half-mad wanderers were met, fleeing from the Danish scourge,
+and smoking ruins were seen afar, Ruadan halted in a grove of little
+oaks and washed in the stream and took more sightly apparel from the
+bag carried on the horse of the servant. A purple cloak from overseas
+he put on, and from the lining of a girdle he took a golden ring with
+a great red jewel of beauty, and set it on his hand.
+
+“From here you take the back road,” he said to his servant, “and if
+you would favor me, and the house in which your family had protection
+of spears, this is the time for the favor.”
+
+“Tell it and it is done,” said the man.
+
+“There may be half-Dane spies among these fleeing people. When they
+ask of me tell them I have made quarrel with my clan, and that the
+monks call me ‘God’s Dastard’ for putting off the robe and letting my
+hair grow as God meant it to.”
+
+“It is a hard thing you are asking,” said the servant, “for it is
+myself has had many a fight to deny your unfaith.”
+
+“I know that without words else I would not be trusting you. Say what
+you can to let them think I have cast off my own people to follow
+Queen Ota and her fortunes. There will be no need to say it to them,
+they will say it for you if they are given the hint. They will call
+me ‘pagan’ because I follow a pagan queen. And you can be sad and of
+downcast countenance, and say a prayer against evil for me. Never
+fear it will get to Ota herself before you get to your home.”
+
+“And where will I be waiting for you, Ruadan?”
+
+“In paradise, man, and good luck to you on the way! Go you back to
+Ardsolais. Tend the herds and wait what comes. It is not with chance
+our life is.”
+
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Then he mounted his horse and when his servant looked downcast at the
+parting, Ruadan tried to cheer him, and sang words of the hymn of
+Saint Colum for a journey.
+
+      _It is alone I am on the mountain,
+      O King Sun of the lucky road!
+      There is nothing to fear on that road!_
+
+      _If I had three score hundreds of armies
+      To defend the body
+      When the day of my death comes
+      There is no strong place to hold out against it._
+
+      _Whatever God has settled for a mortal
+      He will not leave the world until he meets it.
+      Although a high head goes looking for more
+      He will not get the size of a grain of it!_
+
+      _He that is spent may find death in a church
+      Or on an island of a lake he may find it;
+      He that has luck to his way
+      His life will be safe in the front of a battle!_
+
+
+      _It is alone I am in a wilderness,
+      O King Sun of the lucky road!
+      There is nothing to fear on that road!_
+
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Queen Ota, wife of Ragnor who was called Thor’s servant,
+Thorgille—“Turgesius” by the christian land—was a thing of strange
+beauty in her first sailings with the fleets. Flaxen straight hair
+of a child was hers—silken straight. Her face had a slim whiteness,
+and her eyes of amber were the eyes of a white cat. Men had fought
+and slain each other for love of her red mouth and her round breasts.
+Her raids were more fierce than the raids of Turgesius or Amlaf, her
+brother, for no chief but knew that valor might win for him more than
+his share of the spoil if his deeds were worthy her smile.
+
+But many sailings had been hers and much profit from Erinn, and none
+had been greater in one place than the spoils of Cluain-mac-noise, in
+the year of the Great Star, for princes of Gaul and Alba sent their
+sons to Cluain-mac-noise and had sent rich gifts with the sons, until
+the wealth at the great place of learning on the Sionan had become
+the wealth of kings.
+
+All that wealth of gold and silver vessels and jeweled censor
+chains, and crosses of golden wonder, were heaped on the floor of
+the strongest of the stone towers. With them were heaped the dreaded
+magic altar-books of Erinn, in jeweled cases. Neither church bell nor
+church cross was feared by the pagans of the north seas as the mystic
+writings of the books were feared—it was dark magic to them, and to
+be burned or drowned or buried on every raid.
+
+And Ota, wearied after the battle and sick of the smell of old
+blood—though the red of it fresh flowing from her opponents was sweet
+to her as red berries ripening for her in a garden—went within the
+dwelling from which Ronan, the abbot, had been dragged by her men. On
+a couch of furs over which broidered silk of altars had been spread,
+she rested herself and spoke wearily.
+
+“Let none enter here until my rest is come to me,” she said, and the
+wife of Amlaf, whose name was Gurtha, looked at her in wonder that
+she would confess to need of rest, for the hatred of growing age was
+with Ota always.
+
+“But Barolf, chief of your spear men, has been twice here for
+speech,” said Gurtha.
+
+“I am wearied of Barolf. When he comes tell him I take it ill that he
+troubles me today.”
+
+But a man stood in the doorway, broad of shoulder, his yellow hair
+reaching down to his gold-banded arms.
+
+“O Queen, how has Barolf wearied you?”
+
+She looked at him and the amber eyes narrowed to golden slits under
+the silken flax of her hair. He was a favorite of a year gone, who
+was daring much! He waited with folded arms—and Gurtha was watching!
+
+“Yours was the word to the men to burn the bodies where winds brought
+stench to me, which is weariness enough,” she said. “I am badly
+served when Ragnor is south and Amlaf in the north.”
+
+“Was it ill service when my men mowed down for you the clerics and
+guard of this place, and brought the wealth of it to your feet?” he
+asked. “No man of the blood of the queen has done her more service
+than that.”
+
+The queen looked at Gurtha who frowned darkly. Well she knew that
+Amlaf, her man, should be first of the chiefs, yet because of his own
+nature, was not. His sister, the queen, was the greater warrior.
+
+“Another time we will speak of the men of my blood,” said Ota, “but
+this day of weariness it is enough to say that fires of the dead must
+not be built in these days of summer. Illness is on me from that
+burning. Your men are strong to dig the earth. Let them dig.”
+
+“It will be done,” said Barolf, “for the hounds are now full.” He
+looked toward Gurtha, and his look spoke hope that she be sent away,
+but Ota the queen chose not to see the look.
+
+“That is well,” she said.
+
+“And the division of the spoils, O Queen?”
+
+“The time for that will be when Amlaf is with us for the counting.”
+
+“And that other in the tower,” he began, but she made him secret sign
+for silence, and he spoke no more.
+
+“When Amlaf is with us I will give you a feast and we will speak of
+all the things,” she said with less coldness, and at that there was
+nothing to do but go.
+
+“He is not of quiet mind,” said Gurtha darkly, and Ota laughed.
+
+“This victory makes him look long for the death of Ragnor, and his
+crown perhaps,” she said. “He forgets I have a brother to rule beside
+me in need.”
+
+“Yet he was high in your favor with the coming of May,” said Gurtha.
+
+“What of that? Springtime and summer bring different hunger. I am
+tired of huge white bodies and blue eyes, I would rest myself with
+other color.”
+
+“You had that other color on the south shore a year ago, and Ragnor
+had a knife ready,” warned Gurtha.
+
+“You lie. The man never was with me alone. But there was none like
+him! Wine-brown were his eyes, and his curls were shadows of night to
+nestle in.”
+
+“He has no kingdom, and no army to fight for a queen if he chose
+one,” said Gurtha. “He is only a noble of Deasmond who was once a
+monk in this place.”
+
+“In this place? That would be strange if it be true, but he looked
+not a monk to me.”
+
+“No. He was rebellious and cast off the robe, for some anger. They
+call him a name of their own—it means outlaw to their gods.”
+
+“And I let him go, not knowing that!” said Ota. “I would I had the
+year back—he should not go!”
+
+Gurtha went out and left her regretful over a year of coveted love
+with one man, after the many years of love with the men she had grown
+tired of.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+A day went by and the spoils were not divided. She carried the key
+of the treasure tower at her girdle, and walked among the ruins her
+fierce sea-wolves had made, and thought of wine-brown eyes and the
+searching smile of a man who had as a youth lived there by the Sionan
+in sanctuary.
+
+Kings and warriors had given her wealth of love and wealth of tribute
+but the love of an anchorite was a new thought. It charmed her as the
+song of a bird of spring after the nuts are ripe and the ferns past
+their greening. In a cell of stone she saw one white robe untouched
+by ruin, and bade it be sent to the palace of the abbot, now her
+place of rule.
+
+She laughed with it beside her on the couch of rich robes and silken
+broideries, and closed her eyes to fancy wine-brown eyes beside her.
+
+Then the impossible chanced to her, and gave her strange belief in
+her own powers in which her devotees believed, and in the power of
+the strange trailing star, called “the star of the Danes” in Erinn.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+For a runner from the south hills came to her with strange word, and
+she put secrecy on him, and told Barolf and told Gurtha that a strong
+ally of the nobles of the Irish was coming to swear fealty, and help
+in the conquest. One would bring two, and in time all Erinn would be
+ruled from the center by the children of Thor.
+
+Barolf secretly mocked, but the other men did not mock, for they
+had fought the Irish and would rather have them as comrades than as
+enemies.
+
+“Strain not your eyes looking,” Barolf laughed, and went up the river
+to the fort there of Rinnduin.
+
+For all that, they did climb on the walls, and did look toward the
+hills of Meath, and when afar they saw one horseman who rode steadily
+and without fear, their wonder was great, for he was tall and
+handsome and dark Irish, and no other Irish in that day was seeking
+alone any fort of the Danes.
+
+“Tell the stranger Ota sees no man of Erinn who comes without gauge,”
+said the queen, but she laughed and the robe she put on her was a
+robe of richness as if to greet a king of great armies.
+
+“O Queen, the man brings a gauge, and his word is that it was a key
+of all gates when you wore it.”
+
+“That is true,” said Ota, and looked at the ring he sent. “Give it
+to his hand in courtesy and lead him to me. It is still a key to all
+gates for Earl Ruadan.”
+
+Ruadan walked between lines of men with lifted spears until he
+reached her portal. Two of the elder chiefs entered with him, and
+Gurtha was there watching.
+
+“I come without bard to chant your praises or my wishes,” said
+Ruadan. “I come without men-at-arms or wealth or cattle. I bear no
+shield for battle, though I will take one at your hands. My own clan
+put shadow on my name because I cast off the robe of a monk. The
+priests add their word to my blame, and I will take service with you,
+Queen Ota of the ships, or I will go over to Gaul and fight there if
+you have no spear or no shield as a gift.”
+
+Ota looked on her head men, and saw that the words pleased them.
+
+“We will talk of that gift,” she said, and her smile was level and
+steady while the head men were there, and Gurtha was there.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+But when they were gone, it was not a gift of shield or spear she
+would give Ruadan for the enchantings of his wine-brown eyes. Ota had
+been Queen of Love always, and gave royally.
+
+“I brought you—I brought you here!” she whispered. “For a year I have
+wished it—and at last you have come to me! You shall be chief instead
+of Barolf who grows jealous. A knife from you to him in the dark and
+you shall head his fleet.”
+
+“Give me the knife,” said Ruadan.
+
+She laughed and kissed him.
+
+“So keen are you? O wine-brown eyes! O dark man of the red mouth!
+Shields and spears are in that corner, and tomorrow we will make
+choice. Tomorrow you shall see the spoils of our raid and choose a
+jewel gift from me.”
+
+“But the man who stands in my way to you?”
+
+“He is gone north in a boat at dawn and no one stands in your way to
+me. When he comes again, and Amlaf, my brother, comes, we divide the
+spoil, but this night is ours and tomorrow night may be ours. See? I
+hold a monk’s robe here in memory of you, and dreamed of dark eyes
+and kisses, and through the wilderness you brought them!”
+
+Gurtha lied for the queen to the men, but the men laughed, and knew.
+They were told that Ota promised a wine feast of welcome to the Irish
+earl, and that gladdened them, for they would get their share, and
+the wine of the cloisters was good.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+There was starlight and it pleased Ota to walk with Ruadan in the
+night. And the cell where he had once slept was where she would go.
+It was whole and in no ways injured. She kissed him there, and asked
+of his dreams there, and of the Lady Luaine and the song made of him
+a year agone—all things heard of him had been remembered by her.
+
+But he laughed and wound her long cloak of silk about her lest the
+river-damp do her hurt, and would not tell her the things she asked.
+
+“What difference does her beauty make when I left all others to
+follow you?” he asked. “There is only one queen.”
+
+The men on the walls saw them and made jests, for the trailing star
+left no darkness anywhere. None watched too closely; for their
+outposts were many and there was no enemy near for an uprising.
+
+“Tomorrow we look at the spoils in that tower there,” she said. “I
+would that Barolf be the one to tear the jeweled covers from the
+mystic book of Christ’s men before the books are burned. There is
+evil magic in them, and I want no black enchantment from them. We
+will have Barolf live long enough for that work of danger. But go
+he must. He has wish for the place of Amlaf, my brother, and it is
+making troubles.”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Ruadan looked up at the tower where a white face moved at the narrow
+slit in the stone wall—the face did not reach the height of a man.
+
+“You have a guard there besides the key at your girdle?” he asked,
+and she pressed his arm quickly.
+
+“Speak not of that before Gurtha,” she whispered. “It is a young
+thing with a golden mane I am hiding for Amlaf. There is no other
+place to keep her from the men, and from Gurtha’s knife. Amlaf sulked
+because of a girl he lost in his last raid—I need his help to get
+Barolf out of my path, and the girl is a fair bribe. I dare not send
+her to him. When he comes he can hide her in a boat and take her to
+the north if she pleases him. If she please him not, she can go with
+the others.”
+
+“And that is—where?”
+
+“I never ask about women unless I need them. There was a convent
+across the raised road, but I see no women there now, and hear
+none.” Then she held his arm with both her hands, and looked up at
+him in the dusk and laughed shortly. “The other men may follow their
+will in a raiding, and take their women as they choose, but you must
+take no maid to wife!”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+The sun was high in the morning when Ota the queen took her
+serving-man, who was her slave, and her new guest, of the Irish, to
+the tower of the spoils. The serving-man carried a dish of food and
+told Gurtha it was for a hound with a litter of wolf pups, but he did
+not pass the tower with the food.
+
+The outer door was unbarred, and the inner door unlocked with the
+queen’s key; a ladder was there, and the queen was helped up by
+Ruadan, his arm circling her for safety. The slave sent up the dish
+of food in a basket by a rope of grape vine.
+
+“There are ladders above and floors above, but the upper door is
+chained now because of the red bird caged here for Amlaf,” said the
+queen.
+
+By the narrow slit of the embrasure a girl stood as far from the
+opened door as she could get. She was flattened against the stones of
+the wall in terror, and clasped to her was a flat golden-brown book,
+and the gold of its cover was set with amber disks, and pearls of the
+sea.
+
+Ruadan of Ardsolais knew that book, for his own hand had wrought it
+and it was the writings of Mark the Saint, and the chapter in it was
+that of the sermon of the sea, and the great faith when the storm of
+the sea obeyed the Voice.
+
+The Abbot Ronan had asked it as a gift for Clonard, but Clonard had
+been sacked, and he saw again his lost handiwork.
+
+In a corner were many other books—great piles of vellum in their rich
+casings. And on and around them were chains of gold, and necklets of
+gems, woven armlets, and silver sandals, silver trappings of chariots
+and war horses were stacked with the rest, and women’s jewels in
+girdle or torque, or ring, beyond belief. The sun struck on the heap
+through an embrasure and set it all aglitter against the gray stone
+of the wall.
+
+“It speaks a brave hosting,” said Ruadan, and lifted the jeweled
+shrine in which a tiny bell of holiness tinkled. He never looked at
+the girl.
+
+“I will take all the bells for the decking of our steeds when I ride
+the forests with you,” said Ota the queen.
+
+“Nay, it will not be bells we will care to carry,” said Ruadan, and
+she laughed, well content, and emptied a leathern bag of altar jewels
+on the stone floor. A golden bell and a jeweled chalice were there,
+and a wondrous monstrance of gold all aglitter with ruby and amber
+and pale pearls. A censor of jeweled chains was there, and armlets
+and necklets thrust in among the vessels of holy use. Ota lifted from
+them a gorgeous necklet set with smoldering rubies.
+
+“This has been gift of some king of the far world,” she said, “and it
+goes well with the ring you had from me a year ago. I have brought
+you to choose a gift; choose the richest you can carry.”
+
+“My thought is that I could carry you if your long cloak would not
+tangle my feet on the ladder.”
+
+She laughed at that, and clasped the necklet on him and loosened the
+lacing of his garment that it might be hidden next his skin. Then she
+glanced at Doirenn, rigid and white against the wall.
+
+“Look at her face,” she said laughing. “If she has looks of such
+scorn at Amlaf he will not risk the knife of Gurtha for her!”
+
+“So good a sister should make a good wife,” said Ruadan; “few women
+would pick so much of beauty in a slave—unless for sale.”
+
+“Yes, I am good to my men,” agreed Ota. “They are strange children.
+They can be starved, and wounded, and beaten, but if they get their
+toys at the end of the raid their songs are only victory. Yet—” and
+she looked at Doirenn in thought and then turned to Ruadan, “think
+not because I would give such gift to a brother, or a husband, that
+I would allow one to a lover! So choose your gift from the spoils of
+kings, O Ruadan!”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+He laughed with her and fastened a great gold brooch in her sweeping
+cloak.
+
+“My choice is only a jewel for your wearing,” he said. “Are you ready
+to go down?”
+
+“I do not know,” said Ota the queen. “Why is that girl staring hate
+at us? Ruadan, I like it not. She holds that book of the altar magic
+and it may be she works a spell! Ruadan, could it be?” And she clung
+to him and stared at the hate in the eyes of Doirenn. “Why do you
+look frozen? You have life left you, and food and shelter. You were
+not counted among the women for whom lots were drawn. What rage is
+then yours?”
+
+“The grief is mine that in all that heap of jeweled sacrilege there
+is no thing of flint or of iron with edge for a maid of Erinn,” said
+Doirenn, and from the safe shelter of the arms of Ruadan, Ota gained
+courage again.
+
+“A knife might be there,” she ventured. “You have no task all these
+days but to search among this wealth of beauties until Amlaf comes
+and finds your beauty.”
+
+“There is no knife else only my body would be here for your mockings
+this day,” said Doirenn.
+
+“Your caged bird of beauty croaks like a battle crow,” said Ruadan
+and laughed. “There are friendlier places than this place. Come, O
+Queen!”
+
+“But that book she clasps? It is a thing for fear and why should she
+covet that when these jewels are in her reach? Art sure it could be
+no spell she works against us?”
+
+“No, it could not be. What does a stripling maid like that know of
+books? I risk your gift in wager that she knows not the readings.
+Give me the book.”
+
+Doirenn did not give it to him, but she shrank against the wall as he
+approached and let go of it. He turned the leaves and looked at her
+in scorn.
+
+“There—” he said, and thrust it again into her hand. He took her
+other hand roughly and placed her finger on certain lines of the open
+page. “There, O young nun of the books, read me that!”
+
+But she only looked at him in horror.
+
+“God’s worst dastard—you!” she said.
+
+“What does she mean?” asked Ota. “I need not save her for Amlaf. I
+can send her to the men if she does you ill. Was that a curse?”
+
+“No curse: it is only a name the monks called me when I learned I was
+not fit for endless pen work, and endless prayers. Come! The wild
+thing will not eat while she has us to stare at.”
+
+With tenderness he helped the queen down the wooden ladder and drew
+into place the stone slab of the floor.
+
+Doirenn gazed after him, wide-eyed, hopeless. He did not turn one
+look toward her.
+
+Her hand was still on the page where he had thrust it so roughly,
+and her eyes rested there, and then she sank down among the jeweled
+trophies and stared incredulous.
+
+For there in beauty equal to the jewels about her were the
+words—“_Why are ye so fearful? How is if that ye have no faith?_”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+The wine feast of Queen Ota was a victory feast for all. Gurtha was
+angered that it was given before Amlaf returned; neither had Barolf
+come. Early she went to her sleep, and said in going that if word
+should reach the ears of Ragnor that it was a wedding feast, she
+wanted not to be dragged forward for question!
+
+But Ragnor was far to the south, the wine of the monastery was old
+and was good, and Ota left the filling of her cup to Ruadan of
+Ardsolais of the far mountains.
+
+She whispered that his eyes worked magic without the brimming cup of
+gold he offered her, but he kissed the cup, and she emptied it, and
+talked her dreams of empire—and other dreams.
+
+When the feast was ended he broke jewels from the necklet to give her
+women as bribe, and himself bore the queen to her silken couch, and
+rested beside her until all was silence, and the last reveller of the
+night sunk in sleep.
+
+When the deep hour of the night had come, he took the key from the
+girdle of the queen—the cloak of hers, and the veil she wore in the
+sun, a dagger and a shield and spear he took from the place of arms,
+and the shoes of the queen he took.
+
+He listened to her breathing, and drew the dagger from its sheath. He
+knew the right thing to do, for one dagger thrust was small payment
+for the nuns of Cluain-mac-noise—but he thought of Doirenn and halted.
+
+With the queen living there could be only a jealous rage and a brief
+search for him and for the maid. But with the queen dead by his hand,
+there would be Thorgille and Amlaf and Barolf on the trail, and all
+her devoted men with hate for him and vengeance on the maid. Erinn
+might not be big enough to hide her in. Even from his own kinsmen he
+might get only curses and hounds on his track when they learned he
+had stolen away a maid of the cloisters. Another man might be given
+good thoughts for such stealing, but not Ruadan who had paid eric to
+Cairell, and had worn love gift of Ota.
+
+To no dun of a friend could he take her, else that house would be
+stormed and the place left waste. There was nothing for it but the
+caves of the hills until the fleet of Ota was gone from the waters of
+the Sionan.
+
+He thought of old forgotten sanctuaries of the early monks, if he
+could win south to the Skelligs and lay hidden, or reach to Arran, or
+hide in the grottoes of the loughs in Iar Connaught, carved ages ago
+by De Danaan magic!
+
+These thoughts were with him as he gathered swiftly the needed
+things, and took last reluctant look at Ota the queen to whom he
+should deal death. Grief was on him that it must not be done by his
+hand if he would save the scornful holy thing in the tower.
+
+So secure were all the guards of the outer walls, and the far points
+of vantage, that those of palace and cloister slept heavily and
+without care after the wine feast. It was not as an armed camp they
+rested, but a safe household.
+
+He kept to the shadow of the walls from point to point and reached
+the tower safely. No guard was there, and he unbolted the door below
+it in silence, and bolted it back of him in the darkness.
+
+The queen’s key served at top of the ladder and he felt that the girl
+was again crouched against the far wall.
+
+“Haste,” he whispered, “here are shoes and cloak. Take a leathern bag
+in which the spoils were carried and thrust the garments in that. We
+have muck and mire to wade through ere a boat is ours.”
+
+“Give me a knife that I may die here,” she made answer. “You are a
+greater thing of fear than the northmen.”
+
+“Geroid is waiting a call of safety; I am his voice,” he whispered.
+
+“Geroid!” and her voice was a flutter of hope. “I will trust his
+trust of you, if ... you give me a knife!”
+
+“It is here to your hand.”
+
+The dagger of the queen was passed to her in the darkness, ere she
+would take cloak, or shoes, or move a step toward the door.
+
+“Haste!” he whispered as he heard her empty the bag with a little
+click of metal on stone, “haste, for the night is brief.”
+
+She crept to the ladder but halted as his hand touched hers.
+
+“Put no touch on me,” she muttered. “If die I do, it will not be in
+handclasp with the queen’s lover.”
+
+At foot of the ladder he knelt and felt over the flagstone paving in
+the dark, and she heard heavy breathing as he worked fiercely among
+the rubbish and tossed aside sacks of grain stored there for siege.
+Then he found the stone for which he was searching and threw all his
+strength into his task.
+
+Doirenn felt a rush of damp air where she stood. It had the smell of
+the river in it.
+
+“The way is hard and narrow,” he whispered. “Also it is wet under
+foot. Give me the bag.”
+
+“No,” she said, “sacred things are in it: the holy book and jeweled
+chalice, not to be touched by God’s outlaw. I am strong, I can
+follow.”
+
+At first it was dry, then the dampness came, then the water, and she
+was wading near to the knees but wading toward the open. A tangle of
+vines and brush was to push through and she saw the glimmer of the
+Great Star on the still river.
+
+“Steady,” he said, and moved up a space where the small boats were
+moored. A guard slept in one and Ruadan stood, girdle deep, beside it.
+
+There was enough light to see the bare throat of the man, and strike
+true that no slightest cry go out on the night. He twitched once or
+twice and lay still forever.
+
+Ruadan unfastened the boat and guided it back to where Doirenn stood,
+fearful and alert.
+
+“Get in,” he whispered, and she did so, not noting the Dane until she
+stumbled and felt warm blood on her hand.
+
+“What is it?” she asked, but Ruadan climbed dripping into the boat
+and took up the oars, but did not answer.
+
+He dared not row, lest the dip of the oars be heard. They drifted
+in the darkness, making no more sound than an otter swimming in the
+night.
+
+Doirenn stared at the still thing by her feet, and thence to the
+still man of horror, who was perhaps her safety, and wrapping herself
+in the cloak, she drew close the sacred helps in which all her trust
+was.
+
+A late and fading moon came up over the forest as Ruadan used the
+oars for speed—they had passed the last fire of a river guard in
+safety.
+
+The weird light showed the staring open eyes of the dead man at her
+feet.
+
+“Dead and unshriven!” she gasped in horror, “and you with the soul
+stain of blood on you!”
+
+“It is the first of the men for whom Bronach was washing grave
+clothes in the dream I rode to tell you of a year ago,” said Ruadan.
+“I saw his face yesterday, and knew he was the man. When we come to
+the high reeds of a meadow brook we will hide him there until the
+crows find him. There will be others.”
+
+Until the edge of the day they bore the weight of the body ere a
+rushy place was reached where a boat could enter leaving no broken
+reeds near the sweep of the river. Far in, where a bog would hold the
+body, Ruadan stripped him of cloak and ax, and left him to the black
+earth.
+
+“You make not a prayer,” said Doirenn in horror, “though well you
+were taught the ways of prayer.”
+
+“It is yours to pray,” said Ruadan. “My knife did murder for you on
+him because you would not heed the warning I brought you from the
+mountains of the south a summer gone.”
+
+“It was enchantments you spoke, and not warning. The enchantments of
+men of evil are things to fear.”
+
+“Truth is truth—whether holy or unhallowed,” he said darkly.
+
+“Who is Bronach?” she asked after a long silence, while he sought
+other channel where the reeds would leave no trace as he swept again
+into the Sionan.
+
+“She is the washer of the ford. She washes in the land of souls the
+garments of men doomed to die. For my house to see her means death by
+us or for us. In a dream you stood beside her in my land.”
+
+“The priests forbid,” she began, but he stopped her with a gesture.
+
+“Talk me no priestcraft! Bronach is older than foreign priesthood in
+Erinn.”
+
+“If I held not a holy book close in my hands for soul help, I am
+thinking the sky would fall on us with all its stars for that saying,
+or the water of the Sionan run backward from the sea!”
+
+“It will do that in spite of your book,” he made answer, but she gave
+him no belief. She did not think the truth was with Ruadan at all.
+
+She watched him in dread and in disdain while he bent to the oars in
+the dawn. The boat skimmed the air like a bird under his tremendous
+strokes.
+
+“This is the time of the sun they will be searching,” he said. “One
+night is all we have in the lead of them, but many oarsmen has Ota
+the queen. Their course will be swift after they start the search.”
+
+No guards of the river or lake were stationed in the middle land
+between Cluain-mac-noise and Killaloe, for forest and meadow and
+island were stripped of Irish herdsmen and Irish homes along the
+Sionan. He toiled lustily, with the current in his favor, while the
+day was young and the way clear, knowing that cover must be found ere
+midday, and all other water journeys must be in the night.
+
+When a fair place of shelter came in their path he turned the boat to
+the mouth of a meadow brook and crept carefully over the black waters
+drained from bogs beyond.
+
+It was none too soon, for his breath was scarce even again from the
+labor until a man was seen by them leaning on a spear, moving swiftly
+west above the meadow reeds; his head was turned ever from side to
+side, searching.
+
+The boat and the oarsmen could not be seen because of the height of
+the swamp growths and the distance. But their swiftness was a wonder
+to view: it would be a good horse to be beating it.
+
+But they swept out of sight, and Ruadan knew the lough toward the sea
+was now a place of danger.
+
+“They have no trail, and that is a good help,” he said. “Now while
+the sun shines there is only the woods for us, and it may be berries
+or roots for food.”
+
+Far he went inland where the boat was lifted over shallows into a
+little still lough under shadow of the wood.
+
+“’Twill serve,” he said. “Nothing but the wild cattle may be coming,
+and it is a hiding place.”
+
+He left her to get out as she might and wade with wet feet in the
+sedgy marge. Her looks at him were ill and fearful, and she clutched
+to her the bag in which the sacred helps were borne.
+
+“I have no liking for this place,” she said, “and it will not be
+resting under birchtrees we will find Geroid.”
+
+Ruadan made no answer. The labor had been to the limit of strength.
+He drank of the cool water and cast himself on the turf. She frowned
+at the discourtesy.
+
+“Where is Geroid, O Queen’s Lover?” she asked. “It is to him I am
+going.”
+
+He looked long at her, darkly frowning. He had killed a man for her,
+and was risking life for her, yet she had no thought for a creature
+of earth, but thought only of that anchorite who had turned to prayer
+and a bed of stone, and would not look in her deep, seeking eyes.
+
+“By the Elements! It is to your Geroid you shall go,” he swore
+roughly. “My thought is that he is in his glory without you, but that
+is nothing. Though we circle Erinn to find the way to him, it is to
+Geroid you will go! Sorrow on the night you called for help and I was
+the fool to answer.”
+
+She let fall the leathern bag and sank down beside it—her eyes wide
+in wonder.
+
+“How are you knowing that—and you an evil man in an evil world? I
+did send the call. On my knees I made the prayer that holy Saint
+Kieran might help the call go out to some soul beyond the walls—and
+you—_you_—”
+
+“I heard it in my sleep and knew your voice though I had only heard
+it when weighted heavy with hate. Also I followed it.”
+
+She brooded over that long, and drew the book to her.
+
+“You followed Ota the queen,” she said at last, “and you fled in the
+night with her jewels on you lest her kinsmen return and spear you to
+the ground.”
+
+“You shall go to your Geroid,” he muttered, and got up and walked
+away.
+
+So wearied was she that she fell into sleep there in that warm hour
+when the wind and the bees and birds all swept drowsily through the
+low green branches. So thick were they that a dusk was on the turf,
+though beyond their shadow the yellow light of sun was a glory.
+
+It was beyond he had gone, and in her sleep she thought he had gone
+over some edge of the world where she could not find him. She woke
+with a moan of fear.
+
+She lay there thrilled by a sort of terror that she had wanted him—it
+was a thing she could not understand, and puzzling things angered
+her. That thought of evil enchantments of his would not go away.
+
+Then, while she framed a prayer against magic and druid spells, a
+sweet smell came to her, so close she thought it was part of a dream.
+
+But it was a better thing, for fresh sweet blackberries were heaped
+beside her, and a little apart Ruadan sat with his back to her,
+eating.
+
+She had not known how hungry she was until she tasted the melting
+sweetness of them, and then she determined that, on the rest of the
+way, she would pick her own berries—there was anger on her that she
+had not done it.
+
+As she moved away to look for more, he spoke.
+
+“You are not to go from this shadow,” he said. “Cattle are beyond,
+and a hut of a herder; we have far to go, and meat will be good to
+have. I am going in a circle till I come to them, that no track will
+seem to come from here, for this must be the hiding place of you.”
+
+“And if foreign men are there? If they take you—if I am lost alone in
+this place where you bring me?”
+
+“It is not in this place you will be lost. In the dream I saw you to
+the west, and that place is yet to find.”
+
+No more than that he said, and no look did he give to see if it was
+well or ill she liked it.
+
+She crept back to the birchtree shadow, and watched him go, and she
+held the book with its precious work and precious words close to her
+bosom, and was making prayers on it—the prayers of Phadraig the Saint
+against enchantments.
+
+With the eyes of her closed she went over the prayers and over them
+again, and the sun was in the very center of the sky. Two wood doves
+came close and spoke their loves sweetly in a rowan bush near, and
+listening to them was like listening to the silver string of the
+magic harp of the god of music, for the silver string has the wood
+music of sleep in it.
+
+The sun was low to the edge of the forest trees and was red as a
+signal fire of danger when she woke. The doves were flown away, and
+the world was very still about her.
+
+He had not come back, and she felt fear at the wide aloneness of the
+deep forest and the reedy marge of the wide lough; alone she could
+not make her way even to the flowing Sionan or Dearg below.
+
+She looked the way he had gone, and listened for faintest sound of
+his step until every droning bee set her heart to thump. When she
+could bear it no longer, she looked at her knife’s edge, tied the
+leathern bag of the sacred things to her girdle, and looking with
+care to all things by which the return way might be found, she ran
+with swift feet to the last point from which he had vanished in the
+green.
+
+No living thing was in sight, and she went on more slowly. There was
+a hill to climb, and from that height she had hope to see the cattle
+toward which he had gone. On the high point of the hill there was a
+circle of stones, and two with strange spiral carvings. These magic
+places of the old gods had curious legends in Meath, and she drew
+close to her the holy things of the altar as she stood in the shadow
+of the great stone to look westward over the plain.
+
+The herds were there, but they were only far moving specks, no more
+size to them than birds. But among them, or near them, she could see
+no man.
+
+But the hut of stone and timber at the edge of a wood she did see,
+and sat long in the shadow of the huge stone watching for a sign of
+any living thing—and no sign was there.
+
+Then she crept through fern and gorse at the edge of the land where
+the cattle fed, and dragged herself along the brink of a dark wooded
+glen, and the hut was at the wall of that glen, and the look from
+there was a wide look for the herding.
+
+A sound came to her, and her thought was that her heartbeat was
+loud in her ears from the fear of the still, strange place. And she
+crept more close and knew it was not her own heart, for it was a man
+breathing, and the breath was a rattle in the throat.
+
+Through a chink in the hut she could see the man, and him a stranger
+and a great dog dead near him. The man was stained with blood and
+was looking with no good looks at something her eyes could not see.
+
+He was reaching for a long knife with blood on it—far from him it had
+fallen—and there was a stagger to every movement he made, for great
+weakness was on him.
+
+Yet he watched one way whilst he crept to the knife and fell as if
+dying, yet roused himself to creep again a little ways.
+
+The blood of Doirenn went cold from that look of hate on him, and
+then blazed keen and hot to learn why the knife was coveted even in
+the face of death.
+
+With the dagger of Ota the queen unsheathed in her hand, she crept to
+the low door, and the low sun of the west pierced to the dark corner
+where Ruadan lay. She could see no movement of him, yet she knew he
+was not dead, for if it had been so, the foreign man would not reach
+thus for the knife, or creep, dying himself, on a wounded foe.
+
+She had no plan of attack, yet as he grasped the knife and lifted it
+over the body of Ruadan, she leaped through the door, and her dagger
+struck deep and true in the neck of the stranger.
+
+He gurgled, choked, and lay still.
+
+She crept back to the wall and sat there, wild-eyed and fearful. She
+had not meant to do the thing before her: to strike the knife from
+him had been her thought. But the right hand of her had done its own
+task despite any thought of hers.
+
+The lowering sun slanted over his dead face, filling her with horror
+at the moving shadows of it. Her teeth chattered with chill at the
+dead man and dog, and at the other man whose breath she saw lifting
+ever so little the lacings of his garment.
+
+It was that piteous little breath, no deeper than of a child in
+arms, by which she was urged at the last to draw near. She felt
+frozen, and the leathern bag with the sacred helps lay without the
+portal, but without that help, and in forgetfulness of prayer, she
+crept forward.
+
+He lay in a pool of blood, black and stiff. His shoulder bore a deep
+gash, and the red tide yet came faintly at each breath. A long slant
+of a blade had creased his brow and his face shone gray white where
+the dark smear had not touched it. It all seemed to have chanced a
+long time before.
+
+That thought coming to her, she went over where the dog lay and
+touched it; stiff it was and cold.... While she had slept in drowsy
+rest under the birchtree Ruadan had fought out a battle of fierceness
+with the huge foreign man and the dog stretched there as big as a
+calf. The two men had all but killed each other. Each had thought his
+enemy gone out of life ere he gave way to weakness or swoon, and the
+foreign man had wakened first.
+
+Terror went from her suddenly when the mystery of it went. There was
+left only a wounded man for her care, and she knelt beside him and
+loosened the lacings of his garment as she had seen the white fingers
+of the queen unlace it in the tower.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+The sun set, and the other suns rose ere he wakened to knowledge.
+Troubled phantoms of blood and death were with him in his weakness,
+and a strange presence he did not know.
+
+It was in a rosy dawn he wakened to know the walls, and how he had
+first found them, but the strange presence was like mist of the
+seafoam—ever about to take form in his mind, and ever fading again.
+
+And out of that fog of dreams and phantoms of carnage a vision of
+Paradise came to him.
+
+It was perhaps the slant of the sun through the mists of the morning
+by which the magical thing was wrought, but where the sun-kissed
+green had been seen through the portal, there was at once a glory of
+gold beyond any glory of saint told him in the teachings. He looked
+at her and thought of Brighde, the ever young, when bondmaid to her
+druid master, bearing cups and bowls of common things made holy by
+touch of her hands.
+
+For she stood there with the sun making a halo of her red-gold hair,
+and in her two hands was held a golden chalice of richest handicraft,
+set with the thirteen flashing stones of beauty.
+
+The chalice was brimming with foam of new milk, and when she saw his
+eyes, wide open, she stood silent, waiting, but the look in her eyes
+was the look of Brighde, ever the giver, the serving-maid to whom the
+angels sang.
+
+“You are a dream, and not truth,” he muttered. “You are Brighde the
+goddess; you are the fiery arrow of radiance in hearts of men; you
+are Love, and you are Knowledge. When the priests could not stamp you
+out, they made a saint of your name to hold the worship of you. You
+are the vision always beyond a soul—you are only a dream, and I could
+wish you truth.”
+
+“The warm milk is true as if in a wooden bowl instead of a golden
+chalice,” she said. “Two days it has been your food, and has served
+you fairly.”
+
+He drank it as a gift of God, and stared at her.
+
+“And it is a vision come true,” he said. “Two days? And I not alone
+here. There were others—a dog and a man I killed.”
+
+“They were dragged and rolled over the cliff of the glen. There was
+no other way,” she said.
+
+“And this?” he asked, pointing to the mass of soothing poultice on
+his shoulder.
+
+“It is anemone, a flower of healing. I but gathered it and bruised
+the leaves. The work of that was nothing. The only task of fear was
+to hold you from wandering. Too restless were you for the boat and
+the road of the Sionan.”
+
+“And you did it? I dreamed of your hands touching me; I thought it a
+dream of Brighde who was goddess and then saint.”
+
+He went asleep again almost as he spoke, for the weakness was yet on
+him.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+When he wakened his thoughts were more steady, and he asked if the
+golden chalice had been a thing of dreaming.
+
+“I took it from sacrilege in the tower,” she confessed. “It was the
+cup of sacrament, and not to be left to pagans if my life could give
+it guard.”
+
+He looked at her long, with thoughts of that day in the tower, and
+asked where her dagger was.
+
+“It is no longer with me—I have taken instead the one of the herder.”
+
+“The other had sharp slimness and value of gold and jeweled hilt.”
+
+“This, with the horn of a deer for handle, is a cleaner thing.”
+
+He thought she meant cleaner than a knife touched by the hand of Ota,
+and his well hand went up to his neck where the necklet rested—the
+gold of it had saved him a death stroke of the herder.
+
+“This necklet has served its task,” he said. “It can take its place
+with the other spoils saved by you.”
+
+“It has no place among them,” answered Doirenn coldly. “I saved only
+holy things from sacrilege.”
+
+And he saw by that he had said the wrong thing, for she was no longer
+the Brighde of tender service—she was a gold-crowned judge who looked
+down from a far height.
+
+He held in his memory the wordy condemnation of the priests, and of
+Ronan the abbot, but it was easier to endure their revilings than her
+frozen look when she remembered the love gift and caressings of Ota
+the queen.
+
+“It is to your Geroid you shall go,” he said, and looked at her
+darkly, and went out from the hut of the herder, though the blue of
+the sky and green of the turf were as one before his eyes because of
+the weakness on him.
+
+It was better to be in the woods alone with his tranced vision of
+Brighde, than to face the cold scorn of the maid who had seen the
+white hands of Ota on his throat.
+
+But despite the look, or the word of scorn for him, Doirenn was not
+at ease if he was long out of her sight. Never had she outgrown the
+fear of what she had felt at sight of the great dead dog and the
+dying foreign man crawling for the knife.
+
+There was trouble on her for the thing she had done, and no holy man
+anywhere to take her confession and lighten her mind. Prayer she
+could make, and did—but for the sending of an unshriven soul to God
+there was no comfort, and her thoughts had no sunshine.
+
+Sometimes there was terror on her because she could no longer judge
+Ruadan for the stark body at her feet in that first awesome night.
+From the rath of Fethna to the garden of the nuns at Cluain-mac-noise
+had been all the world known to her. Even in the raid of the Danes
+on her father’s house, when the black smoke of burnings had left her
+without roof of her own, or kindred of her own, she had been borne to
+safety before the battle.
+
+Of the foreign men who were pagans she thought no more than of
+wolves in a pack leaving death on their path, but for Ruadan, called
+evil, yet with knowledge of godly things, she could find no gentle
+excuse—until her own hand had the secret stain of blood on it!
+
+By that was she made kindred in evil to him, and the shining beauty
+of her was under shadow from the thought.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+As strength came back and the wound healed, he had curious looks at
+her, ever with the book of amber and pearl of sea on the cover. But
+when he spoke of it she frowned her reproof.
+
+“It is holy, and it is a safe charm to lead me out of the wilderness.”
+
+“Yet is it made by the hand of a man,” he said.
+
+“How should you be knowing that?” she asked. “It is knowledge not for
+sinful men. My own thought is that Saint Kieran sent an angel to do
+the words of this, it may be that a man made the cover.”
+
+“It may be,” he said. “May the charm of it lead you safely, for
+another night we leave this place. I am able. Even Dermot and Grania
+never hid so long on the way to happiness as we here.”
+
+“There is a difference,” she said, and she blazed a rose red at
+thought of Grania’s love.
+
+“There is,” he agreed. “Dermot had to his aid friends and gods.
+The pagan gods are driven out by christian bells and there is only
+the wilderness for us with that white cat on the trail. I must find
+hiding for you and leave you there and gather men of the west to
+serve as guard.”
+
+“I will not be left again,” she said. “To be left behind in darkling
+wood, or dreary cave, gives me more fear than to be on the way.”
+
+She drove in a young cow and braided a rope of vines to hold her for
+the killing that food might be theirs on the way, for their journey
+along the shores of Lough Dearg must be in the nights, and all
+movement in light of the sun was danger.
+
+With his one well hand and her two they managed the killing, but she
+turned away her head because the knife brought her thought of the
+dead foreign man under the cliff.
+
+Ruadan went through the russet fern and the berry vines seeking the
+silky inner bark of a dead tree for the spark of flint and steel, and
+when he found it he wandered on to the circle of stones to sharpen
+spear and knife on the ancient altar. When he made his way back he
+saw a strange thing, for the glen below the cliff was plain before
+him, and he stood very still as if fearing the ancient gods had heard
+his speech of their fading away. There was a glitter of gold and
+a jewel among the ferns below him, and it was not a place for the
+seeking of such wealth.
+
+He crept forward, and saw the dog and the man who lay face downward
+as he had been rolled from the cliff. And it was in the neck of the
+man the jeweled dagger had been thrust deep. The sun shone on it
+through a rift in the boughs above, and set it all aglitter.
+
+It was the knife of Doirenn, and so deep had it struck that it took
+a strong hand to draw it out. Away from there he cleansed it in the
+earth, and washed it all in a shadowed rill, and brooded over it in a
+maze of wonder.
+
+A woman of frankness like Ota the queen he could know the thoughts
+of. She said the thing she wanted and took it. If battle had to be
+waged to gain it, that battle she fought like a man and took her
+victory prize, or put her own foot on the neck of an enemy.
+
+But this thing of radiant scorn and icy piety who thrust her knife
+deep and went to prayer was a different breed. He would not have
+thought her hand strong enough for that stroke. The edge was turned
+where it grazed a bone.
+
+So he carried her secret—and with it the mystery of her.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+As they could, they went from the hut of hiding and went seaward
+in the nights through the great lough, and hid in forest or swamp
+meadows or inlands at dawn, until the churning, quick current was
+reached, and there the boat was hidden, and cooked meat stored with
+the altar jewels in the leathern bag, and they went afoot through
+dusk of the deep wood, or crept, hidden, through lush grasses of wide
+meadows.
+
+At times, afar off, they saw men with cattle on the hillsides, and
+a boat of courier speeding down the rapids. Once a warrior’s boat
+passed beneath a cliff where they lay hidden, and glittering shields
+were bright in the sun.
+
+“Look well,” said Ruadan, “for it is Amlaf, the prince, who is on
+your trail. A strong man is Amlaf, with king and queen for his
+kinsfolk. It may be he could make you queen of Erinn by a lucky turn,
+for Turgesius—which is Latin for Thorgille—has great tribute, is not
+young, and it is said by all that the threat in the night sky is the
+‘star of the enemy’; as it grows strong—will grow the strength of
+the Dane. If gods fight against it, where is the refuge of Erinn?”
+
+She looked as bidden, and the man in the boat was slender and tawny,
+with long tresses of pale silk waving in the soft air. Jeweled he was
+in great beauty, and his armor was of white bronze. The blue-green of
+his eyes was like the glint of his spear-heads, and the cloth of his
+garment was broidered with wires of pale gold.
+
+“He is as beautiful as your lover, the queen,” said Doirenn in scorn,
+“but not so strong. He will hold no strong star in the sky.”
+
+Ruadan looked at her in gloom at the mocking, and after a little he
+laughed.
+
+“That naming of her leaves no scar on me,” he said. “But ‘queen’s
+lover’ suits me ill.”
+
+“Is it so?” asked Doirenn staring after the warboat with its deft
+oarsman. “Then again are you kin to Dermot who was not the lover but
+the many times loved.”
+
+He took the mocking blackly enough.
+
+“Sorrow is mine that, like Dermot, I have no bread unbroken to leave
+on the road for them that trail us,” he said. “And you to your
+Geroid!”
+
+But she knew not the meaning of the words of broken bread, and he saw
+that, and the flame of his anger went out.
+
+“It is ill enough to pass time in rages when our time on this earth
+may be ending,” he said. “That man below is a strong prince with
+a strong army at the shore. Horses and cattle are theirs and one
+spearsman in every Irish house of Thomond. No one king of Erinn
+commands tribute today like to the tribute of Turgesius and of Ota.
+Their swarms are here like bees on honey, and no roof is ours for
+safety. The caves of Iar Connaught are safe if we can reach them,
+with your monk to aid. You may have your fill of life in a cloistered
+cell ere the day I can guard you to safety.”
+
+“And if—if Geroid is not to be found? And if all roads are closed?”
+
+“Geroid will be found if he is left alive. These hills were once
+hunting ground for me, and the cells of Senan’s men were known as my
+own mountains.”
+
+“And, if he is not left alive?”
+
+“Of that we will not speak. If Amlaf, or if Ota, trap us in their
+wide net, you will die first, so make your prayers.”
+
+She looked at him long, and the shadow on his face caused her wonder,
+for she had heard all evil of him but never that he was of faint
+heart.
+
+“Is it so far to your own domains?” she asked, and never before had
+she asked of home or kindred or life of his.
+
+“It is not far as the ravens fly, but my clan have their rages
+against me. After that judgment of cattle, not one would take spear
+for a maid I would hide on Ardsolais.”
+
+“It is said you have good will of Niall the king. How can the friend
+of a king be without help?”
+
+“The Lady Luaine is of the clan of his mother, and the grace of a
+king can grow cold.”
+
+“Like enough,” said Doirenn, “she told them of your enchantments.”
+
+“Like enough,” agreed Ruadan, and there was laughter in his eyes. “A
+woman must ever have ready some excuse of magic. Is it enchantment
+you are thinking?”
+
+“What else to think when you are dark and not handsome? Wives of
+men put jewels on you and follow where you go. How is that but by
+enchantings?”
+
+“How indeed?” asked Ruadan. “And since you are knowing that, it is
+a strange brave heart that is in you to drink from the same cup with
+me.”
+
+“The cup is holy and is to go with Geroid into sanctuary, and the
+book with me is holy. That is my strength.”
+
+“Since it is so I would ask concerning this godly Geroid to whose
+sanctity you would trust them. Since my life is too evil for your
+christian grace, what is the saintly enchantment of him, that a
+well-favored maid would cover herself with a veil because he chose to
+go walking out of her life?”
+
+“Enchantments are evil, and he was never evil,” said Doirenn. “He
+made beauteous verses and told me his love in them sweetly. He gave
+me kind kiss at parting, and only to God would he give himself rather
+than to me. No payer of cattle was he, and—no love of a pagan queen!”
+
+“It may be so,” said Ruadan. “And when was this high loving of his
+and of yours?”
+
+“There is no hurt to him in making speech of that,” she answered,
+“and it may bear its lesson to you. He had seven and ten years to his
+age, and three less to mine.”
+
+Ruadan stared, and then strove to seem grave, yet were his eyes full
+of laughter and she saw it.
+
+“Yet he could love and he did!” she made protest angrily. “Tablets
+were sent to me often and his verses on them told me that.”
+
+“Ay, his verses!” said Ruadan. “From the dull days of schooling he
+would have some fair thing to hear his calfloves, and you were the
+most gracious! Child, at that age I was writing verse to Venus and
+Brighde, and sad at heart for the ghost of fair Dierdre who loved so
+well! All the world is turned to love at that age—it is the schooling
+of hearts.”
+
+“I alone was his Venus and his Brighde and his Dierdre,” she said
+and drew back in proud anger at his jesting. “How could you, queen’s
+lover and God’s Dastard, read that lesson of loving, or know holiness
+of such writings?”
+
+Her anger was like a lash, and almost it whipped him into turning the
+pages of her holy book and show the writing of his own name there
+cunningly twined with the interlaced scrolls of the last page. But he
+knew it was not easy to believe that his other days had been filled
+by that beauty of line and color. It would be to her but another
+proof of enchantment if he should show it her, as he might.
+
+And he put aside the thought for another reason: it would take from
+her the only thing to which she trusted as a link with her saints.
+
+“Time is a good story-teller,” he said, and his smile was grim
+enough. “On a day to come you may know the weight of your words.
+Come, the hunter who seeks you is gone beyond sight, and we can cover
+much ground ere the dark comes down.”
+
+She obeyed him in silence—half shamed because of her anger and his
+quietness.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+She still bore the precious book, making prayer on it through all the
+terrible ways they trod, but he bore the leathern bag in which the
+food and cup and jewels were safe. It was strange to her, but after
+she had found him wounded and given him drink from the cup, she no
+longer thought so deeply of his evil repute, and since the herder
+went over the cliff with her dagger she felt less bitter for the
+other sins on his soul. But when she found herself thinking kindly of
+him as a human she grew angry with herself and went to her prayers.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+All of a day did Ruadan of Ardsolais and Doirenn na Marvan lay in
+hiding of the hills where the path to the high cell of Saint Senan
+could be seen through the branches. Far beyond was the smoke of the
+northmen’s fires, and footmen and men on horseback were seen to cross
+open spaces. One rider, on a steed of shining black, had much of
+glittering gear and waving flaxen hair—it was Amlaf.
+
+“He has had runners in these hills. See, they keep up their stride
+until report is made, when they fall anywhere for rest. It is well we
+hid long in the herder’s hut. Time was given them to make wide their
+search; it is over for this place, and that is well for us.”
+
+Yet, he watched long for slightest sign ere he crept through the tall
+fern and alder and young oak on the hillside. On the ancient path in
+the stone to the cell above he dared not venture until the turn of
+the hill was reached, and no human thing in sight.
+
+Like creeping wild things of the wilderness, they thus made their way
+beneath the leafy coat of green until the steep path was reached, and
+it in the gray stone cliff narrow and winding and curving the hill
+above the lough.
+
+Then Ruadan looked at her with the look of parting.
+
+“It is here I must hide you until I go up to that place,” he said.
+“You see the steepness and the danger. This is the place to wait
+where the leaves are thick.”
+
+Doirenn made appeal to go, but he would not hear. Then she kissed the
+cup from which they had drunk, and fastened close the leathern bag
+into which she had placed all sacred things but the book.
+
+“Take these holy things as warrant to a holy man,” she said, “lest
+evil come to you for intrusion on his pious thoughts.”
+
+“And it is not evil you are wishing me then?” he asked, and looked on
+her steadily, but her eyes turned elsewhere, and rose color flushed
+in her pale face.
+
+“I would not that you die in your sins,” she made answer, and his
+smile had weary bitterness as she spoke.
+
+“A hundred deaths of dread has a man died for you those summer days,”
+he said. “Yet that man breathes human breath. The sacred things I
+will bear as you bid, lest I could not carry them, and you also, on
+the second journey—if I find your saint waiting you!”
+
+“And if your footing should not prove sure, and if death should wait
+you on the rocks below?”
+
+He stood still above her, looking down where she knelt with the book
+against her breast.
+
+“Here is my answer to you,” he said, and tossed her his dagger. “That
+is the better part of Ruadan. Give the blade deep to drink if the
+eyes of Amlaf, or of Ota the queen, look on you again.”
+
+“And you?” she whispered, “it leaves you without a blade for danger.”
+
+“Not so, O Doirenn,” he said; “I have a dearer thing.” And he showed
+her the jeweled hilt of her blade of death.
+
+She went white and covered her face, and he moved carefully along the
+narrow ledge with his burden and shield and spear, up and up until
+he noted birds fly out from nests in the crannies far below. Then a
+sharp turn came in the rock, and the cell sanctified by holy men for
+two centuries was the end of the narrow way.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+A man knelt there by the stone trough which served as bed, and no
+other thing was there but a cauldron on dead ashes, and cup and bowl
+of wood. Some moss was heaped in a corner, and birds’ eggs were in
+the bowl.
+
+“God’s blessing on the home,” said Ruadan in courtesy, but the
+kneeling man whirled in terror.
+
+“Why have you come again? And why do you now speak in clear Latin and
+not before?” he asked, and his voice was high and shrill like that of
+an angry woman—much more like a woman even than was the deep voice of
+Doirenn.
+
+“I am come because that is my task,” said Ruadan. “If you are Geroid
+of Cluain-mac-noise, I have gift and message for you, and I am Ruadan
+of Ardsolais.”
+
+The monk cried out in horror, and waved him away.
+
+“Man of blood and traffic in evil!” he said. “Begone from this place
+of prayer. Twice come the Danes here in search, with tales of your
+murders, and your stealing of maids. If they find you here it will be
+evil to me. Get you gone!”
+
+“A man of blood I have been, and may be,” said Ruadan, looking in the
+pale, narrow face and the eyes of terror. “But I am also a keeper
+of sacred things, and it is your task as a man to help me in the
+guarding of them.”
+
+“You! You were the outcast—God’s Dastard—the youth of holy training
+who threw off the robe for temptings of the world,” said the monk,
+and he moved the width of the cell away and spread out his thin hands
+as a wall, lest Ruadan move a step nearer. “Go back to the world
+and bring not your evil here where holiness has lived—here, where
+in prayer I wait the crown of sanctity and the wings of angels in
+Paradise!”
+
+“I will go back when I have done my task. I bring here gold vessels
+of the altar that you may know my intent, and below a more precious
+thing waits for sanctuary—it is the maid they told you I stole
+away—it is Doirenn, daughter of Marvan. It is a body and soul to be
+saved by you, and by me.”
+
+But Geroid fell groveling beside the stone couch, waving his hands in
+wild protest.
+
+“Take your evils from this place,” he cried out. “Have I fought the
+demons of woman-temptings for naught? Seven times seven days in
+the spring of the year did I pray in water of ice to my armpits.
+Nine times nine prayers have I likewise made to that end, for youth
+is still on me! Is it from the King of Hell you are come to bring
+temptings of women who breed the evils of carnal loves?”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Ruadan stared at him as at a wild dog he would throttle, and then let
+fall the sack, looking at the wasted form and the wild eyes. He tried
+to see where her human youth of the verses was hidden behind the
+grievous mask, and could not.
+
+“I need teaching to tell me that love is of Hell,” he said. “In
+a swoon of half death in a forest I had a vision of love with
+a difference. It was a radiant love, bearing healing for human
+ills—yes-and it shrank not from soiled hands, or blood-stained hands,
+in the service—that was my vision. You, monk that you are, have had
+more than vision: As children, Doirenn and you have gone with clasped
+hands and no wall between you. She has heart-love for the remembering
+of that time and she has come the hard way for your help above all
+men. You look not so much to me, but the priests tell us you are made
+in God’s image. No god of a man can be a coward, and we may have
+enemies to overcome ere we get her to safety, but I am here to help,
+and that is my message.”
+
+“Go you hence with your sacrilege. Holiness does no battle,” said
+Geroid wildly. “Go you hence to your bloody wars for women and cattle
+and the things of the world. Leave me in peace with my God, and the
+saving of my soul.”
+
+Ruadan listened and laughed.
+
+“To save your own soul? By the Elements! I have belief in no man, and
+in no god of a man who hides in safe sanctuary when white innocence
+flees from the ravisher. To sanctuary here has come Doirenn who deems
+you holy. If you cast her out, she has only Ruadan as safety. And all
+Erinn can tell you Ruadan boasts no holiness.”
+
+“Get you gone! Your ways are bloody and fearful and your ways are
+evil.”
+
+“Not less evil than the weight of my hand on you if you hearken not,”
+said Ruadan darkly. “Two holy gifts have I borne to you through much
+danger, for the cell of a monk would seem best hiding place. One is
+this,” and he emptied on the floor of the cell the gold and gem-set
+things of the altar, “the other is a human soul in a fair body,
+which, O praying monk, is the holier thing for your shelter. This is
+the time for the choice of a man.”
+
+The monk lifted the jeweled chalice and gloated over the golden
+monstrance with each ray of the sun set in crimson and rose and
+yellow gem.
+
+“The man who wrought this work had help of the angels of God,” he
+whispered, and made the sacred sign as he lifted each treasure.
+
+“What of the handiwork of angels in the creation of the stray maid of
+warm life, and music of voice and eyes of pureness?” asked Ruadan.
+“Look at this hand of mine. It has been a craftman’s hand in the
+work you adore there; it has been a bloody hand in the work you hide
+from here, the work of the world! It is a strong hand and not yet a
+conquered hand. Yet it shakes, as my soul shakes at thought of that
+fair creation when God spoke Doirenn into this world of ours. Make
+your choice of the holier thing, O monk she deems holy! This is the
+time for your choice as a man—and by your choice and hers, Ruadan
+abides.”
+
+“Get you gone from holy ground with your sacrilege of creation
+and Hell’s vision of carnal loves!” screamed Geroid, and held the
+monstrance of red gold between his own body and Ruadan. “The things
+of holy altars I will hold at God’s will, but name no name of woman
+in the ears of God’s chosen—they drive out the music of angels’
+wings!”
+
+Then a cry came to them—the cry of a woman, and close, and Geroid
+fell on his knees in terror, and gathered close the glittering
+jewels, and Ruadan unslung the short spear from his back.
+
+“It is the time for the choice of a man,” he said, and sped as a cat
+along the narrow path to the turn where he had last looked down on
+her.
+
+But a man on a black stallion waited there instead, and the face was
+the face of Amlaf, brother of Ota the queen!
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+He looked up and laughed, and the thing he laughed at was Doirenn,
+who stood on the narrow ledge waiting Ruadan, and in her hand was his
+dagger.
+
+“You were so keen for his choosing that your heart could not wait
+that I save your feet this hardship?” said Ruadan, darkly mocking.
+
+And the monk in the cave, and the prince on the black stallion, were
+as far from them both as was fear, when she looked in his eyes.
+
+“I followed, O Ruadan, lest he do you harm for your life as a man of
+sin. And I listened, O Ruadan, that your dagger might in truth drink
+deep if you made me his portion—and you going elsewhere,” and his
+dagger was held with the book, in love, against her breast.
+
+“To my heart!” he said, and circled her with his arm, and she was
+borne along the path by him while his eyes searched below for glitter
+of spears or followers of the prince.
+
+Amlaf fitted an arrow to his bow and waited the turn where Ruadan
+would be fair target without hurt to the coveted maid of beauty.
+
+But the hand of Ruadan, thrilled by the love of her, was strong and
+steady. His spear had been sharpened at the altar place of the old
+gods, and the cast of it took Amlaf in the throat as he looked up
+laughing. After that he laughed no more on earth but went to his own
+Norse gods of the summer sailors.
+
+Ruadan stripped him of his warrior garb, and weighted the body with
+stone, and cast it in the waters of Lough Dearg, while Doirenn stood
+on the shore holding the quivering steed, alert at the presence of
+Death.
+
+Ruadan looked about him, and looked at the girl, whose face was a
+drooping flower, and whose hair was a golden veil.
+
+“Look up, O Doirenn,” said Ruadan, “for this is the end of the dream!
+This is the shore on which I saw you with Bronach—washer of raiment
+for the dead. Beyond this all is dark to me on the road.”
+
+“Not so,” she said. “We have walked together through the nights of
+the evil star, but now the light is ours.”
+
+He caught her to him, and kissed and mocked her.
+
+“This is all your prayers and your glittering book served you against
+enchantings,” he said.
+
+“They served me well,” she made answer staunchly. “In the sickness of
+the wound I prayed for your life. Here, where you left me, I prayed
+that Geroid might take into sanctuary the altar jewels but leave me
+free for always to walk with you.”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Among the Danes, that wood by Lough Dearg gained weird tales of Irish
+enchantings, and the reason was that Amlaf the prince had ridden
+along the marge for his pleasure one summer day, and never came again
+into the sight of mortals.
+
+Belief it was in these enchantings and in the powers of the mystic
+books of Christ’s men that went far to lead the invaders, also by
+this time weary of their raiding, back to their own shores.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Far north in Connaught a youth in dress of the northmen was seen
+with Ruadan riding a black steed with royal chains of silver in his
+furnishings. The cropped hair of the youth was the color of the sun,
+and Latin was his only speech. He was named Angus and called a prince
+of the foreigners, but heart-companion to Ruadan. Not while Ota and
+Turgesius held sway in Deasmond did Ruadan go south out of Connaught,
+or let the youth see the lands of the south.
+
+And when he went again into his own domain of Ardsolais a woman of
+mystery rode beside him, and for her radiance of beauty she was
+thought a fairy mistress such as men of olden time had met at some
+edge of the mortal world.
+
+He called her Brighde the Beautiful, and all the people were calling
+her that, and she was his wife, and the cattle of Ruadan stayed on
+his own hills after she came.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Because of the vanishing of Amlaf the prince no Danes climbed again
+to the cell of the solitary monk, and after the weakening of the
+Danes the stories of enchantment there went abroad far and wide,
+and it was a place to shun both day and night, and no one was
+remembering the young monk who, in that year of the fearful star of
+Turgesius, had climbed that hard way for holiness.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+But in after years, a strange harmless babbler appeared one day among
+a herd of cattle in Thomond, shouting to them of heavenly crowns and
+wings of angels.
+
+He had no clear speech to men, and was called the “Nameless” for the
+reason that no clan knew him, and he knew no mortal and no home.
+
+His dress was of skins, and his hair and beard were his only mantle
+to the middle. Neither in Gaelic nor in Latin could his life be
+learned, but no door was closed on him nor food denied him, for gods
+and saints were known to come under secret and lowly guise to the
+abodes of men.
+
+And on a fair day, after seven years, Doire, the childling of Ruadan,
+divided a cake with the Nameless on the green, and then led him, as a
+child with a new playmate, through all the garden and to the grianan
+where the wife of Ruadan sat with her maids and discoursed of the day
+when the master of Ardsolais would come again from the wars.
+
+All said, “God save you, and Mhoirre bless you,” to the visitor from
+the wilderness, and food was given and the child watched in wonder
+that a mortal could feed as the hounds fed.
+
+“The name of me is Doire, son of Ruadan, who is lord of the
+mountain,” said the boy. “You have eaten my cake and come in my gate;
+tell to me now whose son are you?”
+
+But the Nameless stared vacant and seeking, and made mutterings, and
+all they could hear from him was “Ruadan? Ruadan—Ruadan?”
+
+Then the wife of Ruadan, who was called Brighde the Beautiful, called
+to her son Doire, and whispered in his ear a secret saying, and the
+lad ran back and spoke.
+
+“May it be that you were once the son of Kineath? And that your name
+was once Geroid?”
+
+At which saying the Nameless stood up in fear as if for flight,
+and cried out, “Kineath—and Geroid—and Ruadan! Ruadan and she who
+was weighed in the balance with the jeweled chalice? Call you your
+druids, or your priests of wisdom, that I uncover the place of that
+hiding! Go you in haste ere the mist again covers the knowing!”
+
+In haste they did go—all the maids aflutter, and the wife of Ruadan
+sat in the shadow ordering all things, speaking no word aloud.
+
+And Fergus, her cleric, came in haste from the oratory, and made
+prayer, and hearkened, and the Nameless spoke in good Latin, and said:
+
+“Take with you this childling who lifted the mist from me. Go you
+to the cave in the mountain over the Lough of Dearg; to the cell of
+Senan the Saint find you the way; and in the stone trough of the bed
+there find you the jeweled chalice, and the golden treasures. They
+were the bribe of Hell to bring temptings of the world. Let them be
+weighed; let them be put in the scales against my name and my soul in
+the Day of days!”
+
+“Against whose name will I write it for that day?” asked Fergus, “and
+against whose soul?”
+
+But at the question the Nameless turned away and shook his head. The
+mist had again fallen, and he wandered again to the fields babbling
+of crowns and wings.
+
+“He is but a strange innocent,” said Fergus, “and has no likeness to
+owners of golden service and jeweled treasures. It would be as search
+for the many-colored palaces of the magical Danaans under the hills
+about us.”
+
+But the wife of Ruadan had a different thought.
+
+“What the search may uncover rests with God and Mhoirre,” she said.
+“But a sign has been sent to the son of Ruadan, and to him the honor
+will be if precious things or holy things are in that cell of a
+hermit. Take horses and take men, and take Doire, our son, to that
+place of the cliff on the shore of Dearg, and take well-cured skins
+and ink for the record and witness. Every jewel write you down as
+count is made, and every other thing of treasure. If it be that they
+are holy things of Senan the Saint, their blessings may descend upon
+another altar.”
+
+Thus it was done, and great glory went to the son of Ruadan, who
+uncovered the jeweled chalice, and wondrous other golden altar
+service buried under moss, and shells of eggs, and bones of animals.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Legends grew up about that finding, for after they were blest by
+the cleric that no evil thing might leave smirch on their beauty,
+they were placed with prayer in the oratory, and on the altar beside
+them was found in the morning a jeweled book of holiness, thick set
+with amber and pearl. No book had been found in the stone cell,
+and Fergus, the priest, had never before seen or heard of it. Many
+viewed it, and all thought it had, without doubt, belonged to Senan
+the Saint, and after two hundred years of death he had come back to
+gather together the things once precious to him on earth as a proof
+to pious souls.
+
+This was the thought of Fergus, who had a pride in the holy honors
+sent to the roof where he was sheltered.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+And when Ruadan came back victorious from battle with the Danes, it
+was Fergus who discoursed to him of a great church as their shrine.
+He made clear that the wife and son of Ruadan had strange gifts and
+powers of knowledge. If they were christian gifts it was well for
+their souls, but if the power was of pagan strength, then fastings
+and prayers should lift the last doubt. He reminded Ruadan that his
+own peace with the church was not yet accomplished, and that there
+were strange tales of how the mother of his son had ridden out of
+the wilderness on a black stallion and no clan and no country had
+been named for her claiming. The trappings of her steed were those
+of a king, and she wore coat of mail like a young warrior of the sea
+gods, riding out of the waves. No word to her confessor told of her
+life before that day, and there were times when the soul of Fergus
+was troubled over these mysteries, and was craving more altars to the
+saints at Ardsolais.
+
+“That is well enough,” said Ruadan. “She shall have a temple of her
+own fashion for the housing of her sacred things—women and priests
+have hunger for such. Guard you the souls by prayers in the temple,
+Fergus, and my spearman will guard the temple if our shields are
+lucky. That is the task of the man.”
+
+And with his wife, the Beautiful, in her bower, he laughed, and
+stroked her white shoulder, and mocked as was his wont.
+
+“Thus I pay for temples to guard your soul from enchantments,” he
+said, “for Fergus the priest finds you in a grievous way.”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+She mounted the black steed and rode beside Ruadan with Doire, their
+son, and sought a fair level on a green height where huge stone slabs
+stood upright with other slabs resting on them like high altars. It
+was the place of ancient fires and for that was called the Hill of
+Lights.
+
+“Here, by this circle, are the hearts of the people,” she said, “for
+at new moon they are coming, and at the rise of sun they are coming
+in certain summer days. Why build the new altar in another place?”
+
+She paced with her child the great space where the new temple would
+be built for sinners, and the eyes of Ruadan looked their love on
+her, and on the son she had borne him.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+And in the edge of the wild field where the forest came down from the
+mountains, the cattle lifted their heads as a man, hairy and clad in
+skins, strode among them with proud authority shouting to them of
+crowns and wings.
+
+“Whose is the voice?” asked Ruadan.
+
+And his “heart-companion” of the wilderness touched his shoulder and
+spoke low and awed.
+
+“That is the voice of the man who saw no holiness in battle to
+protect the helpless—it is the voice of the man who saw in love only
+the mating of beasts—and his reward is his.”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: LIADAN AND KURITHIR]
+
+[Illustration: The Dream of Kurithir]
+
+[Music]
+
+
+                         LIADAN AND KURITHIR
+
+      “_I am Liadan
+      Who loved Kurithir.
+      It is true as they say._
+
+      “_The music of the forest
+      Would sing to me when with Kurithir,
+      Together with the voice of the purple sea._”
+
+
+It was the time of Hugh Finnliath, Ard-Ri (High King) of Erinn, and
+glad youth of May lay on the land.
+
+The hawthorn was in bloom against the hills, and the cuckoo was
+calling as it flew in long billowy glides to its mate in the yew-tree
+nest.
+
+As the bird to its mate, went the gray eyes and the heart of Liadan
+na Donal, when she looked on Kurithir, the poet and friend of kings,
+in Far Connaught. Fair and gracious was he among the friends of her
+host, and fair and gracious was Flann Siona, prince of the Sionan,
+beside him as they greeted her, and greeted Aevil, her sister, who
+was beautiful as a night of stars.
+
+It was not the beauty of bronze-gold hair, or blue eyes of Kurithir,
+by which she was held, and it was not the beauty of raiment and the
+jeweled links of his garments, for the daughters of the Ui Maic of
+Far Kerry were not without grandeur in the castle of Donal, their
+father. Out of all the guests and the greetings, she knew not if
+Kurithir, son of Doborchū, bent head or knee more graciously than
+others. She knew only that his eyes looked deep, and looked steady,
+into her own, and that without words they bore to her a message.
+
+The message was strange because her heart leaped in her bosom to meet
+it, and that was a new thing in her life.
+
+And that message was this: “We have found the way to each other at
+last, and both of us knowing it!”
+
+Other eyes saw that look, and the wild-rose flush on her white
+throat, and Aevil, her half-sister, spoke bitter words when they were
+safe within their chamber, and there was present only the dark nurse
+of Aevil, whose name was Moria, and whose lore was deep in herbs and
+curious knowledge of druidcraft.
+
+“Know you not that as elder sister my day of marriage must pass
+before your day of courting?” raged Aevil. “For that reason I am
+making this circuit of visits to see the lands and the furnishings of
+our friends. It was in my charity that I brought you by me, and an
+ill day it was to me!”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Liadan sat by the window and looked down into the enclosed garden
+where a red rose tree and a white rose vine were twining against
+the stone wall, and she mode no reply, for her thoughts were all of
+Kurithir, and that look in his eyes, and she felt close to him as the
+white rose twining to the tree of the red bloom.
+
+But Moria talked much as she smoothed the black hair of Aevil, and
+vowed by the Elements that the beauty of Aevil exceeded by much all
+other beauty at the Dun of Dearg. And that the eyes of Flann, Ri
+Domna of Erinn, had not passed her by—nor had the other men.
+
+There was truth in this, for black and red and rich cream was the
+beauty of Aevil, and her pride was great because of her beauty to
+which all men did honor. Liadan had heard all her life that there was
+no beauty in Connaught to compare with Aevil who should, for beauty
+alone, be a queen, and Liadan was well content that the crown go to
+her sister so long as she had her harp and her garden, and now—two
+blue eyes for mirrors!
+
+But Aevil stormed and threw off the hand of Moria and would have no
+caressing of words.
+
+“Well you know there is one man spoke of here for my meeting, and
+that man is Kurithir the poet,” she said. “He is the man whose songs
+are sung by many, and my greeting was spoiled by a gray rat!”
+
+“Only my eyes are gray, sister,” said Liadan, “and if you like not my
+gray robe, it shall be put aside for our visit. What you choose shall
+be done; all is one to me.”
+
+For the song of joy was so strong in her heart that all the world was
+shining summer for her. Her slender gray-clad feet trod as on the
+clouds of heaven because of that look in his eyes. She donned a robe
+of green with a girdle of silver, and in the brown curls of her hair
+she fastened green jewels from oversea, and in the rush light of the
+great hall she slipped quiet as a moonbeam, but Flann and Kurithir,
+who were foster brothers and friends ever, left all others to bow
+before her.
+
+“We look for Maighdenmara in the old sea waves where the white foam
+is,” said Flann. “Men never hope to see her drive in a chariot from
+the forest.”
+
+Kurithir said nothing, but his eyes were on hers, and she liked that
+best, and dreamed of him sweetly that night on her maiden pillow.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+In the dawn Flann and Kurithir walked along the sea cliff and spoke
+as brothers in bond.
+
+“There are other maids and many for you, Flann. For me there is only
+this one and I loving her.”
+
+“You speak your heart and that is best, comrade. My eyes will look
+the other way, and her sister is a fair queen for any castle.”
+
+“I am thinking no castles,” said Kurithir, “I am thinking of a little
+house under the oaks where the thrushes sing, and where heart can
+hear heart away from sound of the steps of man. My harp I will take,
+and hers. The hands of her were like white lilies on the strings when
+she touched them last night. I could have knelt at her feet for joy
+that we have found each other.”
+
+“It is good to be you, Kurithir,” said Flann, who was a king’s son.
+“May you hear the thrushes sing.”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+And Kurithir went back at sunrise, and watched her window in the
+tower until her face looked down on him. Speak she dare not because
+of Aevil and Moria. Go to him she could not for the locked door and
+the key on the chain of Moria. But look at him with all her heart in
+her eyes she could and she did, and a white rose she let fall from
+her breast to his, and that was the first gift of Liadan and Kurithir.
+
+That day was fair with beauty, and all went riding gaily to a
+neighbor castle of friends, and gaily home at the setting of sun; but
+Aevil put Aillain, the son of her host, to ride with Liadan, under
+strict word that their visit would end if he heeded not her order—for
+Liadan must either be guarded, or sent home at the dawn; so Aevil
+rode with Kurithir and talked much with Flann, and was a sweet and
+gracious lady to charm all. But Liadan sat quiet, smiling ever like
+sun touching mist of the morning. Her heart was full of joy only to
+hear his voice, even though the words were to another—which is Love
+itself.
+
+And that night was a very poet’s night of a young moon and the scent
+of dew on the hawthorn, and under the tower Kurithir sang, and
+touched the harp, and this was his song:
+
+      Sweet-scented branch of silver
+      Abloom above me,
+      Lean low to love me!
+
+      Gray bird of harmonies
+      Honey voice, morning star,
+      Wake to love’s dreaming!
+
+His voice and the strings of the harp were whispers soft on the
+night, yet in her heart every whisper was held, and the fury of Aevil
+was as a storm seen afar in the valley. For Liadan was as snow on the
+mountain shining in the sun.
+
+When she left the locked door of her chamber, the dark woman, Moria,
+carried her shuttle and thread, or her tablet of white birch and the
+stylus, or the tiny harp of the six strings, but not apart the length
+of a spear did she walk, and she listening.
+
+But the love of Kurithir forced him to the speech of a man to his
+mate, and he spoke.
+
+“The song of the night was to you, Liadan, and all of me calls for
+you more strongly than song can be telling. Liadan, marriage is well
+for two singers who find the same song. It is by that choosing the
+bird of the forest seeks ever its own mate, for the song is the soul
+of the winged things. That is so of the birds and it is so of men,
+Liadan. Thus the nightingale holds his song pure in rapture, thus
+the children of us will sing our songs, and their own songs, in the
+future years, Liadan.”
+
+The soul of her moved to him that she trembled, but the dark woman,
+Moria, behind the arras, was ears for Aevil who walked the garden
+with Flann, and Liadan veiled her gray eyes lest he read them too
+well, and spoke in sweet courtesy.
+
+“Fair friend, it must be in the rath of my father I give troth to a
+man and not in another place,” she said. “That gate will be open to
+you on a day to come, and your singing will win you fair welcome when
+you are coming there.”
+
+“Your words are as snowfall at harvest time and the sheaves golden,”
+spoke Kurithir. “Your eyes make themselves shadows of gray and are
+veiling their sweetness. But I am servant of Liadan what day of days
+I may ride her way through the forests.”
+
+“The day may be long—the length of days rests in the heart itself,”
+said Liadan. “A far circle of visiting is pledged to the friends
+of our father. That circle must be closed ere we welcome poets or
+princes at the portal of our own castle.”
+
+“Honey mouth, the sweet coldness of you would freeze the red rose,
+and all its flame could not save life to it,” he said. “But within me
+is a deeper flame, and I wait my day, and I wait some sign from you
+for speech again.”
+
+But the bodkin of the dark woman touched the arm of Liadan through
+the arras as a warning against other words, and she spoke no more but
+bent her head over the harp as if alone, and Kurithir looked at her,
+pondering, and then called for his stallion, and rode alone and apart
+from the rest that day.
+
+But Liadan rode not at all lest the hand of another man touch her
+hand, or the hem of her garment, or offer her cup which another than
+Kurithir had kissed.
+
+But the harp of his in the hall was the only one she touched that
+day, and she wished that forbidden druid power could be hers to charm
+the strings into speech for his ear alone. With bodkin she traced one
+word in ogham on the harp frame, but Moria watching! More she feared
+to do, and her tablets of writing had been broken in the rage of
+Aevil.
+
+The dark woman told to Aevil all that discourse of the day, and Aevil
+laughed her victory.
+
+“Tomorrow’s sun takes us away from this place and this blind-eyed
+poet,” she said. “I have a secret to tell, for Flann has desire of
+me, and a king’s rath will yet be my abiding place. But I choose to
+be away from the roof of my father ere these poet songs again make
+night sleepless. My marriage comes before her betrothal. See you to
+that!”
+
+The dark woman promised and praised the maid Aevil, and had joy of
+the thought of Flann who was king’s son and of power to be.
+
+At the supper time, Aevil held up her square cup of mead and asked
+a good wish on the road for the morrow. Her journey of joy was a
+circle, and their chariot must start with the sun on the round.
+
+There were words of pleading from many, but Kurithir said no word,
+only stared at Liadan for a sign—and she there frozen with the grief
+on her!
+
+It was the first word she was given of the journey, but he could not
+be knowing that, and his pride was a cloak as he stood before her.
+
+“Sun-rise or sun-setting makes no change in me but to leave me in
+darkness,” he said, “and the servant of Liadan is ever her servant.”
+
+But Aevil laughed at his shoulder, and bade him not practice poet’s
+art for the sake of practice, for Liadan knew the light worth of a
+rhyme—and herself turned all things, from cock crow until moonrise,
+to such usage!
+
+Then she sent Liadan to her chamber on an empty errand, and laughed
+again at Kurithir, and watched him, and his face white.
+
+She knew that he felt hate for her, and would sing grief and disaster
+on her but for the bond of one father and sisterhood with Liadan.
+The dark woman plucked her by the sleeve and whispered warning lest
+he do that thing and shame her before Flann and the host. Aevil was
+green-jealous and was going far!
+
+But the laughter of her scarce touched him, for the reason that he
+saw only the face of Liadan who had gone past him, dumb and without
+word of courtesy, and she hard struck at the fear of great forest and
+wilderness between them.
+
+It was that fear made her bold to dare what she dared not do before
+the people. No tablet of writing could she send. No secret friend
+could she trust in the castle of the Dun of Dearg where Aevil bore
+casket of gifts for service rendered.
+
+But more quickly than Moria could follow, she sped to the enclosed
+garden where the red May rose bloomed against the south side of the
+wall, and close under her linen shift lay a blossom of it before the
+dark woman, with dark words, grasped her wrist, and drew her within
+the portal.
+
+“The fury of Donal your father will not be a summer storm to you if
+he hears of lovers of yours before the Lady Aevil has her right as a
+wife ahead of you,” she said. “The visits of honor are spoiled by the
+endless twanging of the fool’s harp, and of yours, and the end of it
+is coming!”
+
+Liadan knew there were dark words said of Moria in whispers by the
+people of the hills of Kerry. Her love for Aevil was a real love, but
+her hate was a thing to fear, and the soul of Liadan trembled, yet
+the thought of Kurithir brought back life to her, and she spoke.
+
+“With your hands you will not touch me again,” she said, “and this to
+your warning. As a child I mind me how, for curious reasons, you sang
+sleeps upon me at noontide. I saw strange things in the sleeps you
+sent me and some I remember. But I am not now a child and my life is
+a different thing to me. No will of yours shall be on me again, nor
+the will of any other mortal, save one only—and I loving that one.
+My duty to Donal, my father, and Aevil, my sister, will be paid in
+silence. But to the man who gives me heart-love there has been too
+much of silence, and the end of that is coming!”
+
+The dark woman looked at her sideways and said no word lest the maid
+grow wild and run shrieking, or do some other ill thing to shame
+them. For the words of Liadan told her it was a woman deep in love
+who spoke, and that at once both her body and mind were sacred to her
+as love’s offering on an altar.
+
+And Moria went from the chamber in fear of the wrath of Aevil if the
+lovers met, and in fear of other things! The key on the chain was
+forgot at her girdle, and it was the first time.
+
+At the foot of the turret stairs she remembered the key and would
+have turned back, but Aevil was there and heard her story and smiled.
+
+“Wait for the locking of the door,” she said, and frowned and
+thought. “Since she is turned rebel on our hands, and a dagger is
+forbid, we will try other ways, and ways will be found. Her poet is
+sick with love and mooning alone, yet far enough from the turret.
+Keep you ward, and send to me Aillain, son of our host. He mutters
+poems of hers instead of grace.”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+It was true Kurithir was alone, and a new thought with him for
+company. The next house of the visit of the sisters was that of a
+friend where a welcome for him was ever waiting. Yet at this time he
+would not ride there without a castle servant to ask his presence.
+But on white beech tablet he was writing that friend to send for him
+quickly, and his own servant was put on the road with it, while the
+others played chess, and took pawns, and looked love to women, and
+Aevil laughed, thinking that he wrote poems on dull tablets when he
+could find more human pleasures. Flann laughed when she laughed, and
+knew nothing of the heartache of his friend. After their words on the
+cliff there had been no more words between them of Liadan or of Aevil.
+
+Their laughter sat ill upon him, and he moved to a casement where
+he could see the window of the turret chamber, and perhaps a light
+there.
+
+No light was showing, but the soft note of the little harp was heard,
+and its sweetness was dear to him, for it was his own song of the
+night she had caught.
+
+“It is well Liadan is playing that,” said Aevil. “All the day she was
+making practice of it because you, Aillain, gave it praise.”
+
+“I?” said the youth Aillain, and stared, and his mother heard and
+laughed.
+
+“What does a manling do when music is made by fair lady to his
+liking?” she asked. “A gold-caged thrush would be fitting for a
+lady’s gift, or flowers for fragrance.”
+
+They made jests of him as at a lover they were training for love, and
+the eyes of the youth laughed also, yet he was courteous.
+
+“No less than my duty, and the gift, shall be offered,” he said. “The
+less garden bloom for the other ladies on the morrow.”
+
+Straightway he started for the garden in the dusk, glad to show grace
+to so fair a guest. The sky had primrose tints in it afar, and the
+golden curve of the moon was above dark ocean. Only one star shone
+high, and shadows fell thick where the hedges were, and where a great
+vine threw wide arms at the foot of the tower.
+
+A moment the boy paused to look up where the harp strings were softly
+touched, then there was silence, and a white hand reached far out,
+and a bit of fragrance touched his breast—it was a red rose, crushed
+where it had lain under the linen of her warm bosom.
+
+The youth was mazed and stood waiting with staring eyes. Was it a
+mocking the gay group would make because of his lack of years, and
+his height of a man? This was the reasonable thought, for he had a
+sweetly gay temper of his own, and was used to their baiting.
+
+But while he held the rose and listened for their laughter, something
+finer came to him: it was the hushed voice of Liadan singing. A very
+whisper of a song it was, and heard only by him, and by a man at the
+casement.
+
+      The mystic rose are you to me
+      In secret bower growing,
+      The grayling bird of grief am I
+              Not joyous taking wing!
+
+      One star for both above the sea—
+      The trysting star! A grayling
+      Lets fall a rose and breathes her sigh:
+              Not joyous taking wing!
+
+The voice ceased and the harp strings gave a wail as a heavy hand of
+discord crashed it. The boy could make nothing of that, and walked
+slowly into the dusk of the garden, intent as before on the gift of
+blossoms.
+
+It was a sweet song as she sung it, and a pleading one. He wondered
+as to the meaning of the mystic rose. It was a new word to him and he
+had an ear for words of beauty.
+
+Then there came swiftly the rush of a slender form into the garden’s
+dusk. Like a low-flying bird before a hawk she ran, for the dark
+woman was at the portal.
+
+“O rose of flame,” said Liadan sobbing, “that I should have given
+snow for your fragrance!”
+
+The tall youth, Aillain, had plucked a hand full of bloom, but stared
+at her strangeness, and drew back from her.
+
+“The roses are for your gift, fair Liadan,” he began courteously, but
+at his voice she moaned in terror and caught his shoulder.
+
+“O rose of brief bloom for me,” she said, and fell in whiteness at
+his feet. He bent to lift her, but the dark woman was first.
+
+“Silence is best for this,” she said to Aillain. “It is no new thing
+and I can bear her alone.”
+
+She was very strong, and Liadan lay in her arms like a broken flower,
+and thus she faced Kurithir at the portal; he was white as the maid,
+as he barred her way.
+
+“Tell me of this meaning,” he said, and Moria laughed as Aevil
+herself might have laughed.
+
+“You are a man and should know,” she said. “The boy is a new
+plaything and she broke the lock to keep tryst with him. You poets
+play over much at the love game, and oft choose your mates strangely.”
+
+“If you were a man my hand would send you to hell for that saying.”
+
+“Even that would not make her over, or change the heart of her,” said
+Moria. “Give way that I may put her back under lock ere her sister
+learns this newest shame.”
+
+He gave way, and paced like a chained thing the length of his leash
+under the wall where he could see the light of her window. He
+listened for her voice, but no sound came.
+
+Later he sought Aillain, but the youth had gone straight to Aevil in
+his amaze and fear, and she had cunningly bound him to silence, as if
+Liadan were some distraught creature ever to be guarded when the moon
+was new. To Flann, Kurithir could not speak.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+In the morning Liadan was dressed by Moria for the journey, listless
+and cold, staring.
+
+Aevil mocked her despair, and hummed the words of her trysting song.
+
+“Think you a man of pride waits for tryst with a maid so bold?” she
+asked. “The rose alone might have won a hearing, but men are fain to
+do their own wooing. Your song argued practice in love, so he walked
+away, O grayling, you!”
+
+Liadan took up the harp and broke the strings.
+
+“It will make songs for no other man,” she said. “So much for love’s
+practice on me!”
+
+Cold and white she sat for the braiding of the gold disks in her
+brown hair, and cold and white for the girdling of the gray robe,
+and the lacings of the gray shoes. After the breaking of the harp
+Aevil mocked no more, for there were guests and a host to face in the
+farewells, and it might prove a hard hour.
+
+But Liadan strangely bade farewells as a child is taught to do. There
+was a faint little smile on her lips, and she looked into faces as if
+scarce seeing, while the dark woman watched her curiously.
+
+“Her boast was that no will but his should lead her,” she said to
+Aevil. “Look you! Whose will leads her now?”
+
+“What thing have you done?” asked Aevil, “for his is the one face she
+does not lift her eyes for. What druid’s draught have you brewed for
+her?”
+
+“No draught,” said Moria. “She gave you fear when she broke the harp,
+and that was the time to give her the quiet. Look not fearful, a
+weakness is on her from these days, but weakness goes again in youth.”
+
+Liadan was seldom gay, and none but Kurithir and Flann noted her
+stillness. Neither spoke of it. And so she went away from them. And
+the music was stilled in Kurithir. His harp was laced in its cover of
+otter’s skin, and the message she had writ on it was hidden—to their
+sorrow!
+
+When word came from the friendly house that he was ever welcome
+there, but that the Lady Aevil, and her sister, the poet Liadan, had
+not come their road, he bade farewell to his friend Flann and took a
+boat for the sea.
+
+“The thrushes do not sing, even for poets, on the sea,” said Flann,
+and that was the first time he mentioned the dream of love of
+Kurithir.
+
+“There are no longer thrushes singing for me in the shadows, and no
+dreamhouse of love in any forest,” said Kurithir.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Straight south he steered and then east, through storm and stress
+seeking new ports, seeing new faces, hearing new songs but singing no
+more. Women looked on him with warm invitings in many a harbor, and
+one of sweet words and gray eyes sent him out into open seas against
+wind and tide.
+
+“Other men are not remembering like this,” he said. “Back of the
+look in every woman I see the look of Liadan, O lost gray bird of
+mine—Liadan—Liadan!”
+
+To say her name brought her before him strangely. He leaned forward
+in the dusk and brushed his hand over his eyes as if to clear vision.
+
+For there in the prow he saw—something! It was the faint gray shadow
+of a girl with a broken harp. The harp he could see very clearly, for
+the broken strings were black against the green-white foam.
+
+“Liadan,” he whispered, and moved to her, but white spray dashed
+between them and no other thing was there. And that was the first
+time she came.
+
+“She is dead,” he said, and the world was more empty for the thought,
+yet strangely enough, when sleep came she began to come very close
+to him, and very warm and very much alive.
+
+In the dusk of starlight he saw her, shadowy, with his earthly eyes
+again and again, and at times he thought the fragrance of hawthorn
+and roses of May was on the sea.
+
+“Is it the way of a madman I am going?” he asked himself, “for there
+can no more be fragrance of roses here than there can be songs of
+thrushes.”
+
+And that night in sleep he heard the thrushes! It was together they
+heard them—her hand in his, and she listening.
+
+And the words he said to her there were words he had never said to
+any woman in life. Her eyes shone on him like warm stars, and it was
+as if they had both been waiting always for the words and the hearing
+of them. And in the dream he sang to her, and she within his arms
+warm there. In the morning he remembered that song—and he remembered
+whispers of hers between the lines of it.
+
+      O Liadan!
+      O mist of honey fragrance!
+      Within my dreams,
+      You drift the night with me!
+
+      You are the star
+      Old sea reflects forever,
+      You are the grianan within my heart.
+
+      The white-breast bird are you,
+      The whitest rose,
+      The ever-singing harp of silver string.
+
+      You are my secret,
+      Breast unto my breast,
+      Until the lark shall call the sun,
+      O Liadan!
+
+It was the first time song had come to him since he sang under her
+window at Dun Dearg of the sea cliff, and all the call of his heart
+for her was wakened in new strength. He turned the boat and steered
+west and then north, and every twilight she sat in the prow faintly
+gray, and in every sleep his head rested on her warm bosom, and warm
+arms were holding him, and her face was bending over him with her
+eyes looking into the depths of his own.
+
+“Even though it be madness on me I will follow the way it leads,” he
+said. “I will go as bid to the rath of Donal, her father. I will put
+out of mind all else I saw or heard, for mystical things and deep
+things are sending fair winds to me at every turn of tide, and never
+a day but the seas are glittering fair like silver.”
+
+And it was so. Never a storm touched him after the night he saw her
+first.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+In the nights he smelled hawthorn and May roses over the dark sea,
+and there was one night when he was off Arran, and she sang to him,
+and in the morning he remembered her song as well as his—and this is
+what she was singing that night:
+
+      I dreamed of the yew tree,
+      Its sheltering shadow,
+      I dreamed of your arms!
+
+      I woke to the thrushes,
+      Their song was to nestlings,
+      And your arms about me!
+
+Then he felt her stir as a bird might stir against a mother-bird’s
+breast, and her kiss was on him, and in that kiss he smiled, fearing
+to open his eyes, fearing to lose the dream of her. But he whispered
+in a dream song:
+
+      My eyes are in shadow
+      But sun in my bosom,
+      My world—Liadan!
+
+      To dream true is—loving,
+      Gray eyes of enchantings,
+      Gray lark of sweet singing,
+      —Your music to me!
+
+Into the deep harbor of the cliffs he sailed on a fair morning, and
+men with shields and spears watched him as he climbed the heights,
+and Flann was first with the greeting.
+
+“The summer raiders of Lochlan came down the coast to wreck and
+plunder,” he said. “No roof is left of Castle Dearg; we drove them
+off and sunk half their fleet, but much evil was done by them. Our
+host and his people are dead, and Donal of Dun Conchinn is dead, and
+many other good men have gone the Way.”
+
+“It was to the rath of Donal I was going.”
+
+“It is a late day to be going; death has been there, and veiled women
+are there.”
+
+The heart of Kurithir went cold with fear to ask a question, and he
+did not ask it, but walked silent beside his friend until they stood
+under the portal of the tower where all now was blackened ruin from
+fire and stress.
+
+He looked up to the window and then mounted the stone steps to the
+chamber where once she had slept, and Flann in silence followed, for
+their hearts had been close-knit.
+
+The furnishings were gone and it was a desolate place.
+
+“Come away,” said Flann. “There is no profit to a man in seeking
+empty cages when the singer has flown.”
+
+But under the carved stone seat by the window, where no fire could
+touch it, there was a little harp with the strings broken. Kurithir
+knew that harp and every broken strand from the nights on the seas to
+the south.
+
+Flann took it up and looked at the frame where “Liadan” was set in
+silver wires deep in the dark wood; with the haft of his skean he
+scratched it until it shone bright.
+
+“It is true,” he said, “I thought it was a woman’s lie to mock me—but
+it is true.”
+
+“Who was the woman?” asked Kurithir.
+
+“It was Aevil,” said Flann, “and now with this before us, and Sun and
+Day, and Earth and Wind, to witness, I will speak you the truth. When
+you sailed south and gave no farewell to Liadan, who turned her eyes
+from you in parting, I rode to the rath of Donal and made offers for
+her as a wife. My promise to look another way was broke when you two
+parted and no pledge between broke.”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+There was silence for a while and only the eyes of Kurithir spoke.
+
+“It was all no use,” said Flann. “She would not say the word for all
+Donal’s anger. I know not what his words were to her—God knows! He
+was regretful for the words when dying and said it to me. But before
+that day he offered me Aevil instead, and ordered Liadan to the
+veiled women, and Aevil was a star of beauty, and was willing, and I
+took her.”
+
+“And what was the lie of this?” asked Kurithir, holding close the
+harp with the sweet name of her on the frame.
+
+“It was no lie. It was the truth. The harp was broke by Liadan that
+no love song should ever be made on it after her tryst song to
+you—and you walking away from it.”
+
+“There was no tryst song to me. The woman Moria carried Liadan from
+tryst with another—and mocked me that I was yet sick at heart for her
+love.”
+
+“There are dark things in this somewhere, and there are false things
+somewhere,” said Flann. “Aillain, the boy, is dead, and dark Moria is
+dead—it is late for the sifting of the wheat from the chaff.”
+
+“When were the deaths?”
+
+“He in the first raid, but she, sabbath a week since, together with
+Donal, before our bowmen reached his rath for succor.”
+
+Kurithir remembered that day, and when Flann would have gone on with
+speech of the fighting, and the retreat of the raiders to their
+ships, he held up his hand for silence.
+
+“That was the night she came to me on the sea, Flann,” he said, “and
+that is why I am here listening. Darkness is on my mind—a darkness
+and a fog, but this is true as the Sun: the way of these broken
+strings was never told to me, yet I knew that her harp was broken,
+for at the sabbath twilight a week since, Liadan sat at the prow of
+the boat with the broken harp in her hands, and the smell of the
+hawthorn was there following, ay, and the song of the thrush in the
+nights!”
+
+Flann peered at Kurithir in awe, and a swift chill touched him. When
+he spoke again it was with the soft gentleness as to a child.
+
+“And where was this happening, Kurithir?” he asked.
+
+“It was off the south coast, and I have been sailing straight to find
+her, night and day since that twilight,” said Kurithir. “Never was
+there such a sailing, for the wind was ever with us, and I had but to
+close my eyes to feel her near and to smell hawthorn and May roses.”
+
+Flann looked down into the garden where ashes and a fallen wall
+covered the rose vines.
+
+“The roses of May linger not for anyone through the harvest time,”
+he said. “Come Kurithir, what I can I will do to bring you to her in
+time.”
+
+Kurithir followed after and carried the broken harp, and said over to
+himself words of her tryst song which he knew now was meant only for
+him.
+
+“It will be in time,” he said. “No human thing can part us now, for
+our coming together on the sea had no mortal touch to it, yet we were
+as one soul. Since she lives nothing can change that. She is the soul
+of me.”
+
+“She lives,” said Flann.
+
+More than that he had no heart to say, but while food, and horse, and
+servant were made ready for the journey through the wilderness, Flann
+spoke apart to Ronan, his cleric and confessor, who had been with the
+men through the battles, and shrived them as they went the last Way.
+
+“Is it madness of the mind is on him, or is it some spell of magic
+that makes for him a vision far out at sea of that which is true on
+land?” asked Flann. “Is it evil, or is it good?”
+
+“It has been both. The words of druids and the words of saints are
+witness. It comes between a man and a maid. It comes not of earthly
+marriage but rather of separation of the mortal body. It comes of
+great strength and of much weakness. Saints have known it to the
+glory of God’s mysteries, but it is not for the telling to every
+asker of curious things. You have a kinsman in sanctuary who has
+the right to tell you more than I have right to know. The craft of
+idolatry, and the spells of druids, and power of saints, have one
+likeness to the eyes of the unlearned. Yet is there a difference, and
+a great differing, too! The mother of Liadan was of the race of Dana,
+and she went the Way at the birthing. Her child came into life with
+the sign on her of secret knowings. It is a thing of grief that she
+was bred in the rath of that dark woman of Slieve Mis who could use
+arts of her own on a child of secret vision.”
+
+“You mean dark Moria, the nurse?”
+
+“I mean Moria, the concubine of Donal, who went into death beside
+him. It is an old story and strange. The Dun of Donal is far enough
+in the wilderness to hide many secret things.”
+
+“You know that I have taken his daughter Aevil to wife,” said Flann
+darkly.
+
+“I do. You were swift about it, else I might have spoke caution.
+But the two are dead and God send that her evil died with her, and
+that your children live by God’s grace. Judge you not Kurithir with
+harshness because of his own words. The darkness is on his mind
+concerning this matter. Few of us see as God means us all to see in
+His own good time.”
+
+“God be with us till the Day,” said Flann.
+
+“By the Elements, and the Father and Son,” said Ronan.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+The raiders were gone from Connaught and the work of the chiefs was
+done there, and Flann rode south and told Kurithir he rode to fetch
+back his new wife Aevil, from Dun Conchinn, where death had been, and
+many shadows. And Kurithir scarce noted that Flann rode neither in
+state nor in joy. He rode silent and with dark thoughts, and with few
+servants or comfort.
+
+But he saw to it that none but himself held converse with his friend
+on the long south journey. And Kurithir went through the rivers and
+wilderness as he had sailed north over the sea, thrilled by the
+nearness of the sweet warm spirit of her.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+It was at rising of sun they reached the Dun of Conchinn, and saw
+marks of the siege on it, and it was Aevil who met them in the hall,
+vested in royal weaves and with a golden circlet of richness above
+the black braids where pearls were woven. Already she was wearing all
+gauds and trappings of queenship, and waiting jealously the day of
+the succession of Flann.
+
+She stared in dislike at his company.
+
+“Have you fallen to meaner estate that you ride home with none of the
+chiefs you led away?” she asked. “A servant and a horseman is small
+retinue for Flann.”
+
+“Greet my friend and send for your cleric,” said Flann. “I have
+questions to ask of this household.”
+
+“I give greeting to any friend of yours, O Flann,” she said, “but
+your words and your looks coming back with him are not those of
+Flann, the prince, who went away with his many men of the shields.”
+
+“If it is your will I will walk apart until granted welcome,” said
+Kurithir to Flann. “It is you who know best the desire of my heart
+and the way to it.”
+
+“We will find that way,” said Flann, “but the first thing must come
+first! Send your maids to their duties. I want only your cleric, and
+his tablets for writing. It is your own desires I make plans for. You
+will not be wanting the enviers of a princess around you this day of
+your days.”
+
+Kurithir was no less amazed than Aevil at the curious speech of
+Flann, or at his long curious stare at the cleric with his tablets
+and his scrivener.
+
+“Send your assistant out of the hall,” said Flann, and went on
+staring, first at the comfortable, round old man, and then at the
+queenly woman he had called a star of beauty.
+
+“Nealis of Desmond,” he said, “it is a long time you have been in the
+Dun of Donal, and it is much you have seen of the woman who died with
+Donal, and it may be much you had to know of her.”
+
+Nealis, the cleric, went the color of old wax, and looked at Aevil,
+and Aevil flamed red while her brows were a straight black line of
+rage.
+
+“What should he know?” she asked. “What should he know of my nurse
+and my friend? Why ask a man of the household and pass me by?”
+
+“I asked for an answer—and I am answered,” said Flann. “Fear not that
+you will be the one passed by! I will ask another question. Nealis,
+it is not the husband of Aevil who asks you this, it is the man who
+is Ri Domna of Erinn. Donal talked with you here when I offered
+marriage to his child, Liadan?”
+
+“That is true,” said the cleric, but his small eyes looked right and
+left like a trapped rat, fearing what the question might lead to.
+
+“And it was that time the word went out that Liadan was dying of a
+secret ailment?”
+
+Kurithir sprang to his feet, but Flann put out his hand in kindness.
+
+“She did not die,” he said. “It was a crooked plan but of her death
+there was no need, and the plan was changed.”
+
+He looked at Aevil, and the flame was gone from her face; she was
+gulping as if to strangle back some fury of protest.
+
+“You were her confessor—also the confessor of Moria. You surely heard
+things curious between the two.”
+
+“What should he hear more curious than other priests hear?” demanded
+Aevil after one look at his pallid face.
+
+“It is not your confession, Aevil, for which I ask,” said Flann, “so
+rest you easy. But it may be easier for Nealis to tell the thing
+here where there are few ears than in open shame before the king and
+before his spiritual superiors. Nealis, was it drug of herbs Moria
+of the hills gave to Liadan, or was it the deeper craft of a mind
+chained until life and death was all one to her?”
+
+“You are asking that which is not asked even by princes, and I would
+it were not asked,” said Nealis. But his voice shook and Aevil glared
+at him frowning, striving to make him meet her eye, which he would
+not.
+
+“The witch is dead,” continued Flann. “I ask nothing concerning sins
+of the living, but this thing I mean to know. It is not best to
+depend on the grace of a Ri Domna’s wife. There will be no queen of
+mine but by my will—and justice may come before my will, and before I
+come to a king’s seat.”
+
+“Is that gray rat to come between you and me even with your marriage
+gifts on me?” shrilled Aevil. “The High King may say something if you
+take two sisters to wife at the same time.”
+
+“The sisterhood will come later,” said Flann in great quietness, and
+at that Aevil choked, and the cleric looked at Flann.
+
+“It is little use to speak, since knowledge has somehow come your
+way,” he said. “I know of no drugs, but the Lady Liadan lived as in
+a trance when I was let see her. I was told it was a love sickness
+and that life was hateful. To me she said nothing but that she was a
+shamed maid, and that the man had sailed on the seas, and away from
+her.”
+
+“She sees no man but you. Is she growing more weak as the days go?”
+
+“No,” said the cleric with the first straight look, “she has slept
+well, and smiles now—and her maids no longer fear for her.”
+
+“When did this begin?”
+
+“It is strange to tell it, but the day of the battle with the
+Northmen was the day she changed. A swoon came on her, when the woman
+Moria died, but when she waked from it the trance look was gone. No
+fear of the battle touched her, so the women say. She is pale as a
+primrose, but she smiles again, and the maids now gossip that she
+sings in her sleep.”
+
+“You tell more than you know, and you tell it straight,” said Flann.
+“She had lived under the black shadow of Moria of Slieve Mis until
+the life was smothered by that curse. When Moria died the shadow
+passed. Do you see, Kurithir?”
+
+“I see and I know,” said Kurithir. “She was seeking me that first day
+of freedom, and found me at the nightfall.”
+
+Aevil looked her scorn for the words she did not understand, and her
+look was black at Nealis of Desmond.
+
+“There is one other thing,” said Flann. “The mother of Liadan was
+known, and her race was known since Erinn had a name to it. But who
+was the first wife of Donal of Dun Conchinn?”
+
+Aevil arose, trembling with rage, and her eyes glaring down at him.
+
+“Keep to your seat,” he said in the voice of a master. “I am to
+know these things and the reasons for them. A lady out of Spain was
+brought to these shores a bride in his youth, all are knowing that.
+But where is there some man or some woman to tell me when she died,
+and what of her children?”
+
+There was silence and the breathing of Aevil could be heard as she
+leaned forward, her eyes on the cleric, and her hand slipping into
+the folds of her robe.
+
+“I—I was not here at that time,” he said, stammering.
+
+“But you have seen records, you know?”
+
+“It—is true. I—”
+
+No more than that was said when Aevil leaped forward with a slender
+Spanish dagger crashing for his throat, but Flann was quick, and
+caught her arm. She struggled and fought, but he shook her as he
+would a rat and flung her to the floor, where she lay senseless.
+
+“The dagger is a dainty toy and useful,” he said. “It was perhaps for
+me she carried it.” Then he turned to the wounded and trembling man,
+“Go on, tell it as you meant to.”
+
+“She knows,” he said, looking down on Aevil in her rich robes and
+braided pearls. “The Spanish wife died, and died soon, without
+children. Moria was then what she always has been, full of one
+thought only, and that for her daughter here. Donal himself had fear
+of her, and made promises to her and kept them.
+
+“But when men looked on Liadan they did not forget her. She came
+before Aevil, despite the beauty of Aevil, and of that the troubles
+began, and many of them. It was jealousy first, and after that there
+is no knowing what it was, but it has brought terror, and it has
+brought grief to this roof.”
+
+“Write this as you have told it,” said Flann, “and call the maids to
+look after the daughter of Moria. See that a guard is at her chamber
+door, and no more toys like this to play with.”
+
+Then he turned to his friend.
+
+“There will be no shadow between you ever again,” he said. “You have
+been shown all the reasons.”
+
+“There can be no more shadows,” said Kurithir, and thought he spoke
+truly. He followed Flann through the hall, and to the grianan on the
+south wall; from there a troop of horsemen were seen lounging in the
+shadow, and four more with furnishings for women riders.
+
+“It looks a holiday for gay gallants,” said Kurithir, but Flann had
+no smile; he strode to the door and threw it open.
+
+The grianan was no longer the lightsome ladies’ chamber for
+broideries or games or music. An altar was there, and candles lit,
+and four nuns knelt where a priest recited a prayer, and their voices
+responded.
+
+One voice out of the others pierced the heart of Kurithir, and he
+broke from his friend and called out in love, but the priest stepped
+between, and the eldest nun threw a gray veil over the primrose face
+he knew.
+
+“Liadan!” he cried.
+
+“Kurithir!”
+
+She drew the veil aside, and the two lovers looked long at each
+other. But even with love in her eyes she put out her hand.
+
+“It is for life, Kurithir,” she said.
+
+“I have come for you!”
+
+“Flann, my brother, tell him!” she said.
+
+“I knew of this,” said Flann, “but had hope to outride the ending of
+it. This is why Aevil met us in queenly circlet and royal robes at
+sunrise to flaunt before Liadan a final magnificence.”
+
+“We are here to guard a new sister on the way to sanctuary of
+Clonfert,” said the priest. “From this day she has no life in the
+world. Men are her brothers, women her sisters. There are no other
+human bonds for her.”
+
+“But there are bonds not human, yet between two mortals,” said
+Kurithir. “I have gone through hell to learn that truly, and have
+sailed far over deep seas to bring the word to her.”
+
+“It cannot be said here,” said the priest. “You are doing sacrilege
+in your speech. You disturb the spirit of her on her path to
+Paradise. You to your confessor for penance, and abide by his ruling!”
+
+“Penance will I welcome for her sake,” said Kurithir, “and some
+brotherhood will I find to give right of converse with this, my
+friend. For that I will wear the robe and go into silence forever
+after.”
+
+Her eyes were on his as she passed out the portal between the two
+nuns, and the look in her eyes was the look of the nights on the sea.
+Yet there was question in that look, and a wistful question.
+
+Flann bade them farewell in the stead of Aevil, and watched them
+cross the plain into the forest.
+
+“The evil magic of Moria lives on, even though her body is dead,”
+he said. “It was she put into the head of Donal this business of
+sanctuary—and Aevil helped as she might, until this is the end.”
+
+Kurithir was silent, thrilled by that look, and dazed with the
+temptings to follow after, to take her and reach the sea and some
+land of foreign men, even though all the bells of Erinn rang their
+curses on him.
+
+“Did you mean that as to wearing the robe of a brotherhood?” asked
+Flann.
+
+“I would do more for one day of converse out of life with her,” said
+Kurithir.
+
+That night he abode with Flann, and when the late stars were going
+into the west, she came as on the sea and crept between his arms, and
+lay silent there.
+
+No songs were between them that night and no words. She rested like a
+tired bird after long wanderings, and in the morning he told Flann of
+how it was between them.
+
+“She will walk free in a walled garden,” he said. “Peace she has and
+no fear, and in the Dun of Conchinn she had many and strange fears,
+and of them she would speak to me, and not in dreams.”
+
+“I am believing your word,” said Flann. “No other man could, but I
+saw _the look_. In all of life I will see nothing again like that. My
+feet are on the earth, and my cares are of earthly things.”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+A runner from the castle of the kings came to Flann at the breaking
+of fast, and he opened the seals of the tablet, and read, and took
+Nealis the cleric, and went to the chamber of Aevil.
+
+“Daughter of Moria,” he said, “the dower of a daughter of Donal shall
+be your portion. It goes with you for gifts to whichever holy home of
+cloistered women you may choose from out all Erinn.”
+
+She crested her head like a dark serpent, and her eyes were points of
+jet with jeweled disks on the band above them.
+
+“My Spanish blade is not in my holding else there would be another
+man than you in line for the crown of Hugh,” she said. “You would
+wall me from the world that the grayling rhymer come to you at last.
+Late it is for that—and she under veil! All bells of church in Erinn
+would ring to damn you.”
+
+“Liadan is not in this, nor can be,” he said. “You go to a cloister
+for a dagger stroke to a churchman, with thought to silence his
+speech in death. You could be killed like a wolf for that, and no
+one to make further question. But Liadan wears the veil to pray for
+sinners, and she would not have wish that you die in such sin as you
+have known. You go also into cloister lest you bring to birth a thing
+of poison such as your mother bred. You are of the women who know
+lusts, but not love, and such should not be breeding.”
+
+“What then of the love of that grayling?” she asked in mock. “What is
+the thing it breeds in men?”
+
+“Its breeding will last while speech of Erinn lasts—and after!
+Liadan’s is the mystical soul. Aengus of the white birds is the
+priest to hear her confessings. His is the key to unlock gates for
+Liadan where your feet and my feet may not walk.”
+
+Then while she brooded there Flann turned to Nealis the cleric.
+
+“To you the records of this,” he said, “and let me not hear even
+the name of cloister she is choosing. It is the daughter of Moria
+who enters that silence, and is not the wife of Flann. See you to
+that—and your life and her life to answer if there is mis-writing in
+this rule of mine!”
+
+Aevil, glooming, took her last throw of the dice of fate.
+
+“To the ears of Hugh the king this may go on a day to be,” she said,
+“and he may make other ruling against an heir of his.”
+
+“The king of Erinn has no heir,” said Flann, “and when the time
+comes, it is a clean woman he will be choosing for the mother of
+heirs. That is a riddle for your reading.”
+
+But she read it quickly and stood up, and cried aloud.
+
+“He is dead then—dead at last! And _you_ are the king!”
+
+“Since the sun of yesterday went down, I am king,” said Flann. “I go
+now for the seat of the king, and the taking of the white rod.”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Aevil, daughter of the dark woman, took from her hair the gold
+circlet she was pleased of her pride to wear, and trampled it under
+foot in her rage at the thing she had coveted and had lost. She knew
+no record would be writ into the annals of Flann to show that when he
+was only a prince, and had gay journeys for his pleasure, he had ever
+taken to wife a daughter of Donal of Slieve Mis.
+
+But of Kurithir there were records, for there was grief on Erinn when
+he put aside the music of the world and took a monk’s robe for the
+cover of his youth.
+
+And the day of days came to him when he earned indulgence of his
+confessor, Cummine, son of Fiancha, to talk apart in the walled
+garden, and the converse to be of things spiritual with a noble
+woman, and a youth between them as was custom with mortals in
+sanctuary.
+
+And there Liadan came to him, and his hands touched hers after the
+long days.
+
+“O Heart of me,” she said, “twice have I made earthly tryst with
+Kurithir, and this time he is keeping it!”
+
+“And the May roses in bloom, and the thrush again singing,” he
+said. “Speak again, speak, Liadan! It is long we have whispered in
+the nights apart, and now you are in my touch, and I would hear your
+living voice, Liadan.”
+
+“Kurithir, Kurithir, Kurithir!” she said. “There has been no music
+like your name written in my heart.”
+
+“Your harp is with me. I mended the strings, and the wind plays on
+them in the nights in my window, Liadan.”
+
+“I know,” she said, “and I wrote ‘love’ in _ogham_ on the frame of
+your harp, and you only found it there when you came back from the
+sea.”
+
+“That is true,” he said, “and you knowing it! You are in the likeness
+of a flower, Liadan, yet are you strong as mortals are not strong,
+and you found strong ways to come to me over ocean.”
+
+“I was dying that time, Kurithir, and the death shadow was on me for
+the shame that you thought my tryst song of evil boldness. The dark
+woman had sent me in sleeps to vision for her the unseen things, and
+when her bonds on me were loosed, your bonds drew me, and I found the
+way to you. You were the stronger then, Kurithir.”
+
+“Liadan! Liadan! We have only this day.”
+
+“Kurithir, we have all the days forever, Kurithir!”
+
+The sun went behind the world, and the birds called to each their
+vesper song, and the moon of May grew warm through the dusk, and the
+youth walked in the shadows while Liadan lay in the arms of Kurithir.
+Their litanies of love were murmured there, and ever the wonder that
+their souls had found the way of meeting.
+
+“You were the mystic rose, O Kurithir. The fragrance led me through
+the deep to you.”
+
+“Oh, sweetest bloom! There was no fragrance on the sea till you were
+bringing it.”
+
+“You heard the music, too, O Kurithir?”
+
+“With my lips on your rose-leaf body I was hearing it all the nights.
+You brought it there.”
+
+“It was like this—the clasp thrill of your hand.”
+
+“It was like this—the yearning of my mouth.”
+
+“Sweet dream—O Kurithir!”
+
+“It was like this—O Liadan!”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+The moon went down, and the stars of dawn broke on the world, and a
+veiled woman who had once dreamed of Erinn’s crown stood watching two
+sleeping lovers in the convent garden. A youth crept from the shadows
+at sound of her step, and lifted the discarded veil of Liadan.
+
+He spoke, and the lovers wakened and smiled at the waking, and at
+the dear closeness of the other, but Liadan cowered in the arms of
+Kurithir at glimpse of the mocking eyes of the watching woman.
+
+“Is it even to a cloistered garden that Aengus, god of Youth Dreams,
+brings you the key for soul mysteries, O Liadan of Kurithir?” she
+asked.
+
+“The Liadan of Kurithir is a new name to me and a proud one, sister.
+Shadow there may be on it, but no shame.”
+
+“By the Elements, you dare it well, grayling, and well your lover! It
+may be the prior and the abbess can give vouchings for you.”
+
+Cummine came to them there at the bidding of Aevil, and shouted holy
+wrath at sight of the veil of Liadan.
+
+“It was not told me that a veiled woman was the friend he would
+converse with in this sanctuary,” he said. “This is a shame beyond
+words to both our houses—and beyond penance.”
+
+“I could kill you here, Liadan, before their hands touch your sweet
+body, Liadan,” whispered her lover. But she shook her head and took
+her veil from the youth.
+
+“In that way we might lose each other in some dread darkness,
+Kurithir,” she said. “But now we will never lose each other. Give me
+sweet farewell, O Kurithir.”
+
+“Liadan—O Liadan!”
+
+“Kurithir!”
+
+They bound him there and took him away for slow torturings and
+penance in a stone cell of the “Solitary Ones” on whom silence is put
+forever.
+
+They stripped her in shame that she might walk in only her
+winding-sheet of the grave, and that walk was nightly, and her
+slender bare feet on the rough stones to the place of tombs. Before
+all the line of cloistered women she walked thus until the stones of
+the way were red from her bleeding feet.
+
+After that they took her to a stone cell at the edge of the forest
+where holy women might not soil their eyes on her. Only her confessor
+and a poor lay sister came to her window there. She was under penance
+of silence, and writing-tablets were hers for speech.
+
+She wrote prayers on the tablets, and she wrote confessions. There
+were times when she wrote poems.
+
+The years left no trace of age on her—she was ever the primrose face
+of May. Marvels grew up around her because of that—and because of
+other mysteries.
+
+At a time when the Danish raiders were stealing up the Sionan to the
+heart of the land, Kurithir wrote the number of their vessels and the
+number of their shields ere they had fared as far as Killaloe from
+the sea. When questioned, and told to speak, he asked that Flann,
+king of Erinn, be sent a warning and gather shields, for Liadan, of
+the cell in the forest, had seen them coming, and asked him in the
+night to send word to Flann the king.
+
+When the men of Flann took the battle path and proved the truth of
+it by a battle with the foreigners, and brought back slaves and many
+spears, Flann himself rode to Clonfert and talked with the abbot
+there, and silence was lifted from Liadan and from Kurithir.
+
+The son of a dead prince of Tormond was being disciplined at that
+time for the reason that he wished to revoke the gift of his life to
+the cloisters. The gift had been made by his kindred when he was a
+child, and was not binding on his soul. He had been with the spearmen
+for the defense against the Danes, and there was a wound in his
+shoulder, and he talked as prince to prince with King Flann.
+
+“Since my days of a child I have lived this life, and the schools of
+it delight me,” he said. “I have joy in the work of the annals and
+their making. I may come back in gladness to cloisters when the snow
+is on my hair, but they call me ‘God’s Dastard’ for the reason that I
+would walk free into the world in my youth to win what youth may win.”
+
+“It was not always so with him,” said his confessor darkly. “There
+was a time indeed when he was quite content.”
+
+“Yes, when I was a child,” said the soldier-monk, but his face went
+white and he looked elsewhere.
+
+“Come, tell me of it,” said Flann, and walked away with him.
+
+“You are a man and not a monk, Flann, and I can speak. I was a child
+here—it is not so long ago. I saw the love-night of Liadan and
+Kurithir.”
+
+Flann looked at him and the tears were thick in his eyes for the
+penance done for that one night of a May moon.
+
+“Then you saw that which was holy, for there was no evil ever in
+the soul of Liadan,” he said. “You will come to my castle and make
+books as you will, or range free where you will. I heard of the hard
+penance given to that lad to force his speech of that night.”
+
+“The scourgings were given, and were heavy,” said the youth, “but the
+speech they did not get.”
+
+Flann took the youth away with him and later placed him back at the
+head of the province where his jealous kindred were dividing his
+goods and his lands.
+
+So, by this and by that, Flann left trace of the heart-faith he gave
+to Liadan, and to his friend who had the love of her.
+
+He lived as a king lives, and took to wife Maelmara, the queen of
+Hugh Finnlaith, who had no knowings of druid power or of jealous
+loves, and children grew around them to strengthen their bond.
+
+But when the Night of nights was come to Liadan and Kurithir, and
+their souls met at last tryst, and did not come again to either body,
+it was Flann the king who did them honor. It was by his will that the
+building of their tomb was at the cell of Liadan in the edge of the
+forest where the thrushes sang.
+
+It was also Flann the king who had their poems of love writ on fine
+vellum, and set in a golden, gem-crested casket, that the memory of
+Liadan might live.
+
+But in the wreckage made by wars and plunderings of the men of
+Lochland the treasure books and annals of beauty were wrested from
+many a castle and monastery, and stripped of their cases of silver,
+and pale gold, and copper into which jewels were craftily set. Among
+such plunder of priceless worth fell the royal gifts of Flann the
+king, whose memorial slab at Cluain-mac-noise is a wonder of beauty
+after the passing of a thousand years.
+
+And of the veiled poet-maid whose soul he saw rightly, there has come
+down through the centuries only fragments of her love lines, and
+among them her wistful unashamed confession:
+
+      “_I am Liadan
+      Who loved Kurithir,
+      It is true as they say._”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: DERVAIL NAN CIAR]
+
+[Illustration: March of Battles]
+
+[Music: _Eleventh Century._]
+
+
+                          DERVAIL NAN CIAR
+
+                       (Dervail of the Shadow)
+
+
+Ardan, the fosterling of Donough O’Carroll, King of Orielle, watched
+with longing the carving of the stone as leaf, and bud, and traceries
+grew under the precious tools of Brother Cormac for the new temple to
+God and Mary.
+
+“To me the doing of that work would be dearer than to wear robe and
+circlet of the king,” he said.
+
+“The cowl of a monk to you if cold stone contents your youth,” said
+Cormac. “Hard and cold it is. The crown of a king means warm robes,
+and warm cherishing on snowy nights, and—and all the other comforts
+a king can command. Go you to your verse-making and folly. Your head
+is o’er soft if you would trade a king’s crown for a mason’s tool—and
+neither crown nor trowel yours for the trading!”
+
+“But to dream beauty and then form it out of the stone—that is to be
+as one of the _Daoine sidhe_” (Gods of the earth).
+
+“You will burn in hell if you believe in the pagan ancient gods; not
+even must their names be said. To make speech of them calls them
+near.”
+
+Then Cormac crossed himself, and muttered a bit of the lorica of
+Phadraig the Saint, and looked at the lad whose face had a pale dark
+beauty, and whose gray eyes looked black under heavy lashes.
+
+“Take clay and make your dreams,” said Cormac at last. “If well mixed
+the mud will take all shapes. What are we all but the dust of the
+earth?”
+
+“It is not in mud I see dreams,” said Ardan, “but you give me a
+thought, O Cormac!”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+The white snow of the past night lay, rose-tinted, under the path of
+the early sun, and, singing low to himself, Ardan began to gather the
+whiteness on a great slab of gray stone near the south wall.
+
+“It will not be mud of which I build my dreams, good Cormac.”
+
+The monk watched him idly for a while, and then tossed to him a
+trowel from among the tools of the builders.
+
+“It will take no harm from the snow,” he said, “and will save your
+hands. But make your play quick, for the sun travels north to bring
+the end of the cold moons.”
+
+“You mean he comes to wake Cethair, spirit king of the forest, out
+of his winter’s sleep,” said Ardan. “Cethair but breathes over the
+fields, and all the snows melt, and all of leaf and bloom comes out
+for his carpet of green fragrance.”
+
+“There is no king but King of Heaven and Turlough, Ard-Ri of
+Erinn—our own kings of Leinster and Orielle, and such,” said Cormac,
+but Ardan was deep in his new play and had no words of argument. Once
+Cormac looked and saw he had set upright a slender straight sapling
+of yew in the packed snow of the slab, and once he noted that
+the hands of Ardan stripped from the sapling all but two branches
+reaching out east and west as the arms of a cross, and after that
+Cormac carved at stone traceries, well satisfied that the fosterling
+of King Donough was, after all, but making a holy thing.
+
+That was a comforting thought to the good Cormac, who had love for
+the lad who was known only as Ardan of Ardbreccan, and whose stay
+near them had not been so long. He had been the ward of the holy
+and learned O’Cahsahde of Ardbreccan, where his childhood had been
+lived between gray walls, and under the great oaks’ shade. At death
+of that holy man, who was called “Dall Clairineach” and known of all
+scholars, his ward Ardan, with wealth and comfort, was left to King
+Donough with instruction that he was the son of a mother whose dying
+hope had been that sheltered holiness be his share in life; and no
+more was known of him than that.
+
+But his breeding spoke of gentle blood, and Maureen the queen made
+choice of him for comradeship with her own children, and her own
+maidens in the garden games, and the gracious sweetness of him won
+its own way in king’s palace or monastery walls.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+In the shadow of the wall he made his snow form—that the rays of
+gold of the sun not melt the white of it; and Donough O’Carroll of
+Orielle, and Diarmod of Leinster, his overlord, passed that way and
+spoke of the handsome boy and his destiny, for the work he did made
+him look like a monk, and his father had been known only to the holy
+Dall Clairineach of Ardbreccan, where many sons of princes wore the
+robe of scholarship and holy sanctity.
+
+The two kings went their way, and Cormac was called by Duighal the
+prior to another place, and the boy was forgot by all, and the snow
+image was not seen by any until the morning after, golden lances of
+the sun touching it when coming first over the edge of the green sea.
+
+And then, at sight of it, Cormac the monk cried out in awe, and his
+cry called others from the chapel.
+
+Duighal the prior was there, and the two kings were there and Ardan
+stood in the shadow of the wall in a queer trembling of joy—and
+mayhaps some hunger, for he had worked till the setting of the moon,
+as in a trance, fasting.
+
+“Is it a miracle of Brighde, the Foster Mother of God, as the blessed
+mantle was given her?” muttered the prior, and others thought it
+Mary, Queen of the Elements. But Diarmod the king stood beside
+Donough and stroked his dark beard, and his eyes shot green fire.
+
+“A miracle it may be, holy father,” he said, “but the miracle is
+in the gift given the mortal hand placing it there. Where is the
+Ardbreccan fosterling who heaped up the snow on this slab but
+yesterday?”
+
+Cormac the carver of stone pushed forward Ardan, whose teeth
+chattered as he knelt under the eyes of all the brethren and the two
+kings.
+
+“This is the lad, your royalty; always he is making the coaxing word
+for my edged tools that are not for a child. It is true I tossed him
+a trowel yesterday, but this thing of whiteness with jeweled robe of
+dewdrops could not have been formed by mortal hand and mason’s blade.”
+
+“Speak, if you did it,” said Diarmod of Leinster.
+
+“Of snow I did it with a tool cut from wood. In the light of the moon
+I worked on the mantle with clear water from the well. The freezing
+water there made the jeweled fringes to the robe—it was no miracle,
+O King, and I will do penance that I made the thing on consecrated
+ground. The fever took me to work, and I asked no permit.”
+
+“You need ask none forever in Leinster,” said Diarmod. “Rise up to
+walk where you will in our domain, and work when you will.”
+
+There was a buzzing as of bees among the monks who looked at the lad
+and at the white limbs of the snow creature, tip-toe with wide-spread
+arms like a bird lifting for flight. The mantle of it spread from
+wrist to wrist across head and shoulders and hung truly like jeweled
+wings in the early risen sun, but the white breasts and limbs and
+body were bare against the mantle save for the girdle of maidenhood.
+
+The prior Duighal was the one with a frowning face at the words of
+Diarmod, and he looked from the king to the white wonder, and then to
+the faces of the monks, bent and shifty-eyed as they glanced sideways
+at each other, and then at the white snow of the round breasts.
+
+“Penance for all whose eyes are smitten by the sight!” he thundered.
+“This is no holy thing—no white picture of saint: it is the work of
+the Evil Father forming temptation! What wench has bared herself for
+you that you know the way of that?”
+
+His staff was lifted as in threat above Ardan, who gazed, round-eyed,
+at the faces of the monks, and the holy fury of their shepherd.
+Donough O’Carroll stepped between the lifted crook and the builder of
+the mystery.
+
+“Look again, holy father,” he said. “The boy has not been tempted;
+that understanding is elsewhere.”
+
+“My word with Donough,” said Diarmod. “The lad says he worked in a
+fever a day and a night—”
+
+“And fasting, too, your royalty,” said Cormac.
+
+“And fasting, too,” said Diarmod. “Look at him: it might be words of
+foreign tribes we speak for all he understands. Look at him! It was
+only a game of chance that he formed a virgin maid instead of a white
+bull—or a white fawn of the forest.”
+
+“But the bulls roam the hills uncloaked,” said Donough O’Carroll with
+a laugh; “so also does the fawn and its dam. Speak, lad—we know it
+was no wench came to you here in the cold of the night—and to a wench
+no girdle would be given. How got you that mystery as you got it?
+This is sanctuary—you can speak.”
+
+Ardan stared at the listeners like a trapped thing, and then knelt
+before Donough.
+
+“I am under bonds as a son to you—and I meant no evil. I have the
+mind dark on your meanings. I crave your pardon, and the pardon of
+your queen for her fosterling. It was at the bathing pool in the
+summer time. Her maidens were in the water, and like that she stood
+tip-toe on the high stone at the pool’s margin. Like a bird with
+wide wings she stood ere the mantle slid from her shoulder. Proud
+she stood, and I from the thick green of the other shore saw her
+thus—more of beauty in her than snow and ice can tell! I went deep
+into the forest that day—lest they see me and deem me a spy on their
+pleasure-place. That is all, O Donough! If I have done a wrong deed,
+I ask to atone to the priests and to the maid.”
+
+“Her name has not yet been spoke,” said Donough, and Diarmod made a
+quick step forward and laid his hand on the head of Ardan.
+
+“To your feet,” he said. “Is there name to a living maid for the
+double of that? Is there a name?”
+
+Ardan turned his gaze from the eager king to Donough, and then to the
+frowning prior.
+
+“If it might be spoke in another place?” he plead, but the prior
+lifted the staff.
+
+“Here in this place where the evil thing was wrought,” he thundered,
+“here begins your penance with open confession before all!”
+
+Ardan turned to Donough O’Carroll.
+
+“If first I could speak of the word to you alone?” he said.
+
+But Donough laughed at the pleading, and lived to know sorrow of the
+heart for that laughing.
+
+“As you have shown her breasts and her body to us, give us the name.”
+
+“But—let me entreat—”
+
+“The name, lad, the name! What is she called?”
+
+“She is called—Dervail.”
+
+The voice of him went low as the breath-whisper. Yet it was too loud
+for Donough, whose face was thunder-black and threatening.
+
+The prior heard and turned on the monks, with words of censure for
+hearkening, and his orders brought them to heel like a pack of
+hunting hounds on the wrong trail.
+
+Diarmod heard, and his eyes, with the strange green fire, narrowed as
+he looked at King Donough.
+
+“What sweet hidden thing have you put away for holidays, good
+friend?” he asked. “The lad only spoke in whisper, yet the sound of
+it echoes among you like a thunder-clap in the hills.”
+
+“It is not hidden by choice of mine, Diarmod,” and the voice of
+Donough had the gloom on it. “We will to break fast and then—”
+
+“The lad at our table for the food!” decided Diarmod. “Look not so
+down, lad, because you held beauty in your mind more close than most
+of us. The monks today dare not bury you alive as they once did to
+sinners. Their forbears would have left you pinned to the earth for
+a smaller thing than a naked virgin in their cloister—even the prior
+will have dreams tonight!”
+
+Then he walked around the white figure to see the solid backing of
+the cloak to the slender body, and smiled at the craft of it. The
+mystery of it was going, yet he glanced from under his brows at the
+lad, and had wonder.
+
+“Lucky for me that I abode the night with you, Donough O’Carroll,
+else would I have missed this in life,” he said, “and no man can hope
+to see it twice. This will be a melting day, and the wind has turned:
+it comes the sea-way since the dawn.”
+
+“The sea-way,” said Ardan, “the eastern sea-way—the path of sorrows.”
+
+“Why do you give that word?” asked Donough O’Carroll, staring at him.
+
+“I have no knowing why I spoke it,” said Ardan. “I thought I heard it
+somewhere. And look you! It is true: I fasted and half froze to build
+that while the joy of building was with me—and like a white jewel it
+was when the sun touched it this morn. But the sun ray is gone, and
+the wind of the east brings the melting with it, and the jewels of
+the mantle are dripping tears already—tears! I should have wrought
+with metal tools in stronger stuff.”
+
+Cormac had come back with a stout, long stave under orders of the
+prior, and stood waiting in courtesy the going of the two kings.
+
+“Go you to your food, lad,” he said kindly; “the tools you shall have
+at need. But go you, for your fasting gives you the sight of things
+you know nought of at all! The Hidden People of the Ancient Days are
+putting speech on you; go to food, and drink, and human thoughts.”
+
+“I would rather do that,” said Ardan. “I had the Dream of things with
+me when I built this, and my heart would sorrow to watch the white of
+it melt gray in its own tears. She is still the white bird tip-toe
+for flight!”
+
+Donough O’Carroll looked at Ardan as if he was seeing him for the
+first time in life, and Diarmod the king tore himself from the
+gazing, and strode beside Donough with the swing of the man who had
+found things easy in life.
+
+“Diarmod MacMurrough, have you given heed to the words you have heard
+beside that white wonder image?” asked Donough.
+
+“I have that. Some of the words are as full of wonder as the image
+itself,” said Diarmod.
+
+“Take them to your remembrance then, for no idle words were said
+there. That boy had the right knowing, and was right in his silence,
+but I made him speak. It is my grief.”
+
+“It is no grief of mine,” said Diarmod, and laughed as one who holds
+his own thoughts.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+At the angle where the path narrowed to the portal, Donough, in
+courtesy to his overlord, stepped a pace aside and behind. A sound
+came to him of wood striking on wood, and he looked back, and he was
+glad the lad was making reply to some asking of the king, and did not
+see the thing he saw.
+
+Cormac was doing well his task: the white wings were shattered, and
+the slender white body broken. There was nothing left of the Dream
+but the dark cross of the young yew tree dripping drearily against
+the gray stone of the wall. The wind from the east carried the
+melting mist with it, and there was no longer any sight of the sun
+anywhere.
+
+Donough O’Carroll went into his house that day with a heavy gloom on
+his face—a strange gloom for one shown honor by his overlord.
+
+The woman who loved him looked her amaze that he put aside the bread
+she offered, and called first for the wine at morningtide.
+
+“Let be, Maureen,” he said, and spoke to her lowly. “Take your heed
+of our friends if I limp lacking in courtesy this day. I feel ‘fey’
+with some happenings of the morn, and would that you send best
+messenger and swiftest horse for Kieran Dall of the caves. The king
+must be told some truths and some sayings. And it must be a holy man,
+and a wise one for the telling.”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+The coming of Kieran Dall was at the nightfall, and the O’Carroll had
+a day of fever and fuming with his overlord who had moods of haste
+for the thing he wanted.
+
+“Why should the name of a strange maid so witch your thoughts from
+Mor na Tuathal and the daughters of princes?” asked Donough, and
+Diarmod laughed his happy laugh by which hearts had been won.
+
+“Why should the lad who knows not love have made her his Dream?
+Answer me that, and you will have your own answer! What put silence
+on the monks when her name was spoke? There are mysteries in it, and
+riddles are sometimes witchery.”
+
+“Mine is not the telling of the riddle, but it will be told for you,”
+said Donough.
+
+When the supper was over, and only the two kings and the blind monk
+called Kieran Dall were in the great room which was for private and
+secret things, their talk began.
+
+“It is for a curious thing I have sent for you, O Kieran,” said
+Donough of Orielle. “With me is my friend, a hunter from the south.
+He is a MacMurrough, and I want him by my side when I hear the story
+of the maid called Dervail nan Ciar.”
+
+“That maid is of your fostering, since the death of Ethnea your
+sister, to God her soul! She is called the ward, or the daughter,
+of Murtagh of Meath—is Dervail of the Shadow. Beauty was hers by
+birth, and wealth is hers by a dower of fear. Of that you should
+know somewhat, O’Donough, as you should know why the wife of Murtagh
+has fear of her and would give all wealth of the valley of the Boyne
+rather than have her under the roof of Meath. What new thing can a
+hermit of the caves have for your worldly knowing, O Donough, prince
+of Orielle?” said Kieran Dall.
+
+“It is not of the new I would hear—it is of the ancient old. It is of
+the prophecy; it is of the reason why that blood is feared and must
+not repeat itself in Erinn. It is the year and the time when she was
+to go from my castle to the walls of holy sanctuary, and the dower of
+fear to go with her.”
+
+Diarmod, stretched on a pile of wolf skins in the glint of the
+firelight, looked up and gave Donough a smile at that. But the
+sightless eyes of Kieran could not see the look, or the mockery of it.
+
+“True, it is the time,” said Kieran, “and the reason of it goes back
+to the dim old days when men who walked the world took mates ofttimes
+from the Hidden Tribes. Aye, that was the way of it more oft than in
+the days in which we live. The dark mist of the earth-mind was not so
+thick between us in them times, and there were other matings not to
+be spoken. Women of the sea and wolves from the forest have helped
+man bring forbidden lives—lives without souls—on the earth. The
+saints know it, and God knows it, and the tribes of that people have
+often strange evils in their blood.”
+
+There was silence while the blind eyes stared into the red ash as if
+seeing visions.
+
+“How far back can you be going into the dim days of that time?” asked
+Donough.
+
+“The mind can go far back on paths where speech must not follow,”
+said Kieran. “To give words to things gives power to them as well.
+To give names calls up the shadow—white or gray—of the soul that
+answered to it on earth. That is a true saying. And there are them
+not to be called back—the names going out in shadows! Under a like
+shade the child Dyveke Og, called Dervail, was born into Erinn. Her
+birthing belonged in another land, and not here—not here at all.
+
+“Among the druids of the dim days there were sacred things, sacred
+rules, and names, and priests who were kings. I am not naming the
+name of one, or the name of his tribe, but there was one who was
+Highest, who was given ‘the sight,’ yet the rules were broke by him,
+and broke for a woman who brought temptings. The name of that woman
+is not to be spoke, but she was a queen in her own tribe—and it was
+a tribe of the blood of the wolves of Alba. To Erinn she fled as for
+sanctuary—and brought her temptings. The madness of love she brought
+on that priest who was king, and he was netted by her as a fish is
+netted in a deep-sea net—and was borne by her kinsmen across the sea
+to their land. Her kinsmen were the barbarians of the east, and he
+was held by them as hostage while Erinn paid eric in skins of the
+deer and otter, and gold from the rivers of the west. That is how
+it was until a helot of Alba made way through their traps and their
+walls and brought the word to Erinn; and a sad word it was, for
+there was no truth in that people! The priest-king, netted through
+love, had neither feet, nor hands, nor eyes left to him. Their women
+tortured him, yet kept him alive as mockery of a king, for a king
+of Erinn must be without blemish. Speech was left him, and nothing
+else of a human was left him. He made a rune, and word by word the
+helot learned the words of it and brought it to Erinn. A long rune
+it was, too. And first of it was that no further eric was to go out
+of Erinn for him to the red brutes of the eastern shores. He alone,
+by his death there, would pay the price of his fall—but it was worth
+the summer and winter of torturings if he alone could pay for the
+lesson to Erinn, and to the men of Erinn. He laid on his own clan a
+heavy rule that by Sun and Moon, Earth and Air, Fire and Water, and
+the lives of their children, no bond of faith be made with the men of
+Alba, and no marriage with a woman of Alba, for the blood was not the
+blood of clean people, and the eyes of that people had no vision of
+clean faith in bonds of fealty.
+
+“In that rune he had the vision of the greatness of Erinn if tribe
+by tribe they made bonds only with each other for the glory of Inis
+Fohdla, which, even in far ancient days, was named that—the Isle of
+Destiny.”
+
+“Why is Erinn, in the ancient runes, called by that calling?” asked
+Donough.
+
+Kieran Dall shook his head.
+
+“I do not know. God knows! Men who named the stars called it by that
+name, and had ‘the sight.’ A land was given to the Hidden People, who
+were great people; they have not known death, yet have never left
+the land of Inis Fohdla. In the years ahead they will again have a
+birthing, and the hidden things of the wise are in their keeping
+until that day. For three centuries Erinn has been the school for
+the sons of Brythen and France, and other foreign people. The Dane
+invaders were driven home by Brian of the Tributes, and Inis Fohdla
+pays tithing to no viking of the foreign in our day; it may happen
+that we are near to reading the riddle of Inis Fohdla and that
+naming; it may be so if the faith is kept in peace, and the rune of
+that king of the tortures be not lost again as it was lost by Cuan
+the Dark in the days I hold in memory.”
+
+“Who was Cuan the Dark?” asked Donough.
+
+“He was of the blood of that priest-king of the rune; he was also of
+my blood, but his own name is not spoke. He was of the sacred line
+into which no blood of the enemy must flow lest it bring the curse of
+a thousand years’ helotage on Inis Fohdla.”
+
+There was silence as the slow words of the blind hermit sunk to the
+minds of the two kings.
+
+“A thousand years!” muttered Diarmod. “How could Erinn be held as
+tribute-payer for a thousand years to a king of the foreign? Thorgils
+and Ota the queen did hold the Sionan and many harbors, and the tax
+paid to the Danes was a heavy tax. But years more than one hundred
+are gone since there was taxing like that. How could it be coming
+again?”
+
+“I have not the sight for that,” said Kieran. “It was the prophecy,
+and the penalty spoken in the ancient rune if that line of the kings
+should take mates from the red-wolf women of Alba.”
+
+“But—it was of one line alone—one family—or one clan,” said Diarmod.
+
+“Aye—it was one alone, but that one was the sacred line of the
+priest-kings. Their rule was the rule for the men of the crown and
+the temple, and the people of lower rank would follow. It was before
+the time of christian men in Erinn. It would take more than the time
+of one winter night to tell you all the difference in minds and
+lives between that day and this day. But through all the changes the
+line of Cuan the Dark kept to the law of that rune—eight times one
+hundred years was the time it was held to and the line was clean, and
+the record of that line was proud.
+
+“And then?”
+
+“Then the young had the teaching that no thing could be truth but the
+truths spoke by the saints of the New God, though truth was in the
+world before Mary came to the birth.
+
+“Truth is truth for always, and even the pagans had many true things
+in their hearts. But the young are light of mind, and do not see
+these things. So it was with Cuan the Dark.
+
+“To Spain he sailed for a matter of import, and I was beside him. To
+the land of France we went, and I walked the lines of mighty Carnac,
+and thought of kindred wonders at Knocknarea in our own land. There
+were women everywhere, and they were the days of his youth, and he
+gave them love, and good-will, and farewell! So it was with us, and
+home he sailed, glad and free of heart; and it was here in Erinn he
+met that trial he was to meet. He broke the geis laid on his line,
+and on his birth, when he looked on Dyveke the Dove, child of Gorm,
+son of Knud of the rath of Knud.
+
+“The mother of Dyveke had been a woman out of Alba, blue of eyes and
+flaming of hair, and in her own land she had been to the front with
+her kinsmen in battle. But Gorm the Dane had his way with her and
+stole her to sail the seas with him, as was well-fitting, for each
+was of a tribe drinking from skulls at their joy-feasts, and fierce
+alike in their lovings.
+
+“Sons they had, but they never kept life long; that fierce mother
+held her strength for her own passions. There was a saying for that
+among the Danes. Then Dyveke came to birth, and the mother went out
+of life. It may be there were fairer things on earth than Dyveke; but
+I never saw them.
+
+“Dyveke means ‘dove’ in the wording of her father, Gorm, and no
+breast of dove was whiter, and no flight of dove had more of
+grace—and no love-call of a dove had more of music than her voice.
+
+“From her grianan she smiled down with look of longing on Cuan the
+Dark, who sat on his black racer below, and the madness came on him
+there for that look and for that woman—and the madness stayed.
+
+“None of his elders was there—I alone who knew the geis was there—the
+_geis_ every son of our line was bondman to.
+
+“But he was deaf to my words when she spoke!
+
+“A noble of the Danes named Thorold had heard, in the far north, of
+the beauty of her, and came with gifts and with offers. She took his
+gifts and gave him love looks as she gave to Cuan the Dark. The boats
+of Thorold the Dane were anchored in the bay, and the word went out
+that it would be with Thorold she would sail as wife.
+
+“That was the day Cuan the Dark changed to a wild thing showing his
+teeth—the girl Dyveke had looked love on him, and he had that madness.
+
+“I made him listen to the record of the ancient horror when a woman
+of Alban birth had brought death in life to a prince of his line.
+
+“I held him as I reasoned with him, speaking over the names of the
+men who for the hundreds of years had taken the vow and the bond for
+his own life, and the lives of his children. He fought me and growled
+back that the vows were pagan vows—not christian—and not binding on a
+christened man.
+
+“I spoke the rune of the priest-prince who had warned his clan to
+make no bond forever with the fierce Albans of the jealous eyes:
+
+
+             *       *       *       *       *
+
+      Thus shall it ever be:
+      Honor and sanctity
+      Shed on the sons of Eire.
+
+      Sleep with the sword between
+      Sons and a foreign queen!
+      To daughters the blue dirk’s sheen
+      Sooner than blood unclean!
+
+      For Fohdla the Fair
+      Hold blood and the land,
+      Else victors of Erinn
+      Swarm red on her strand!
+
+      For eric is breaking;
+      For soft heart in taking
+      A mate out of Alba
+      A thousand years’ snare!
+
+      A thousand years’ yoke
+      On the bent neck of Erinn;
+      A thousand years’ tribute of blood,
+             Inis Fair!
+
+“That was the _geis_ made binding by the priest-king in exile ere
+they cut out the tongue from him, and left him to rot when his clans
+heard of the maiming and sent no more gold of the ransom to the woman
+who had netted him. She was a queen; she had heard of his beauty and
+his sacred knowings, and had the jealous eye for that which was too
+fine for the vision of her people. Aye—she netted him and tricked his
+clan to pay eric against the day of his return. And in the end he fed
+with her wolfhounds, and was torn to death in their fightings. That
+is how it was; but he had the clear vision of the future years before
+his going! That rune I told, and the vision I told, to Cuan the Dark
+that it make strong his geis to hold against the charm of Dyveke the
+Dove.”
+
+“Did it hold?” asked Diarmod.
+
+“It did not hold. He broke from me and shouted that there were
+christian bonds between Erinn and the ancient enemies to the east. He
+would follow the christian bond, and make a forgetting of pagan geis
+laid upon princes of his line. That is how it was. I was the one who
+sent for the elders of our house, but it was too late. She was in his
+dun at Cualann ere their coming. There it was the men of his line
+put against him the ban of the unnaming, and the forgetting. That is
+where her lover, Thorold the Dane, stood him siege for her and made
+break in his walls. The curse of the _geis_ came in quickness to
+Cuan, for it was the hand of Dyveke, of the whiteness of doves, by
+which a knife found his heart, and his head was tossed by her from
+the tower to the feet of her lover, Thorold!
+
+“With Thorold she sailed out to sea, but the girl child she had borne
+to Cuan after that beheading was hid in the cell of a monk who was
+let near for some shrivings. Thorold was raging like a maddened bull
+for the death of the child not his. Two were born that night. One was
+dead; it was given into his hands, and the fierce soul of him was
+content with that, not knowing. But Dyveke, the white, knew somewhat.
+She had heard the unnaming and the ban of his clan against Cuan for
+her sake. She had heard the _geis_ of the rune, and she had bitter
+hate for the banning of her, or of her blood, and it was a bitter
+curse she put against Erinn at her going away, and a bitter prayer
+she made that the seed of Cuan might raise up hosts of wolves to tear
+each at the throat of the other till the geis of the rune held true,
+and Erinn was broken, and her neck under the foot of the foreign men
+of enmity.”
+
+The two kings looked at each other across the light of the fire and
+Diarmod turned to the portal as if a cold wind had struck him. He
+moved more close to the hearthstone and drew over him a robe of otter
+skin.
+
+“And that was the ending?” he said.
+
+“God and Mary knows! Mayhaps it was the beginning! It was the year
+Adrian, Pope in Rome, signed the grant of Erinn to King Henry what
+time he could win warriors for its conquering. The conquerors have
+not yet sailed from Alba, but the eyes of Alba are jealous eyes, and
+the grant was given the year the child of Cuan, Dyveke Og, came, born
+living, into the land of Erinn.”
+
+“Young Dyveke?” repeated O’Carroll. “That name for her was never told
+me.”
+
+“Your sister, the Lady Ethnea, had hatred of it, and Dervail was
+the name she made choice of instead. The mother of Cuan had kindred
+in the Ua Machflain, and to King Murtagh went the Lady Ethnea with
+concern for the dower and station of the unwelcome woman-child. A
+dower was given for her life in sanctuary, and that dower was doubled
+by Ethnea who had love for the father of the child. The ward of King
+Murtagh she has been called, and it may be she is thought of his
+breed. But Duighal knows she is Dervail nan Ciar, who had no right to
+live; and King Murtagh has no longing to see the evil face of her—she
+is of the shadows, and to be forgotten in walls of sanctuary—and the
+walls built high.”
+
+“It is the first full hearing of the child I have asked for, though
+I had fear of the truth,” said Donough. “From the monastery she
+was taken to the castle of Ethnea, my sister. At the dying of that
+sister, she was brought to Maureen, who thinks her a bud of the tree
+of Machflain of Meath, to end in the convent of sheltered women.”
+
+“Aye—that was hope of the prior when he gave penance to the monk who
+carried that white wolf’s whelp to his cell for safety! Aye—the years
+pass, and she has reached the age. No sons and no daughters should
+come to Erinn of that breed of Dyveke. I saw what I saw of the broken
+_geis_, and my hair went white in that seeing, and for that the fear
+is on me for that breed.”
+
+“Then it was not in the young years the sight dark came on you,
+Kieran of the cell?” said Diarmod the king.
+
+“It was not in the young years. It was by the hand of the one love
+of my kinsman, Cuan the Dark. Her lover, Thorold, found me out where
+I was putting a cover of earth over his headless body. The brute men
+of Thorold held me, and her white hand drew the hot iron across my
+eyes. She was hard, jealous, and she forgot nothing. She was Alba!
+She had the name of Dyveke the Dove, and her looks were sweet looks,
+and her voice had the music of birds, but her heart was the heart of
+her foremothers who ran with the wolf pack.”
+
+Diarmod laughed low. “Your words are not the words of a priest of
+Mary,” he said. “An army of men with your heart would be a good army
+for battles.”
+
+“Battles for Erinn were dreams in my life,” said Kieran. “Dyveke knew
+the dreams, and let me have my blinded life for the mourning of them!
+I wear the robe and do penance for my sins and for the sins of Cuan
+who died unshriven. But there is no sin in the strangle of a wolf,
+and no seas would be too wide for her following if I had but the
+sight. May she burn in hell all the years there is shadow on Erinn!”
+
+“Be it so if she brings that shadow,” said Donough, “for that is no
+sin to say.”
+
+“Truth for you! And the same to all who would walk in her thoughts!
+In the name of the Elements, and Mary, and the Father and Son!”
+
+“In the holy names,” said Diarmod the king, and rose and stood by the
+fire with the otter skin robe about him in a quick tremble of cold.
+
+Donough O’Carroll looked at him, and poured wine from the flagon into
+a jeweled cup.
+
+“To your warmth,” he said. “We have talked the fire low on the
+hearth. Empty the guest cup with me for comfort of the body.”
+
+Then he poured a cup for Kieran, thanked him and asked what gift he
+could give him for the story of the blood of Dervail nan Ciar, whose
+true name was Danish dove.
+
+“Give your gift to Erinn for me, and make your own choice of that
+gift,” said Kieran, “but let it be a good ship to take the wolf’s
+whelp as far out of the land as the shores of Egypt, and that is a
+far sail for a good ship; or failing that, build a wall of stone,
+doubled, around the convent where she is barred from the sight of
+men. If she has what her mother, Dyveke, had, say prayers to Phadraig
+and to Brighde that the curse of the eric be not laid on Erinn.”
+
+“That besides the doubled wall?” said Diarmod, who was warmed by the
+wine, and spoke lightly.
+
+“Aye—besides the double wall! The paying of that eric is beyond
+thought. It is the yoke of a slave and a thousand years of blood on
+the bent head of Erinn!”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Kieran was led to rest by a servant of the castle, and was not told
+that Diarmod the king had been a listener to the tale of the rune.
+
+Diarmod paced the room and quaffed another cup of the red wine of
+Gaul.
+
+“Is it not enough that the priestly rules are ever near to ban
+anything of beauty coming a man’s way?” he grumbled. “But a hermit
+must bring runes of a thousand years to strengthen that ban! The tale
+would witch a man to follow her if but to see if she had the wonder
+in her of Dyveke the Dove—and tame that wonder as a falcon is tamed
+for the wrist of the master.”
+
+“But that is a bird you will not take from its cage, Diarmod?” said
+Donough. “Take to memory the _geis_ of your own line against the
+hunting of birds—it is more than a thousand years, yet the bards are
+telling the legend even in our day—and it was a white bird in the
+legend, Diarmod, a white bird coming to earth with love-words and
+warnings to your ancestress, who was queen—and this white bird of the
+cloister you will not be seeking cage for, Diarmod?”
+
+There was silence but for the crackle of the new wood heaped on the
+fire, and Diarmod looked long into the red heart of the flame before
+he spoke.
+
+“No, Donough—one veiled maid of the cloisters brought shadow enough
+and blame enough to me—that is long since, yet never forgot.”
+
+“It is Dhira you mean?”
+
+“It is Dhira. Rest to her soul! She was robbed from me again by Dall
+Clairineach and hid in shadow to her death. No, I will not take
+another maid from convent walls—and no guest of yours from your
+castle; but if she is fair of body as that white mystery in the
+cloister, it is as well I have not crossed her path a-nutting in the
+forest.”
+
+“You put light in my heart at that saying, Diarmod, for I saw the
+thought of you. But there are women always for you; women a-plenty.”
+
+“Of a sort,” said Diarmod, who had to wife Maelmor na Tuathal, sister
+of Laurance the saintly, and a queen-woman in her own way, and a
+pious, of a sort, “but white birds with reaching wings do not wait on
+every road for a man.”
+
+Donough O’Carroll went to his rest with content that night, and
+unburdened the cares of the day to Maureen, his wife.
+
+“Get the maid, Dervail, on the road to sanctuary of Cluain-mac-noise
+in the dawn of tomorrow,” he said. “Our shelter has not kept her name
+from the ear of the king. Strange happenings have been, and curious
+portents. She is not one to win friend for any king of Erinn.”
+
+“In truth she is the fairest thing in all your province, Donough, my
+heart,” said Maureen, “but, like a bird, she is—untamed.”
+
+“Do not make that saying of her to me,” said Donough, “or sleep could
+not come to my bed this night. Too much I have heard this day of
+bird-women, both doves and falcons, and I would that the maid was
+ugly as a mud-hen among the bogs. Woman, let me have sleep, and pray
+that Saint Brighde speeds her in safety on the road from us tomorrow.
+If she is in truth of the blood of Murtagh of Machflain, King of
+Meath, the time has come for his claim of her. The mystery of her is
+abroad on the winds, and the very name of her sounds temptation to
+Diarmod!”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+It was in the mist of the gray dawn when Ardan crept like a thief
+down the turret stairs, and to the castle wall on which the grianan
+of the queen gave entrance. The door of it opened from within, and
+to meet him came the maid called by Maureen the fairest in all the
+kingdom of Orielle.
+
+Like forest pools were her eyes—gray with a glint of blue; her mouth
+was the rose for beauty, and her hair held the warm flame of red
+gold; heavy it fell either side of her face and reached below her
+girdle. A cloak of royal blue touched the stone floor, and a veil of
+silvery gray broidered with blue was held by the wire-spun circlet
+of gold about her head. The falling of that silvery veil gave her
+a strange mystical look to Ardan, and the dignity of the cloak hid
+every maidenly curve of her young body.
+
+“Argatonel,” spoke Ardan as he stood staring at the beauty of her,
+“‘Silver Cloud’ in truth you are, Dervail; and you look as if you had
+slept in a fairy’s rath and woke changed and not young any more.”
+
+“Sleep I did not at all—for the doom of going away was put on me ere
+the turn of the night. That was the time I sent the maid Kauth to
+seek you. The castle of the holy women at Cluain-mac-noise is to be
+my prison. Some sudden thing has stung the prior, Duighal, and his
+monks are to be my guard to sanctuary. It will be my grave they take
+me to!”
+
+“I am to blame—to blame!” said Ardan. “I, too, must go a road this
+day, but it is to the Culdees of Saint Hilary. For my fault I am to
+study in a new place and among strange scholars.”
+
+“Why are you to blame? You that were my comrade?”
+
+“It is forbidden that I tell you all, or think of it—but I made an
+image of snow like a white bird that yet was a maiden. I thought of
+you and made it all of whiteness, but like you, too, in beauty. It
+was in the cloister. Duighal the prior says it is an evil thing to
+image any but sainted women, and a penance is put on me that I go.”
+
+“But you—you have no unhappy heart at that going,” said Dervail,
+and sighed as she looked at him. “You will walk free to make other
+beautiful things in other places.”
+
+“I will remember you in the far places, and the beauty I make will be
+thoughts of you.”
+
+Dervail smiled on him with closed lips and eyes peering sideways
+through the silver veil. The veil made a new mystery of her face.
+
+“Argatonel,” he said again, and was thinking of a rhyme for it to
+make a poem as a farewell gift, “Argatonel!”
+
+“You do not love me, Ardan,” she said; “you only love beauty.”
+
+“But you are that beauty.”
+
+“You do not love me; you do not know I am alive! You look at me as on
+a saint, high on the church wall. I would rather dance free with the
+Ever Young People in the Hidden Hills!”
+
+He did not know what to answer. Cormac had said hell waited for
+people of pagan thoughts, and Cormac had a soul of good intent.
+
+“You are my best comrade, and as my sister,” he said; “my grief is
+much that you go unwilling—I would that you went not out from here
+until a marriage feast gave you to some righteous king. You look like
+a queen with that cloak and the veil of the silver cloud.”
+
+She laughed a little bitterly.
+
+“I said you did not love me, and I said true; you are almost of my
+age, yet you would pick a king out of the world for me! I steal ere
+the dawn to seek farewell of a poet, and his only seeking is a rhyme
+for my name—not to be found!”
+
+“But I have found it!” he cried in triumph. “I will write it for you
+ere the troop leaves the portal. I will sing it in the lonely west
+where I go for scholarship. Dervail, what other thing could I do to
+show my thoughts and my heart to you?”
+
+“I do not know. It is a boy you are, and my thoughts are of a man’s
+thoughts. Look: I am cloaked and shod for travel; there are swift
+steeds below, and there are boats at the sea’s marge. Beyond where
+the low sky takes the silver of morning, there is another land. Had I
+the strength of a man beside me, it is there I would go.”
+
+“With the troops of two kings of power to claim you for the church?
+Who would dare give shelter to you in such flight?”
+
+“Two kings?” she asked, puzzled and frowning.
+
+“Diarmod of Leinster is guest of King Donough.”
+
+She laughed again.
+
+“So: that is why I have been kept to the grianan of the queen for
+three days! It has been so always when guests of might are housed
+here. What crooked stick of the forest am I that no prince or king
+must look my way?”
+
+“The fairest things of earth are God’s offerings, Dervail,” he said.
+“I think of you as abbess of some white sisterhood of Mary. On some
+day of days I will surely see you so, and kneel for your blessing.
+You will be ever the white bird and the silver cloud to me.”
+
+“That makes the cold stone no softer a pillow,” she said. “You live
+in dreams—sometimes you have made me see the dreams, but this no
+dream today. They take me for other prison and call it serving God!”
+
+A clink of metal on stone sounded above them where the flying
+buttress carried a windowed room as a canopy above where they stood.
+
+Dervail sped quickly back out of sight, but Ardan stepped further out
+to look above. What he saw there was Diarmod of Leinster with his
+finger on his lip. Horsemen clattered through the castle gate, and
+Ardan looked down at them from the edge of the wall.
+
+“The castle is awake, and there is no other moment for speech,” he
+said. “My heart goes with you on the road, comrade maid of mine. May
+that road lead you to peace!”
+
+She stood looking at him moodily while he lifted the hem of her cloak
+to his lips.
+
+“Almost I see you here a queen in the queen’s grianan,” he said. “You
+look it in that robe you wear. Have you no farewell to me, Dervail?”
+
+“For that I came, Ardan, and may it be so to you! I would you could
+teach me the content of dreams—my dreams lack content. Farewell,
+comrade! In the gray days I will think often of the white bird by
+which we are exiled. Fare you well, Ardan! Go you the way of your
+white dreams!”
+
+There was a weariness in the sweet voice. So few days before she had
+run races and tossed the ball in the games, but the Dervail in the
+silver veil at the dawn was a different maid.
+
+The veil—the silver cloud—Argatonel!—in a moment more he had out
+the inkhorn and quill and was tracing on the smooth stone the first
+words of the rhyme singing in his ears—he had promised her a verse of
+farewell.
+
+      The sun has set at morningtide,
+        Argatonel!
+      The wall between is high and wide,
+        Argatonel!
+      Above it stars of heaven may rise
+        In witchery,
+      But none so bright—
+
+The rhythm of it sang itself, and he was glowing with eagerness when
+he became suddenly conscious of someone near, and turned to find
+Diarmod smiling at him in great good humor.
+
+“I had joy of my eavesdropping, though I could get no glimpse of her
+face,” he said. “Anyone seeing your tryst might have had his doubts,
+but I’ll go your warrant to any father alive who has sweet-voiced
+daughters in want of a playmate.”
+
+Ardan bent knee to him, and thus turned from the words, roughly noted
+in ink, still wet. Little escaped the eye of Leinster, and a step
+took him beside it.
+
+“What’s to do here? ‘The sun has set at morningtide.’ That is against
+nature. How could that be?”
+
+“My King, I cannot make you see it when you did not see her face—and
+she goes at morningtide.”
+
+“So, that is it! My grief, to hearken to a tryst with a lad when it
+was the strength of a man she gave call for! And this—Argatonel?”
+
+“It is the silver cloud of the veil she wore—the veil by which she
+was hidden from you above.”
+
+“Very good—it looked, indeed, a veil of silver over hair of gold. Go
+on—finish your lines. Here is a scrap of vellum of no import; write
+it across that. Your craft is curious, and has interest to me. You
+shall write lovepoems for my daughters. Go on! ‘But none so bright—’”
+
+And Ardan, encouraged by the king’s mood, plodded placidly on.
+
+      But none so bright as are your eyes
+          Of mystery.
+      Argatonel, white wings to you!
+      Argatonel, deep heart to you!
+      O Silver Cloud, that wraps the world,
+          God’s Sun to you!
+
+He finished writing and read it aloud, and the eyes of the king were
+on him curiously.
+
+“That, and a maiden tryst at dawn, and you fasting!” he said. “What
+works then might you not do with good meat under your ribs? I’ve
+a mind to take you with me, if only to feed you, and watch your
+growth. Come! We’ll talk of it and eat. Clean white vellum shall be
+yours for your love-lines, though the maid read you true, my young
+cock-robin! You had no heart-love to give your Argatonel; your only
+seeking was some fair thing to sing about.”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Thus it was the friendship began between Diarmod the king, and Ardan,
+the fosterling of King Donough of Orielle, and thus it was that they
+went out together at sound of the gathering guard in the castle yard
+that morning, and from the shadow of the portal Diarmod looked on the
+unveiled face of Dervail.
+
+The rising sun touched her hair to a glory, where it fell in braids
+to the saddle cushion. The deep pools of her eyes held shadows, and
+the black lashes were wet against her rosebloom cheek, yet the head
+of the silver veil was not humbled, and her chin was lifted in pride
+as she looked about her on the household back of the spearmen, and
+her maid, and the page holding her restless steed as it pawed the
+earth, and grew restless under the tinkling sweetness of its bridle
+bells.
+
+“Truly you said it, Ardan; she is the sun at morningtide,” said
+Diarmod the king; but when Ardan attempted speech in reply he was
+silenced lest a note of the music of her voice be lost.
+
+“Think of me as Regina in that new life,” she said to Queen Maureen
+at the farewell. “I wear the blue mantle that Mary the Mother may see
+I serve her in a royal way. The gray of life has no liking for me,
+and to the last I will wear colors of the deep sea, and the sky.”
+
+“What a queen can do will be done that no gray robe is yours until
+the day you make choice of it,” said Maureen in kindness. “A writing
+to that end goes with you to the holy women.”
+
+“All have spoke a farewell but yourself, King Donough of Orielle,”
+said the girl Dervail, with proud coldness in her voice. “I give
+thanks to you for years of sanctuary. Am I to have no host’s gift of
+the stirrup cup at my going?”
+
+“A white road, and a white welcome to you,” said Donough, whose
+tongue was stiff with fear that she go not quickly enough. The wind
+of the morning had caught the silver cloud of her veil, and swept
+it back over the golden circlet; she looked a girl queen beyond all
+queenly beauty, and too fair for the men of Leinster to view.
+
+Donough waved forward the bearer of the cup and the wine, and lifted
+his hand to pour the draught, but Diarmod, who stood in the portal
+with Ardan, came forward, and the hand of Diarmod was before that of
+Donough.
+
+“That the right may be my right,” he said and filled the cup.
+
+The servitor dropped to one knee, and the King and Queen of Orielle
+bowed low, and Dervail saw them, for the first time, stand aside for
+another man in their own castle keep.
+
+The wonder of it filled her, and her lips opened for question, but
+Diarmod stood at her stirrup. He gave to her the verse of Ardan and
+lifted the cup, and when their eyes met she forgot that a king and
+his household bent low while only one man stood.
+
+“Will you not kiss the cup?” he asked. “It is my grief that it is the
+farewell, and not the welcoming.”
+
+With both hands she reached for the cup, with both hands he held it
+up, but their eyes never parted. Their look was a long, strange look,
+and the smile was gone from her face.
+
+“I speak thanks to you, O my lord,” she said, “and the cup of parting
+will be remembered by me.”
+
+The prior rode through the portal with six stalwart monks at his
+heels.
+
+“I go north for pilgrimage to the shrine of Phadraig,” he said, “and
+we will add guard to the new nun for Cluain-mac-noise.”
+
+He did not look at her at all, and his speech was to Donough
+O’Carroll.
+
+Diarmod turned darkly on the cold-faced prior.
+
+“Six of my own men will ride with you as far as the Shannon,” he
+said. “They are the best of my horsemen, holy father, and will bear
+to the abbott a message. A gift will go to the abbess as a dower for
+the Lady Regina, for such is her new name in religion. This on the
+word of Leinster.”
+
+The prior stared at him, and bent head in brief courtesy. Never
+before had Leinster dowered maids, except they, in one way or
+another, were among his possessions.
+
+But Diarmod, with full knowledge of the sharp ears and keen dark
+thoughts about him, followed his mood because of the red mouth of
+Dervail, and her trancelike gaze. He slipped a ring of gold from his
+hand and put it on hers.
+
+“This my gauge of the promise,” he said. “Let it go with the dower.
+In sanctuary pray for Diarmod of Leinster.”
+
+“Diarmod!” and her voice was a whisper of wonder, but her face held
+liking, and swift joy, and hope. It was plain to see that cold
+sanctuary was none of her choosing. “Diarmod, O some time Ard-Ri of
+Erinn!”
+
+Fire of pride flamed in his eyes at her words. She had voiced his
+secret hope that the cloak of Leinster like the mantle of Brighde’s
+legend might gain magic growth to cover all the land.
+
+“The prayer of you for that day, O Regina,” he said, and lifted the
+cup to drain the leavings of her draught. “By the Elements, I wish
+for you all you seek in life!” The emptied cup of silver he put in
+the hand of Kauth and stepped a pace aside as Duighal the prior
+spurred his steed forward, and spoke to Dervail without glance of the
+eye. He had known Dyveke, her mother, in her day of beauty, and had
+seen the christening of the wolfs whelp—also he knew the moods and
+loves of Diarmod of Leinster. Kindling for the pit of hell were both
+of them!
+
+“Veil your face from the eyes of man, girl, and ride forward with
+your maid,” he said.
+
+Dervail lifted her hand to the veil, but lifted proudly her head as
+well, and cast one slow look over the awed group. Between the church
+and the king none dared speak, and Maureen grasped the arm of Donough
+in fear.
+
+The eyes of Dervail rested last on Leinster and her eyes spoke for
+her as she drew the veil and shrouded the beauty of her face.
+
+Two by two the riders passed the outer portal, and yet Diarmod
+stood, stroking his beard, and staring after the blue cloak and the
+shrouding veil.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+“What is your will for the day’s hunt?” asked Donough at last, and
+Leinster swung on him as if to find vent to his humor.
+
+“What joy in the hunting of deer when Paradise opens portals a man
+may not enter?” he demanded. “You played well to get my promise
+before my eyes had looked on her! You played well, Donough!”
+
+“But the promise was a good one, and you will live to give thanks for
+the making of it.”
+
+“It will not be this day you will hear such thanks,” spoke Diarmod
+shortly. “The beauty of her is beyond belief, and it is not her
+beauty alone! There is something—something—”
+
+“True, there is,” said Donough, “there is the beauty of Dyveke, her
+mother, but she is stronger than Dyveke, for she has the charm of the
+man named The Dark, because he was made Nameless, and those that were
+loving him could never see charm in another man. My sister, Ethnea,
+was one. Her life wore itself out making prayers because he died
+unshriven, and there is Kieran Dall, devoted even to vengeance if
+need be!”
+
+“Oh, you make it strong, and I have given my word,” said Diarmod,
+“but it is well it was you and the church I promised. Had it been one
+man claiming her—Murtagh of Meath or _any_ man—I would be gathering a
+troop now to bear her back, and the monks with their prophecies might
+carry their runes to hell.”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Two years Ardan lived between the castle of Diarmod and the Culdees
+of Saint Hilary’s cloisters, and then, with Diarmod’s sanction and
+help, he joined a group of pilgrims for Tours, and thence on to see
+the glories of Rome.
+
+Five years of books and songs and travel he had, but ever close was
+the craft of carving, and Diarmod’s attempt to make him a bard, and a
+bard only, had not been a success.
+
+“Let me work out my poems in stone if I can find them that way,” he
+said. “Some need a pen, some need a brush and color for the telling,
+and surely the stone has its own hymns—and it endures.”
+
+“It is not a bad thought,” agreed Diarmod. “If the ancient books had
+been carved of stone tablets the Dane raiders would not have carried
+away so many of the treasures. And in our own day O’Ruarc of Breffni
+is laying tribute on many an abbey of the north. The Culdees had best
+save their parchment and use the chisel.”
+
+“I saw him when I was a child at the ford, O’Ruarc,” said Ardan, “and
+had bad dreams. He had only one eye, and an evil look. The monks told
+tales of him, but they say his castle at Lough Gilla has the riches
+of an emperor.”
+
+“Well may be! His men hold the fords of the north for heavy toll,
+and his robbings give him jewels enough to cover the many women he
+steals.”
+
+“As I mind him, he would get them no other way—none would go to Lough
+Gilla for love of him.”
+
+“Aye! But he has his ruler, strong as he is,” said a monk of the
+north. “I heard of her in Armagh from a wandering bard who boasted
+that he traveled north in poverty, but by her grace he wanted for
+naught on his way back. Some message was his to bear for her, and he
+was fair delighted by the rare beauty of her. Songs he was making
+of her milk skin, and her gold of hair, until men fell in love to
+listen.”
+
+“Where found Breffni such pleasing treasure?” asked Diarmod.
+
+“I know not—God knows! There are tales told. One is that a boat
+of the Danes was wrecked on the north coast, and she was of that
+wreckage. Another is that he got her when he sacked the abbey of
+Clonard, and the new house of the nuns there. That may be. Her name
+is Regina, and that is no name of a Danish maid—it is christian name
+for a queen.”
+
+“Regina!”
+
+Diarmod whispered the name under his breath and stared at the guest
+of the north, but Ardan cried out in horror of the heart, and turned
+to Diarmod.
+
+“My comrade maid, the white-winged one of sanctuary! Is there word
+from King Donough as to that?”
+
+“There is no word,” and the face of Diarmod had brooding blackness on
+it. “To me he would not be sending that word. He would go first to
+Murtagh of Meath, and abide by his word, and the word of Duighal the
+prior. There is no love in their hearts for Breffni. It may be they
+care not for her taking, if she is taken far enough north—and the
+mountains and the bogs between!”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+After that, Diarmod said no more, but left guests and tale tellers
+and singers to have their own cheer of the night—and went to his own
+chamber. There he sent for Ardan.
+
+“You have art enough to pass for a wandering singer, a cunning
+worker in gold, or a carver of stone,” he said. “O’Ruarc adds to his
+craftsmen as he can, to change treasures of the abbeys into gauds for
+his women. Go you north into Breffni, and learn the truth of it. Here
+is gold for your faring. Guard your own life for me, but venture all
+else to bring me word.”
+
+“And if Donough is on their track?”
+
+“No word to Donough of this matter! If she is safe again in his
+castle, or safe in the convent, come you back to me in silence. If
+the tale be true, find her and bring me word of her need.”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+So it happened that Ardan had crossed the Shannon at Ath-Luin when
+the wandering bard from the north found the way to the castle of
+Diarmod, and craving audience, knelt and offered a ring.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+“This from her who calls herself Regina,” he said. “The dower given
+to the convent for her has gone to Lough Gilla Castle with many other
+things. The ring of the south should not be among the plunder of the
+enemy, and for that reason it is sent back.”
+
+“Is that the only word?”
+
+“All that was given me.”
+
+“Is she—in prison?”
+
+“She is the wife of Tiernan O’Ruarc, King of Breffni; she rules all
+within the castle by his love of her.”
+
+“He has then taken a nun to wife against all rule of Rome? Has there
+been naught of protest from King Murtagh of Meath?”
+
+“Nay, O Diarmod, no vows had been laid upon her. She was free to be
+sought in marriage to any man, and O’Ruarc was the man.”
+
+That rankling thought was not good company for the man who had let
+her ride out from O’Carroll’s castle into the new prison, and the man
+who got her was his enemy!
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Two days Diarmod fumed over the thought, and then rode with his
+spearmen and bowmen to council with King Donough.
+
+“Is it in silence the men of Meath and men of Orielle let the
+plunderer from Lough Gilla strip the holy churches and carry away the
+cloistered women?” he asked. And Donough walked with him apart that
+Queen Maureen might not hear.
+
+“As to Clonard Abbey, it is true, and we should stand against this,
+and send a spokesman to O’Ruarc; but as to women there was only one,
+and that one is his wife. There is no profit in going against that.
+She is Queen of Breffni and content enough. Since it is so, what call
+for speech of it among the people? It is well her own name is lost
+from her in those changes. To ride to her rescue would but bring her
+back for other princes to fight for. She is too fair for peace to be
+her dower in any land. Let that hawk of the north keep her safe at
+his own nest.”
+
+“She has brought him lucky fortune, since he sweeps all of church
+wealths into his chests and goes scatheless, and it was a different
+prophecy of her told by Kieran Dall.”
+
+“We are born, but not dead yet,” said Donough, “and it is ill profit
+to think of her now—and her a strong king’s wife.”
+
+“Yet I am thinking of her, O’Carroll, and the promise holds me no
+more. From your castle I would not take her, nor from the church, but
+she is with neither. She and the other stolen things are now free to
+who can take them.”
+
+“No man will fight for her when her name is known, and Turlough
+O’Conor will not be the man to let Breffni be robbed of a covenanted
+woman. Murtagh of Meath knows it, and cares not how soon she brings
+ruin to O’Ruarc—if bring it she does—_he_ is not of the line
+forbidden to her blood.”
+
+Diarmod glowered darkly and showed contempt.
+
+“The short sight was on me when I let her ride away, and foolish was
+the tale of Kieran Dall. Strong houses have ere this taken mates from
+the Lochlannach. Why should a ban, forgotten for a thousand years, be
+uncovered for her house or for mine? My own thought is that her dower
+was the dower of a king’s daughter, and a gain for any holy group of
+the veil. Without doubt she was a chance child of Murtagh of Meath,
+and the tale of Kieran Dall was made to fit. I have had no other word
+concerning Cuan the Dark; it is some old world tale of druid power.”
+
+“If ban, or banishment and un-naming is pronounced in secret against
+a man, it is more than death against him, Diarmod. There is no record
+left that he was ever living. The father of Dyveke had youth with
+him—he was the firstling of a devout house, and was meant for holy
+life—there may be many who think he is living out his years in work
+and prayer among foreign pagans. As a man he has left no name and
+no record. Now that O’Ruarc has the maid, and caused question of
+the source of the dowry, there is but one thing to do in the house
+of Machflain. She is called ward of the King of Meath, and daughter
+as well. It is a rich cloak to cover her white shoulders and cover
+a buried and bitter scandal for the house of the man called ‘The
+Dark.’ It will never be safe to lift that cloak, Diarmod; too many
+pious hands have helped weave it, and work over each rough seam with
+careful broiderings. Hidden forever now is father or mother of hers.
+She is no longer Dervail of the Shadow; she is daughter of Murtagh
+Machflain, King of Meath, and is wife to Tiernan, Prince of Breffni.
+The whole of Erinn is between your shore and hers, and no cause for
+your thoughts to cross over.”
+
+“Yet are they crossing over,” said Diarmod, and looked at a ring of
+gold. “There is no joy for her there in Breffni, and her own thoughts
+are crossing the wide land.”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Donough O’Carroll was not easy in his mind after that speech. He had
+remembrance of the words of Malachi, son of Murtagh of Meath. He
+also was afire because of her beauty, and the little love he had for
+Tiernan O’Ruarc. He also could see no reason why the maid, and her
+dowry as well, should go to a prince so well hated. For the truth of
+her was not told by Murtagh of Meath to any of his household. Duighal
+and certain monks knew it, and among them they hoped to hide the fact
+that the child of Dyveke lived though she should have died. Some
+fear of Dyveke’s curse was on Murtagh, and for that reason the maid
+was dowered for sanctity as had been his own daughter, with little
+thought that his enemy of the north would sweep hawklike on Clonard
+and bear away the troublous maid with all her mysterious wealth.
+
+“Hark to me, Diarmod,” said O’Carroll in all kindness. “Murtagh
+Machflain is well pleased that she is taken to the far end of Erinn
+by a man—any man—strong enough to hold her there! You are not the
+only man she makes restless by a look, or a word, or it may be a
+pledge! If it is adventure you hunger for, forget her beauty and seek
+victories in the west where the men of O’Brian are ever snapping like
+wolves across borders of Connaught or Leinster; I am with you to join
+shields with Turlough O’Conor against them at any dawn you name to
+set forth. Make yourself strong with allies ere you venture a hosting
+into Breffni. With care you can be chief king of Leith Mogh.”
+
+“You have the King of Meath and all the bishops on your side,” agreed
+Diarmod of Leinster, “yet if I was a wifeless man, I would make her a
+queen of more than Breffni. Tiernan of Breffni will yet pay with his
+life for having her before me!”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Diarmod had never forgotten her words of admiring when she greeted
+him as “Ard-Ri of Erinn.” It was but a tiny seed let fall from her
+rose-leaf lips, yet had it grown in his mind, nourished by the
+records and legends of his own royal line until he saw no head of
+Erinn more fit for crowning! This was a dear secret thought of his,
+spoken of to none, yet when he heard Turlough O’Conor called “King
+with opposition” there came flashing back to him the music of her
+words, and with them a long look ahead to the days when Turlough was
+gone! To be chief king of Leith Mogh—all southern Erinn—would seem to
+Donough a natural ambition. But to dream of the crown of High King
+over all would put fear in the mind of every friend who was loyal
+to Leinster. No thought of it had come to any heart but his own—and
+hers!
+
+That was the hold she had over his dreams; she had voiced the secret
+thing much desired. And in his dreams she became a part of that which
+was desired—the beautiful part!
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Yet Diarmod of Leinster did consider the words of King Donough, and
+did join shields with Turlough against the men of O’Brian to the
+west, and did make himself allies for the days when need would be
+his, for that was his way. The strong family of Mor, his wife, he had
+in bonds to him, and strong churchmen he had; if ever he ventured
+to follow his dream he meant to have help of Rome through princely
+clerics.
+
+He took credit to himself for joining shields to Turlough the king
+at that time. His mind was to go north, but the counsel of Donough
+brought him thought and remembrance that Murtagh of Meath was no
+strong ally even if he should make choice of the road of spears into
+Breffni for the maid of beauty. Though reinstated in his holdings, no
+one was forgetting that, for the blow to Gelasius the bishop, Murtagh
+had suffered for a space the loss of all kingly rights, and the
+devout and the spiritual fathers held it against him. It was no good
+time for making bonds with him, even if he and Malachi, his son, had
+been eager—for Malachi held no great strength of his own. The time
+must be on another day.
+
+But in all his thoughts of her there was the curious certainty that
+their own time would come. She was the music singing far in the
+forest of a fairy rath; she was the veiled maid beyond the lattice;
+she was ever Argatonel, the silver cloud out beyond the nearer gray!
+His men of the spears and battle-axes would have had curious thoughts
+if they had known that the music to which the great Diarmod of dread
+kept pace on his warhorse was the song of the boy, Ardan, in boyish
+praise of her beauty.
+
+He had forgotten that song, or thought he had, but in some far corner
+of his mind it lay sleeping, and the thought of her whiteness in the
+arms of that red terror of the north wakened it, and gave it music
+until he heard the feet of his men and the feet of his warhorse
+marching to it!
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+And the young maker of the song?
+
+His travels abroad made the wandering northward an easy path.
+He slept at monasteries, and was known only as ward of “Dall
+Clairineach,” who had been the scholarly abbot of Ardbreccan. But
+that name, given the learned O’Cahsadhe, was a key to every door. At
+Armagh, Ardan was even trusted with messages to other retreats of
+religious men further along his way, and at one monastery was offered
+a Saxon slave as gille, and a letter to Tiernan O’Ruarc, prince of
+Breffni, giving thanks from a fortunate prior to whom he had sent
+vestments and altar candles!
+
+This lucky chance brought aid to Ardan and much comfort. He had only
+to say, “A letter from a grateful priest to a gracious prince.” And
+over mountain or moor the message was given a pleasure path. Near his
+own domains the O’Ruarc did not plunder or lay waste, and the way to
+Lough Gilla was an open way when within the Breffni borders.
+
+But the Prince of Breffni was not at home to receive the priest’s
+letter of thanks. He was gone north to the shrine of Phadraig in
+Lough Dearg, as was his custom after great hostings. Even his
+enemies never could say the O’Ruarc shirked pious pilgrimage, or
+rich gifts of hospitality. The flat top of a great hill above Lough
+Gilla was seen afar as a landmark and named the “Table of Breffni.”
+It fitted in well with the giant cromlechs of the ancients to which
+the Saxon slave made curious circles of respect, and told to Ardan
+the faith for which the ancient gods had left such monuments. It was
+different from the faith of the saints by which Ardan had been given
+instruction, and he chided the slave and made a prayer, and went on
+between hills touched golden by the carpet of gorse, and touched blue
+as peat smoke when seen afar along the fair waters of lake and river.
+
+The letter from the cleric opened the portals of Breffni for Ardan,
+and his own youth and sunshine of face made him welcome alike to
+steward and warrior. The cleric of the castle was less friendlike,
+and had searching and priestly questions, and another man in
+scholar’s robe gave long looks to him, but no question. He was called
+Duffagan, and had been of the captured at Clonard—a silent student
+to whom Tiernan gave care of the plundered books, because of his
+learning in such craft.
+
+No word did Ardan send to Dervail, but with a bard of Breffni he made
+pact of friendliness, and told him of Erinn’s music in monasteries,
+and the courts of princes in Gaul and beyond it to the east. An Irish
+air he had brought back from Rome set to words of Italy, and he sang
+it to the delight of all in the great hall. After the supper and the
+songs of olden days, the little harp was given to his hands, and he
+took his turn in making music, as was the custom and joy among those
+of the musicians and poets. Young lovers would thus sing their
+thoughts to the one maid most longed for, and maids and women of
+the household of Breffni had their pleasure of the evening in that
+pastime. The castle took to itself neither silence nor added prayer
+for that Tiernan, the lord of it, had fared north for penitence at
+the shrine of Phadraig.
+
+It was a gay and very beautiful hall where the music was made, for no
+stone of the wall but was covered with hangings of rich weavings from
+the lands foreign, and under foot were many skins of animals, and one
+of a great white bear was beneath the feet of Dervail where she sat
+on the throne seat.
+
+At the far end of the hall she sat with her maidens, and the chiefs
+and ladies of Breffni’s household. Wearily enough she sat there above
+the others, and brooding she sat in a robe of white, heavy with gold
+threads and girdled with green ropes of gold-set emeralds from the
+Kerry hills. Her veil was of white, and fell from a crown of gold and
+glimmering green jewels. Her chin rested on her hand, and she had a
+sidelong look for a chief who sat near her, reciting some late glory
+of her lord’s victories.
+
+Ardan noted it all afar off where he hid himself with the younger
+singers. The song that came to his mind was of a white bird weighted
+with golden chains. But in the old Irish tales of chained doves
+or swans there were ever two birds chained together with golden
+links—and she was alone. In his heart he was glad it was so. He could
+not think of her in another way. She was still to him the lone white
+bird, though a jeweled queen.
+
+But it was not of that he dared sing when the tiny harp was put in
+his hand, for he was to the others only a chance bearer of a letter,
+and traveling in no great honor. And she was wife to Prince of
+Breffni and sat on a throne.
+
+And the thing he sang was the farewell song he had made for her in
+a far dawn when she had worn a silver-gray veil instead of a queen’s
+crown. And he had named her silver cloud—Argatonel.
+
+      The sun has set at morning tide,
+          Argatonel!
+      The wall between is deep and wide,
+          Argatonel!
+      Above it stars of heaven may rise
+          In witchery,
+      But none so wondrous as your eyes
+          Of mystery.
+      Argatonel—white wings to you!
+      Argatonel—white road to you!
+      O Silver Cloud that wraps the world,
+          My song to you!
+
+He marked the very heart-beat in which she knew the song and the
+singer, though she did not turn head or glance to where he was, and
+her attention was given entirely to converse with the chief of Mac
+Roigh and his lady wife who was an Irish princess out of Alba, where
+Irish tribes had gone in a far-off time.
+
+But when the song was ended, Dervail turned as if for mere courtesy,
+and spoke.
+
+“It is a fair, mellow voice, and a new song for us,” she said. “Bid
+the singer come for speech.”
+
+The steward of the castle brought forward Ardan, and told his name
+and errand, and showed the letter and spoke.
+
+“I bade him wait the return of our Lord of Breffni, and while he
+waits we seek to give him fair courtesies, and the usage of a chief’s
+son.”
+
+“You serve your lord well,” said the queen. “He shall be of our
+household. Whence come you, strange singer?”
+
+“Late from Rome and other far lands,” said Ardan, his eyes on the
+golden hem of her robe, and not lifted to her face, for the eyes of
+the others were looking, and had nought else to do but look.
+
+“Do pilgrims to Rome come back with songs of gallantry to bright
+eyes?” she asked, and smiled, and the younger maids pressed close to
+listen.
+
+“A pilgrim sometimes carries the songs, and the memory of eyes, on
+all the wide circle from the white strand of Erinn to the harbor of
+return,” said Ardan, and she laughed at that, and bade him to a seat
+near, and told him he should sing for her again, and he might teach
+one of the maidens the song of “Argatonel,” for the air was a sweet
+air, and a plaintive.
+
+Then, having shown him this much of courtesy, her mind in appearance
+strayed from him to matters of more import, but the youths and maids
+circled him, and had their pleasure in questions of far lands, and
+Roderick, son of Turlough, the King of Erinn, was there, and spoke
+of Rome and the scriptures of the Irish sent eastward to carry both
+religion and book craft to the Germanic peoples, and their neighbors,
+the Gauls.
+
+“For that purpose was Erinn the savior of learning for all Europe,”
+said the Mac Roigh. “In the wars of the Huns and the Northmen the
+great eastern land was swept bare of scholars, and Greek was lost to
+the Gallic tribes until our books and our men carried it back again.”
+
+“Strange to hear—that is,” mused Roderick. “As strange as to think
+that the Gaelic and the Latin we speak and read could be lost to our
+children in another day.”
+
+“It may be that the waters on every side of Erinn will be the wall
+to keep that loss far from us forever,” said Mac Roigh, “but in the
+great foreign land there is neither wall nor waters of separation.
+The tribes overrun and melt into each other, or they fight and
+harvest the enemy as grain in a field. It is all and always change
+there; thus were their settlements of religious men reaching out for
+the Irish scriptures made here in sanctuary. Gelasius the bishop was
+telling us of that at Clonfert.”
+
+“I had thought,” ventured Roderick, “that between the Danes and
+raiders of Norway and their Saxon mates, Erinn had work in plenty
+to save even life, without the strife to save learning enough to
+civilize her invaders. It’s a good gift they got from us when our
+saints taught them religion. And it was an evil payment they made to
+us with their ships full of raiders.”
+
+“Our well-beloved Dall Clairineach told me Erinn was set apart like a
+jewel in a lost casket,” said Ardan. “The old south sea-way to us was
+lost to the traders of Europe through the time of the great wars; our
+land was out of the path of battle and was forgot. When they found us
+again, it was in a different way—an island beyond an island in the
+sea! While they had fought and made destruction of all things, our
+men of many crafts and many books had worked to garner and build. All
+the learning was here to start anew the broken, foreign tribes.”
+
+“More than some godly souls made welcome!” said Roderick. “I ever had
+wonder on me to know what penance was given Forgal the saint when the
+Pope at Rome reproved his heresy in writing that the world was round
+instead of flat as we all are knowing it.”
+
+“Forgal had lived on the coast here at home,” said Cineath the
+cleric, “and took note that the masts of a vessel at sea are seen
+before the body of the vessel is seen. Yes, he was given strong
+reproof for saying it, but his writing was not changed because of
+that—he left it as the words were written. In all else it is known he
+was a true scholar, and a holy man—the blessing of God on his soul,
+and on us!”
+
+The talk went on thus, and the queen and her ladies listened. Ardan
+could feel her eyes on him, though never once did he meet her gaze
+with directness. He did not obtrude his speech, except as one of the
+men of rank asked of his journey afar, but he knew that he did not
+seem out of place near her throne, and had a pride in that.
+
+“You speak of the wise and holy abbot of Ardbreccan,” said Mac Roigh
+as the time for rest came, and the prayer of the cleric was ended.
+“Was he well known by you?”
+
+“He was as my father while he lived, and left me to his close friend
+when he died,” said Ardan. “His fancy was to make me as a scribe and
+genealogist—but why should I, a son of no family, turn genealogist?”
+
+“No family?” said Mac Roigh, and looked at him. “If you were not of
+blood and race, think you so renowned a man would have found in you
+the stuff for his science? And you wear the colors of a noble.”
+
+“Youth thinks not so much of these matters, and I was but a youth
+when I turned from that work,” said Ardan. “Instead of a devout
+priest with quill and ink pot I am a priest’s message bearer to royal
+houses.”
+
+“We will see you again tomorrow,” said the queen graciously. “If you
+ride, you could attend on the ladies who fancy sport with the falcons
+on the moor.”
+
+“I ride,” said Ardan.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Three days they were speaking like that before princes and chiefs,
+and three nights he was led by Kauth, her woman, to Kauth’s own
+curtained room of sleeping, and there Dervail came to him. Kauth was
+their guard, and their nights were of whispers. He heard there her
+dreams of strange greatness, and knew that Breffni’s crown was as a
+golden rung in a ladder she meant to climb.
+
+“And you, Ardan, will climb with me, for it is true what the chief
+of Mac Roigh has said: no youth below the noble rank of _aire-desa_
+wears the colors, and is taught music and chess, shooting and the
+riding of horses—swift riding beautiful! You are fitting in all ways,
+and have the trust of Diarmod, and that is a thing lucky. When the
+day comes I will have you near the throne and my eyes are made glad
+that you have visage and speech of a prince. It will be well for you.”
+
+“Your talk is in circles,” he said. “You are queen—yet you talk of
+the day when you win the throne! I come through all the wilderness
+for the reason that you were a soul in prison—and it is a different
+thing I find. You have freedom for the first time, and are using it
+on men.”
+
+“I do the things of my girl dreams,” she said. “I never was told how
+women had power and here I am learning. When I go to Diarmod—”
+
+“No,” he said, “it is not good to dream that. There is Prince of
+Breffni and Mor na Tuathal between you two! Her people are of
+greatness in power, and even a strong king might not stand out
+against them. She is his wife, and her brothers are his watchers.”
+
+Dervail lifted a feather, and tossed it upward.
+
+“She, and her brother abbots, and sainted priests will weigh not so
+much as that against my wish, when I wish it,” she said. “I am out of
+the convent walls forever and am learning the power of women—and the
+strength of it is sweet.”
+
+“And what answer to Diarmod who would save you again for sanctuary if
+your prayer was for that? for without your word he may not take this
+road.”
+
+“The time will come when I send him signal. It will be—it will be a
+white pearl of royal size. There are creels of jewels here! I will
+be sending one to him more beautiful than the one given by Gillebart
+of Limerick to Anselm the archbishop oversea—and that one was called
+a royal gift to the prince of the English church. Yes, it will be a
+pearl I will send when I send the call for him. It is a fine thing
+for me that I am able to bind my friends with a queen’s gifts.”
+
+“It—is not a queen to whom he was sending me, Dervail. It was a
+veiled maid of the cloisters, and she calling for champion.”
+
+She laughed low, and looked at him in pride.
+
+“Every man in this keep would be champion of mine if I called—and if
+I gave him my smiles,” she said, “but not one is strong to control
+all the others. I have given much thought to that matter and secret
+knowings have been spoken to me by a man of the Old Wisdom! Diarmod
+is, of all Erinn, the one of strength; and he will be stronger in
+days to come, for his gathering of spears will be a great gathering.
+The spears he gathers will make a new ruling for all Erinn. And I
+was knowing that thing before the day I laid sight on Tiernan the
+ravager.”
+
+“You are talking of dark, hidden things, Dervail, and they are
+forbidden.”
+
+“They are true things, and the stars tell them! A secret man, who has
+the name of Duffagan, told me that thing in Clonard. He was a scholar
+but no monk, and Kauth gives him fellowship. When O’Ruarc would in
+willingness bring any retainer of mine, I brought him as husband to
+Kauth, and that was saving his life. He has a fever on him for old
+books, and his was the task to carry north the annals most rare. He
+has the trust of O’Ruarc who thinks him a book fool; but he knows the
+stars and the tides, does Duffagan Mac Knea, and he knows the tides
+of men’s lives as he does the tides of the sea! When he tells me it
+is time to send call to Diarmod of the Spears, it will be gladness
+for me to be sending it. And until that day comes I am waiting and
+learning and dreaming my dreams.”
+
+“Mac Knea,” said Ardan, “that means ‘Son of the Night’—it is a
+curious name to put on a man.”
+
+“Yet it is fitting,” said Dervail, “else he would not be having it.
+Words have power, and the wrong word he would not have on him. He
+has a wisdom not to talk of to every bird crossing over, and none
+of these people are knowing it. They laugh at him, and call him the
+little dark spider sitting ever alone in a corner with watching eyes;
+but a spider spins webs beyond craft of mortal.”
+
+“It may be evil craft you praise in him! How then if you find it so?”
+
+“It is true craft,” she insisted. “Already it has proven itself on
+me. Of Tiernan’s hosting I was warned by him. I was ready on that
+day, and it was no weeping novice he found in me, but a king’s ward,
+with the rights of a noble. He was my key to the world, and I used
+him. I came not out of the walls a captive: it was the wife of the
+Prince of Breffni who rode beside him.”
+
+“A mystery are you to me, Dervail,” said Ardan, “and not the caged
+bird I crossed the kingdoms to find.”
+
+“The caged bird!” she said. “Ardan, have you memory of the snow bird
+you made of me in the cloisters?”
+
+“I have the memory—and the guilt,” he said. “When I listen to you I
+think I was ‘fey’ that night I worked on it. I had cold and hunger
+and my soul afire. Had I made likeness of the Holy Ones with such
+perfectness, the monks would have made a saint of me; instead of
+which they banished us both far as was in their power. And—they did
+not break down its white wings of ice quick enough to save it from
+the eyes of Diarmod!”
+
+She gave a little cry at that, but it was a sound of joyous triumph.
+
+“Again has Mac Knea proven true,” she said. “He told me it was by
+some work of another that Diarmod’s heart turned to thought of me.
+That I did not believe, and so I have said; but it was true! You,
+Ardan, made one image of me poised for flight—you must make for me
+another—when I have reached the end of the flight and picked my
+throne.”
+
+He thought she made a jest of him, but her beauty was so great that
+he was content to look in silence, as he thought that no queen ever
+told of in song or annal had such beauty as hers. Not fair Dierdre of
+the sorrows, or the wondrous Brighde who was goddess of beauty and
+art, or that Grania whose beauty and courage were as one when her
+beauty won a crown, and her courage dared toss it aside as a ball in
+her great game—and her game was Love.
+
+He sat thinking these things, and knowing that all the beauty of all
+of them could not equal the beauty of Dervail. It was seemly enough
+that her fame might indeed grow great as she hoped, and her name be
+widely known among the rulers of Erinn.
+
+So deep was his dreaming of it that he kept no count of his silence,
+or her curious looks.
+
+“Of what are your thoughts when you stare past me as if there was
+naught between yourself and the skins on the wall?” she asked, and he
+roused and looked at her.
+
+“I am thinking there was never your equal for beauty in all the wide
+world, Dervail,” he said simply, “neither them that are living, nor
+them who are gone the Way.”
+
+“You are the same Ardan,” and her smile was strange.
+
+“You think I fail to make note of beauty because I do not play the
+sighing champion for your favor,” he said, “but you read me wrong.
+As ward of Murtagh of Meath, and foster child of Donough of Orielle
+it is a pretty puzzle to me why each king was not striving to make
+best marriage for you with ally of his own. They shut you in high
+walls for life without choice of yours—and would have forgot you were
+living if—”
+
+“If the Son of the Night had not made the key to come to my cell!”
+
+“What would you say?”
+
+“Three new moons was his work to help it to come that way,” she
+whispered. “He made secret prayers for that thing—to the four ways he
+was sending that call for the man—and Tiernan was the man to hear it,
+and to come there, and Tiernan was the key!”
+
+“More like it was that Tiernan sent your master of druid lore to spy
+out the wealth of Clonard! You were part of that wealth, Dervail.”
+
+“I have wonder if that be true,” she mused, and her eyes were looking
+sideways in thought, but the red-rose lips curved over the white
+little teeth of her, and the blue eyes had laughing pride.
+
+“Even if it be so, the rule of Tiernan is over with that man, and
+mine is the rule,” she said. “He pins his life to my service. Tiernan
+is now but a man on our chessboard. And you are wrong in one thing:
+Tiernan knows nothing of Duffagan’s hidden wisdom; no, Tiernan has
+dread of such learning, for he was born at Whitsuntide, and it was
+foretold that by a man and a woman of druid craft would his downfall
+be if he followed their steps. That is why, after every hosting, or
+every great killing he makes faithful pilgrimage to the shrine of
+Phadraig. Great and rich gifts he will be leaving there to prove he
+is christian surely. No—Ardan, Tiernan of Breffni has fear, and has
+horror of all ‘Old Wisdom,’ and the life of Mac Knea would go out
+like a rushlight in the wind if Tiernan knew.”
+
+“And you! Is there no fear on you?”
+
+“At first there was fear—and great fear—but not now. The strength of
+the stars is with us, and that lifts and bears me above the fear.
+The ‘Old Wisdom’ has made me Queen of Breffni and that, Ardan, is my
+first move in the game, and it is a great game.”
+
+“If someone should be telling Tiernan O’Ruarc?”
+
+“I would kill that one, Ardan, and you alone have my secret.”
+
+“Suppose I tell it to Diarmod?”
+
+She looked at him, and thought a bit and laughed in silence.
+
+“That would be favor to me,” she decided. “He has no love for me—yet;
+though he has much thought of me. That telling would give him more
+thought, for I will spend one secret night on Tara with the man
+whose name will go down the centuries with mine! Take that saying
+to Diarmod for me, Ardan; it will tell him that no pale-blooded nun
+has come north to rule in Breffni. Let him give dreams to a night in
+Tara!”
+
+“Tara has been desolate these many generations.”
+
+“Yet his fathers did rule there, Ardan, and it may be my own did! It
+is the place for Ard-Ri of Erinn, and it may be a great rule will yet
+be built on its ruins.”
+
+“It is a dream, Dervail.”
+
+“Duffagan is saying all great things of life have been grown from
+dreams, and that the moon and the stars govern our dreams.”
+
+“I would see this priest of the forbidden ere I journey south, and
+tomorrow is the latest I may linger. It is no wish of mine to see
+Tiernan of Breffni, whose plunder is sacred things of altars.”
+
+“Yet are you loyal to Diarmod.”
+
+“What then? Diarmod gives endless wealth to holy houses. His own gold
+has built monasteries and churches for the glory of saints.”
+
+“Ardan,” said Dervail, gently smiling, “all this is truth, yet
+there are other truths of him; when a lord of the south refused his
+daughter to Diarmod in the days of Diarmod’s youth, he gathered
+spears and took her with the veil and the vows of a nun on her! In
+amorous fellowship she was held in his castle and wedded there to a
+lord of his choosing. That is the custom of a king who has power,
+Ardan! He takes what he wants! I hear much of the power of Diarmod of
+Leinster. He has their hate, but their tales are tales of praise to
+me, for they tell of his strength.”
+
+“Their hate may build untruths against him. When was this ravaging?”
+
+“In Kildare, and her name was Dhira. Her house was the house of
+Cahsadhe, and one hundred and seventy lives were sent back to God in
+her capture. She lived a hidden woman after that time, but the story
+could not be hidden. That was before your birth, or mine, Ardan.”
+
+“Dall Clairineach surely had knowing of that if it was a true thing,
+Dervail, yet yours is the first word of it I am hearing.”
+
+“It is not for nothing Diarmod founds monasteries and religious
+houses! You have been bred in them, Ardan, and it is a place for
+holding secret things.”
+
+Kauth slipped through the arras to tell them the cocks were crowing
+and the old day was gone. She looked strangely at Ardan, and to
+Dervail, when alone, she said the youth had much of beauty, too much
+for such distance of converse as was his custom.
+
+“True enough,” said Dervail, unbraiding the pearls in her hair. “But
+there are other men for other uses, and this one has such honestness
+he would be useless to me except in his own spirit. Because I tell
+him much, he thinks I tell him all; and in his prayers my name will
+not be forgotten.”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Kauth, who had been lay sister of Clonard, was given higher place
+than the place of a serving-woman in the castle of O’Ruarc, and her
+dress held three colors. She rode abroad with Dervail when the days
+were fine, and ever stood between when man or woman made approach to
+the hall of the queen.
+
+Thus she rode obedient with the glad riders of the springtime in the
+forest, and with adroitness found way to lose herself with the queen
+and Ardan, and all three rode in the edge of the great wood, and
+looked out on the moor where women with their young were gathering
+gorse bloom and marsh marigold to keep luck in the house when hung
+over the door on May Eve. Others were plucking primrose for the
+doorstep, and youths were seen bearing holly and rowan and a young
+tree of the yew for the circle dance of the many stars around the
+Still Star of the north.
+
+“It would seem a strange nightfall to be out in the wilderness,” said
+Ardan. “All christians are together elsewhere on the eve of Beltain.”
+
+“Duffagan Mac Knea gives me word that the prayers are the same, and
+only the difference is that saints’ worship is given instead of
+druid. The dance does not change, and the harp music does not change,
+and the faith does not change. I have spoken at every chance with
+these people concerning all things, and not yet has Duffagan told me
+anything not of easy proof.”
+
+“But the castle cleric, Cineath, has he no reproof?”
+
+“He knows Duffagan only as student and scribe, who has gone into the
+foreign world to the shores of the Nile, and tells no cleric of the
+deeper things learned there.”
+
+They had reached a hill of three circles, and Kauth, who rode apart,
+came close and slipt from her horse.
+
+“No animal must press foot up above,” she said. “So said Duffagan to
+me. Since the end of yesterday has he been here, and fasting. It is
+new moon, and Beltain.”
+
+Dervail sat on her white horse and looked up at the steep sides of
+the hill, and looked beside her at a huge square stone, pierced, and
+once rudely carven, but now covered with lichen gray and green and
+russet. It was high as her own head and she on the back of the horse.
+Other stones of the same bigness were seen as if standing guard
+around the circle of a great earth temple.
+
+“There were great men in the world when that thing was done,” she
+said. “It was not two or three people who were coming here then to
+take note of the sky and the clouds over the new moon.”
+
+Ardan said no word. He saw Kauth take from under her cloak a white
+pigeon wound about with white and saffron bands. She placed it in the
+hands of Dervail and pointed upward.
+
+“Not empty-handed must you go there,” she said. “Pluck a rowan or a
+holly branch for the hand of your friend. I have my happiness in lack
+of knowledge, and will be your guard of the horse below.”
+
+A dim path went up through the wood clothing the steep, and at the
+first terrace they saw other tall stones like sentinels circling the
+hill. Ardan felt as if he had passed some strange dread portal into
+an ancient life; far above he saw that which he had heard of in Gaul
+but never dreamed to see in Erinn.
+
+It was a temple in the open with the sky for roof. Great squared
+pillars arose in a circle, and to the east a sanctuary was made by
+a huge slab overhead and two uprights on either side. An altar was
+there on a raised floor of stone, and Duffagan the silent, in white
+robe and saffron bands, stood there watching the sinking sun, and
+striking flint on flint craftily where the silken strands of the wild
+flax made tinder.
+
+A tiny spiral of smoke curled and drifted along the stone slab above
+him, and the two at the edge of the circle stood still and spoke no
+word.
+
+A curious hoop of hazel wands was beside the altar, and two balls
+suspended at either side—one of yellow, one white; twigs of rowan
+were there, and twigs of yew.
+
+The priest lifted the hoop and whirled it sunwise through the smoke,
+and Ardan knew it was symbol of sun and moon circling thus through
+the smoke of the earth altar.
+
+As the last fire of the sun went beyond the great sea of mystery, the
+blaze of the temple leaped up—it was as if stolen out of the western
+sky!
+
+Dervail thrust spray of holly into the hand of Ardan, and went
+forward with her offering.
+
+Ardan could hear the low murmur of a prayer or incantation as water
+from a shallow cup in the stone was sprinkled in a circle about the
+slender blaze.
+
+      Sun and Sky,
+      Moon and Earth,
+      Fire and Water,
+          Living Green!
+
+As the priest lifted his eyes, Dervail went forward with her strange
+offering. Without fear she walked, yet with a look of question. And
+Ardan knew it was for the first time.
+
+“As Life I make my offer,” said Dervail.
+
+“As Life I give it again to the elements by which life endures.”
+
+The voice of the man had a sweet singing note in it by which Ardan
+was won in surprise. He had expected roughness or harshness in an
+un-christian priest, yet Duffagan, who was also “Son of the Night,”
+was gentle beyond belief.
+
+So amazed was he at this that he scarce noted the firm, quick stroke
+of the flint knife until the wings fluttered once, and then were held
+close and steady while the blood trickled from the slit throat to the
+altar where the fire was.
+
+Dervail stood, serene, yet pale of face, for it was a place of
+curious imaginings. Ardan saw her cast quick look over her shoulder,
+and knew that, like him, she felt the movement, or the very breathing
+of a multitude circling that high place of ancient mysteries. Once he
+thought he heard the sound of shrill singing far off, to the tramp
+of thousands of feet, but in another moment he knew it was a distant
+shepherd’s pipe, and the wind hurtling through the forest below.
+
+Wind caught the flame and blew it against the hazel hoop of the
+symbols. Dervail led Ardan forward.
+
+“Once I was to come to this place where you read the stars,
+Duffagan,” she said. “I am here to keep faith, and I bring my one
+friend who makes offer beside me.”
+
+Ardan’s hand held out the branch of holly, and Duffagan stripped the
+leaves, and let them fall one by one on the blaze. His watching of
+each new flame was curious. He did not speak until there were left
+only red embers of the twigs.
+
+“Good it is that your soul is strong in faith, O Queen,” spoke the
+strange, gentle, even voice. “The trial times of life will call for
+much strength of yours, and it is well to prove faiths. I have fasted
+and prayed here, and have read the sky at this new time of the moon,
+but this is not a moon in which change will come to you. It is a moon
+for patience. Your friend who has come as a new star in your sky is
+safest if his going is soon. There are watchful eyes in the head of
+the cleric of Breffni. Take you leave as if careless of time, but
+ride for life when you have turned a hill!”
+
+“Cineath the cleric?” mused Dervail. “He is a ferret for Tiernan. I
+will provide for you extra horse on the way, Ardan.”
+
+Ardan gave curious glances to the man whose words she heeded, and
+made promise to act on. Dark he was, as his name denoted—dark, and
+small, and gentle—and his dark eyes had a strange, withdrawn look as
+if looking at the two mortals, yet listening to unseen things!
+
+“The Great Bear of the stars points again to the east at fall of
+night,” he said. “It is the mid-sign between heat and cold, and is
+the time for searching. The old learning has been lost for the reason
+that no royal protector dare stand against the craft of the saints
+and their followers. But many, Dervail, will have your name in their
+speech, and you will cause much wonder in the minds of many. That
+is a thing I read in all castings for you, and it may come to pass
+that you will be the royal one who dares openly sanction that ancient
+hidden wisdom to which each simple heart makes secret prayer.”
+
+“With aid from you, and guided by the powers unseen, I have brought
+here in secret my vow offering,” said Dervail. “That is my pledge—a
+fair white pledge—not to go backward on the road we are walking. In
+one year—two years—a thousand men and women will face sunwise about
+the circle where we alone stand now. You will be the honored priest
+of divinings, the thousands will give you their strength when their
+fear is lifted—and lifted it will be if you show me the time and the
+road for Tara.”
+
+“That will come—and strife will come—and terrors. Great hostings will
+come, and kings will fall; but you will live through all, and your
+name—your name—it is a name whispered secretly now, but in days to
+come there will be shouting of that name—Dervail—Dervail—Dervail!”
+
+His speech was half whispered, and he said her name as if repeating
+echoes of it afar off. A faint smile was on his lips and his face
+serene.
+
+For the first time Ardan spoke.
+
+“For what reason is Tara the key to any greatness when Tara itself
+was cursed by Ruadan the saint, and is deserted ground, and crumbling
+walls in our day?”
+
+Duffagan did not at once make reply. It was as if he had drawn out of
+hearing. Then he came back and spoke.
+
+“Tara even in desolation is a word of power. Images of greatness
+belong in that place—and some mortals see them! Tara is the mid-court
+of dominion, and the Ard-Ri should face the sunrise from that center.
+Tara is a symbol, as are these things before me symbols of the
+heavens and the earthly life. By symbols spirit is caught in the
+silence and held, breathless, for the union with knowledge. Tara
+holds a message for the woman or man who would rule Erinn—and the
+message cannot be carried to another. Each finds there that which
+his own soul can circle. Dervail has made record that it is the rule
+desired by her. My task is to study stars, and phases of the moon,
+and find the safe time for such journey.”
+
+“Will he, my friend, be beside me?” asked Dervail, and Duffagan
+peered at her in the falling twilight.
+
+“He will not be there. His road touches yours strangely, and a veil
+between! Is he of your kindred?”
+
+“I have no kindred,” said Ardan.
+
+“I think that is not true,” said Duffagan, “for I see you bear
+shadows or burdens of kindred.”
+
+“Where do you see these things?”
+
+“I read it in the leaves of your holly when the flame curled them
+into shapes before burning; if not kindred to Dervail, it is to some
+mortal close to Dervail.”
+
+“We are going, Duffagan,” she said. “The dark will be coming, and the
+spies of Tiernan on the road. I come to the sunset of Beltain because
+of your prayers here, and in other days many will follow me.”
+
+“They will,” he said. “I hear the voices of many calling your name.”
+
+He held his hands out over her head in blessing, and made gesture of
+the way they should circle the altar and the path of descent. He did
+not look at them again, and as they passed without the great circle
+they looked back. He was holding at arms’ length the hoop of the
+hazel, and looking through it at the faint silver line of the new
+moon against the dark purple of the western sky.
+
+Dervail drew near to Ardan, and laid her hand on his as if to know
+a mortal beside her, for red light from the sun long gone reflected
+itself on a cloud in midheaven and fell on Duffagan. It turned his
+robe and the stones about him into soft light of flame—and left a
+strange image.
+
+“It is as if a furnace of fire had opened at his feet, lighting him
+only, and leaving all the other pillars in cold gray,” said Ardan, as
+he watched the light fade again.
+
+“Strange signs follow Duffagan, or, does his thought compel them?
+He has fasted since set of last night’s sun, and will have no feast
+until tomorrow. All this he does for the craft he follows.”
+
+“His belief is strong as though his birth had been in Phadraig’s day,
+and not in this,” said Ardan. “It is a strange end to my last day
+with you, Dervail.”
+
+She pressed his arm and walked beside him into the shadows of the
+wood.
+
+“Make me a song of this place, Ardan. A song of the old, old days
+when sharp edges were yet on these great stones, and this hill was
+saffron and white with the robes of Ancient Faith people.”
+
+“That is far to go for a song, Dervail. I have made you songs most of
+my years, but this is not the place I would seek for songs of you,
+lest they be sad songs.”
+
+The wife of Tiernan peered at him from under her golden mane.
+
+“Is it fear on you, Ardan?”
+
+“I think it is not fear, but this mystic hill is not a place to seek
+lightly on the eve of Beltain.”
+
+“What could come to us?” she asked and clung to his arm. “Ardan—many
+times you have come close in my thoughts of old in my dreams. But the
+words of Duffagan of the veil between—what meant he by that? Look,
+Ardan, what other man would not turn warm when my warm hand touched
+him? Yet you are cold; what is it, Ardan? Did some veil indeed fall
+between at that altar? See, my hand did not touch you as we went up;
+yet were we more close than now, Ardan.”
+
+“Duffagan has given you dreams and fears, and it is best not to speak
+of them now in this place,” he said.
+
+“What could come to us?” she repeated.
+
+“What could not? Is that altar jewel you wear so holy that it is
+strong enough to guard you in all places?”
+
+She drew away and stared at him, and drew her robe more closely over
+her breast.
+
+“Have you ‘the sight,’ Ardan? Times are when I think it. You know
+that great jewel of white diamond and red ruby?”
+
+“I heard of it at Armagh. It was the wondrous star of Clonard, and
+strange wealth to wear riding the forest.”
+
+She laughed at that, and shook forward the gold of her hair over her
+breast. They were again near to Kauth, who stood with the horses.
+
+“Tiernan forbade that the altar jewels see the light of day in his
+absence,” she confessed. “But what use has a pilgrim of penitence
+with gems of richness?”
+
+He did not answer, but helped her on the horse. The question of the
+jewel had changed the momentary love-light in her eyes, or the claim
+of warmth for warmth. He knew she had been touched by fear in the
+druid circle, and it had driven her to his arms if he would have her
+there.
+
+Kauth looked at them as they came down, but had no question. Though
+drawn to Duffagan as a mate for his comfort, she had no wish to know
+the secret things of his dark delvings.
+
+They rode hard and fast until in sight of the castle, and then Ardan
+spoke.
+
+“I will carry your message south, Dervail, and I will go tonight
+instead of on the morrow. I have seen your hopes and your dark road
+to them.”
+
+“And your thoughts are baleful and apart from me!”
+
+“No. Call on me for that which I dare to serve you. But you have
+taken yourself out of the world we know together. It may be I cannot
+follow. Your strange Duffagan says there is a veil between our roads
+of life—and neither of us can prove that this day. But take deep
+thought to what you do, Dervail. Duffagan spoke of symbols, and I saw
+one when you offered the white-feathered thing there for the altar
+knife.”
+
+“Ardan, what did you see?” and he knew she was thinking of that
+strange _crowded_ feeling within the circle. The unlaid ghosts of the
+centuries swept to the altar at the call of blood.
+
+“I saw the white bird of a boy’s dream of beauty in a cloister. I saw
+the caged bird I rode north to seek sight of, and to lead spears of
+aid to—and I saw a queen who offered that bird as token for ambitions
+of earth power. It was only a symbol, Dervail, but you placed all in
+one under the knife there! Your white bird was a symbol instead of
+the children other women, in other ages, have borne up to that druid
+rath for sacrifice.”
+
+“Ardan!” and her white hands were flung out toward him. “That will be
+the veil between, and I will be a lone woman—terribly lone.”
+
+“You will be queen of beauty and power, Dervail. But put your all
+of white dreams and of heart-love on that altar, and you will then
+indeed be alone in life and in death!”
+
+She drooped there, her hair a veil about her in the gloaming, and her
+hands clasped over her knee.
+
+Two kerns ran out the castle gate and stood with lights at either
+side to light her entrance. She straightened and tossed back her
+hair, and rode forward in pride.
+
+“Yet the dream of Tara is a great dream for a life,” she said.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+The harvest of the year was not yet garnered when the pearl of
+Dervail went south to Diarmod of Leinster by the hand of Duffagan.
+
+It found him flushed with the victory of Moanmore against Turlough
+O’Brian, and strong with the thought that O’Conor of Connaught owed
+him and owed Meath too much of grace to lift sword or spear if the
+sacking of Clonard Abbey by O’Ruarc was avenged at last by the lords
+of Leinster.
+
+In every secret way Diarmod and Malachi, Prince of Meath, had
+gathered strength and made bonds in friendship for that hosting when
+the time came, and the messenger of Dervail told the day O’Ruarc was
+going north on a hosting of his own against a rebellious sub-chief
+who had taken sides with O’Lochlainn of Ulster in his claims to the
+rule of Ard-Ri of Erinn as against Turlough O’Conor, whose word was
+the most weighty in all but the northlands.
+
+The days of going and the days of return had been reckoned with care
+by Duffagan, and there were plenty for the task.
+
+As to a joyous fair rode the men of the spears of Diarmod, and he,
+kingly in pride, in the midst of them. Years sat light on him, for
+the message of Dervail had brought back his youth. It had come at a
+time when the music of life was dulled by the discords of rule, and
+the watchful eyes of Conor, the heir-apparent. But the dream of the
+forbidden maid brought deep longings, and her secret call to him
+brought again the fairy songs of youth to his soul.
+
+Fierce was the assault on Breffni, and lightning quick the conquest
+of the castle where Kauth had seen to it that every lock was loosed.
+
+No woman was touched but the wife of O’Ruarc, who was bidden forth
+with her chosen woman, as hostage to Diarmod of Leinster.
+
+In garb royal, clad in the cloak of seven colors, walked Dervail out
+from under the roof of the prince who had been her Key!
+
+The men of Leinster and Meath gave long looks to her as she walked
+between the rows of them to the champing racer straining on his bit,
+and their eyes turned to each other, dazzled by the brilliant beauty
+of her. No such hostage had ever been given from prince to king in
+Erinn.
+
+It was the hand of Diarmod touched her foot in the mounting, and they
+two were speechless as their hands met. It was the wild dream coming
+true, and the stars read by Duffagan had all her faith in that moment!
+
+Kauth mounted her horse, and among her goods fastened to the saddle
+was the gift-cup given by hand of Diarmod in the castle of Donough.
+The sight of it helped Dervail to her voice.
+
+“It has not been drunk from under that roof,” she said, “but now we
+will be drinking from it again—and at the well of Nemnach in Tara we
+will drink.”
+
+“Your word is the word—and will be,” said Diarmod the king.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Murtagh, King of Meath, knew nought of the hosting until the spears
+of Leinster were north of Ath-Luain, and there was none for comfort
+but Donough of Orielle—and him only with the hope that Dervail would
+seek shelter from all men in the abbey of Mellifont.
+
+But Malachi, Prince of Meath, rode back the richer for the plundering
+of Breffni, and spoke his content at the sisterhood claimed for
+Dervail.
+
+“No queen so queenly in Erinn,” he made boast, “and it is a foolish
+thing to hide, as you have hid—her daughterhood! Take pride that she
+is of our line, even though a shadow is on her dam—whom no one is
+knowing! She will yet be queen for Diarmod—and our house remembered
+because of her name.”
+
+“That has been a long, dark, fear of mine!” said Murtagh the king.
+
+But Malachi had no knowledge of the secret held by the older man, and
+thought it a foolish saying.
+
+“Meath has been made strong for us by this act,” he boasted. “The
+troubles of yours with the clerics will be at an end, for Diarmod has
+made pledges for Meath. From Clonard to the Shannon you are to be
+protected by hostage; from Clonard eastward to the sea I am to divide
+the rule. This makes stronger the border; thus much of gain already
+for your tie—whatever it be—with the wife of Breffni.”
+
+Murtagh frowned at the words and walked apart, deep in thought ere he
+spoke.
+
+“I wish death in peace,” he said, “and I can have that best by
+forgetting the tie. Pray God she makes choice of a cloister!”
+
+But she made choice of a different thing; from the rath of Malachi,
+whom she now called “brother,” she went for some secret thing to the
+ancient rath of the Kings at Tara on Midsummer’s Eve. There went
+Diarmod to keep tryst with her, and drink from the well of Nemnach.
+
+Until the morning star shone over the plain to the east they were
+alone on the height where his forefathers had been high kings through
+the centuries, and the look on his face was a look of entrancement
+when he came down from that place, and Dervail beside him.
+
+“She is my mate, and no woman before has been that to me,” he said
+to Malachi. “The clerics must find a way for it, for she is queen to
+me.”
+
+Yet, because of fear for her at the hands of Conor, the son of Mor,
+who was moving toward death, he took her not among his own children
+at Ferns, but in gorgeousness and much comfort placed her in the
+castle of O’Faelain in Kildare with a loyal guard, and the hostages
+of a princess claimed for her safety from Rhudri, lord of the castle.
+
+Thus came the daughter of Dyveke south into the region where the
+Danes had their holdings under Leinster, and where her mother had
+cursed the land, and all kings and all clans of Erinn!
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Great wealth had been taken out of Breffni by Leinster—not only her
+own dower wealth, but rich plunderings of Clonard, and the droves of
+cattle taken were the wonder of the country in crossing.
+
+Like fire in the forest after falling of the leaves ran the story
+of that hosting, and of the vengeance on Breffni for the sacking of
+Clonard. Murtagh of Meath, and Donough of Orielle, and Duighal the
+prior went into prayer and deep converse over it. All things within
+human power had been done by them for the hiding of Dervail—yet had
+she ridden free and set their world afire!
+
+But prayers of piety could do naught to stem the flood of rage
+unloosed by her ambitions and the pillaging of Breffni. Turlough
+O’Conor, the high king, took sides with O’Ruarc. Erinn was divided
+in the struggle. The enemies made by Diarmod in his proud domination
+turned their spears against him, and annihilation threatened on every
+side. Turlough, the High King, sent a priest to deliver the doom of
+Leinster unless Dervail and her dower were returned to O’Ruarc of
+Breffni. And troops of Breffni followed the messenger.
+
+Diarmod raged like a wounded bull.
+
+“My men will die for her, though they may not save her,” he said. “I
+cannot be the one to make choice; that is hers to make. But the army
+of Turlough and Breffni have crossed the Shannon.”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Rhudri of O’Faelain came riding a foaming steed, and stumbled, dazed
+and spent, before Diarmod.
+
+“My plea is to serve you in some other way,” he begged. “More than my
+troops are needed in the guarding of Queen Dervail for you. Her name
+has carried on the wind to strange places, even to the cells of monks
+in the wilderness. One of them, old and blind, and housed for charity
+in my hall, made his way in secret to her chair, an evil knife under
+his monk’s robe, and—”
+
+“Harm to Dervail?” thundered Diarmod, and the speaker quailed—“the
+lives of your household will answer!”
+
+“No harm has come to her beyond the baleful deed done under her
+eyes. Her dark friend, Duffagan, gave his blood instead of hers, and
+wounded the monkish murderer to the death. But the dying monk said
+some things of horror for her ears, and all who lavished courtesies
+on that fair lady now flee from her! It is a mystery—like rats
+seeking holes, they scatter as I turn my back. To save her there in
+life and dignity is beyond the power of man without guards—without
+servants.”
+
+“What is their fear?”
+
+“They will not voice it. May happen it is the death of the monk, or
+his words not heard by me. It may be the death of Duffagan of whom
+they had great awe. At her feet it is he died, and her own robe red
+with the blood of them both, yet there was no shrinking of her and no
+scream.”
+
+“She is a fitting queen, and royal her daring,” muttered Leinster,
+“and it is a baleful task to speak any going backward on the road for
+her! There is none to bear that word but one friend, and he would be
+loth, though constant. You, Donall, send to Glendalough for Ardan,
+the fosterling of Donough.”
+
+The lord of O’Faelain put out his hand to stay the son of Diarmod.
+
+“That message has gone on swift feet,” he said. “It was the first
+request of Queen Dervail.”
+
+“Gone? And for what purpose?”
+
+Donall the Illegitimate looked at him and gave quiet but scornful
+laughter.
+
+“Ardan has a good shape and good looks,” he said.
+
+The great hand of Diarmod smote him on the mouth, and the dirk of
+Diarmod was out.
+
+Conor, the heir-apparent, caught his arm and was flung aside, and
+Rhudri of O’Faelain stepped between.
+
+“Take time with you in counsel, Diarmod, ere you slay a son for sake
+of a hostage you will be forced to return.”
+
+“Hostage?” said Diarmod, glowering.
+
+“Is not that word the right word?” asked Rhudri. “It is the only
+one used for our queen guest in our keep. Connaught and Breffni are
+moving their troops to win her return, for the loss of Dervail is a
+greater blow to the pride of O’Ruarc than the loss of Longford and
+Leitrim. Is not hostage the wise word? Hostages are ever to be given
+back again, and in safety.”
+
+“She was hostage of Destiny to me, and not to be given back ever in
+life,” said Diarmod.
+
+Conor got Donall, with his bleeding mouth, out of the hall, and
+Diarmod sat steeped in gloom, turning over in his mind the attack on
+the life of Dervail. The word “hostage” as applied to her to cover
+her flight was a bitter word and—heavier than all—the thought of
+her going again out of his life, and she the glory of his dream of
+kingship over Erinn!
+
+He arose, frowning, and with set jaws.
+
+“No other must tell her since it must be told. I ride with you.”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Ardan was first at the castle of O’Faelain, and there was sickness on
+his soul for what he met in that place.
+
+Herdsmen and kern, ploughman and smith, raged like a sea of storm
+about the walls of Faelain, and the name of Dervail was shouted
+in hate heard even at a distance. At times it would die away to a
+murmur, and then some wild voice would shrill aloud and the wave of
+sound would again roll upward—“Dervail the Shadow! Dervail of dark
+crafts! Dervail, the curse of Leinster!”
+
+At sight of the scholar’s robe of Ardan and the foam-wet steed, the
+mob made way, and held parley.
+
+“Be our spokesman to the white slut who is harlot of two kingdoms,”
+they said, “and we will let you pass safely. You are of the
+cells—they will let you speak. Tell the woman, and tell the governor,
+that none of our men will fight to hold her for Diarmod. The High
+King of Erinn is against him, and much of Leinster is against him. A
+free road to her if she takes the Breffni way; and death on her if
+she makes a stand in Kildare! A holy man is done to death in there by
+her dark comrade, and the curse of all saints is against her forever
+for that! Dervail! Dervail, the malediction of men!”
+
+They let him pass, and inside the gates white, stricken faces turned
+to him. The guard held spear and battle-axe against a rush of the
+crazed household. They pointed dumbly within when he spoke the name
+of Dervail. Only one man of the guard led the way, and he halted at
+the portal of her chamber.
+
+A horrid weeping was heard within, quivering sobbing and choking. It
+was the woman Kauth, who had seen Duffagan dragged into the court
+below, and there hung in ghastly manner against the castle wall for
+the killing of Kieran Dall.
+
+But the more ghastly thing was that Kieran had not yet died. He was
+coming out of a swoon of pain, and was prodded by Dervail, who sat
+beside him, dagger in hand, and steadily, in a dull, weary tone,
+making question.
+
+“You lie, monk, but I would have you damn your soul with other lie
+at the last breath! What reason to ban my race more than the race of
+another? What reason to ban my mother? Speak ere I rack your wounds!
+What reason—blind monk?”
+
+“The reason—the reason—Dyveke—is—proving—itself—in you! Your hand
+gave death—to him—to the father of your child, ere you went to your
+lover Thorold, fierce Dyveke!”
+
+“Again you lie yourself to hell! The name Dyveke is a name I never
+heard; I am a queen—Dervail the queen! Speak again the name of the
+race of the father of Dervail—speak!”
+
+The woman Kauth never ceased the dreary, smothered keione of
+despairing, but neither Dervail nor the man with the black wounds
+gave heed. He had again sunk half out of life, and the breath of him
+was a hollow rattle.
+
+“Speak, monk!” And again the prick of the knife was in his flesh.
+“You said it; say it again! The race of ancient kings? The branch
+sanctified in secret ways? It exalts me, that blood—and you shall
+speak! I am Dervail—I would know of that race. Speak! Speak again!”
+
+There was a struggle, a twitching of the body, and a whisper.
+
+“The race—dies out! Hark you! I hear wild waves on the shore; they
+are shouting curses—hark you! Dervail—Dervail! Dervail! The world
+rocks with that name of evil—
+
+      For eric in breaking
+      - - - -
+      A thousand years’ yoke
+      On the bent neck - - of Erinn!
+      A - - thousand years’ tribute of blood
+      - - - Inis Fair!”
+
+Then there was only the rattle—and after that no whisper, and his
+head lolled sideways and was pricked by the dagger to no good. And
+Ardan made the sign of the cross at sight of the thing she did, and
+caught her hand in horror.
+
+“Dervail! He has gone to God—and was a holy man!” “He has gone to
+hell—and was a liar! Also he was a cheat! He died too soon, not
+telling all—only fragments of his hate for me. He brought death to
+Duffagan, and he brought that pack of wolves howling below—and
+without Duffagan the road I crave is a dark way for me! Is Diarmod
+dead that these things are?”
+
+It had been a long night and a morning she had sat there with her
+blind victim, and she viewed his dead face with disdain. And from
+weariness she was as in a daze. She looked at the blackened dagger,
+and again at Kieran Dall.
+
+“Who was he that a place was made for him at the table of a noble?”
+she asked. “Who was he that he was filled with hate against me in the
+lands of Leinster?”
+
+“He was a prince whose name was hidden under the robe, Dervail.”
+
+“Learn all for me and tell me! He made speech of things to madden my
+soul! I want Diarmod, and I want you to go to him! Hearken to the
+cries down there! It has been since sunrise—and ever more coming.
+Hearken to my name! Dervail! Dervail!”
+
+“That is the thing prophesied by Duffagan, whom they call your ‘Dark
+Comrade.’ He told you in Breffni he heard the echoes of your name in
+countless voices on the winds.”
+
+“That is true,” and she crouched there looking over her shoulder at
+him in a strange and fearful way; “but—but _Ardan_—this calling is in
+hate! They are not human beings down there—they are a hunting pack,
+howling for victim!”
+
+“They are mortals, indeed, Dervail, but they are made mad by fear. An
+army of men are bearing shields against Leinster for the sake of you,
+and there is only one road of life and safety open for your feet.”
+
+“And that road, Ardan?”
+
+“That road is north into Breffni.”
+
+“No! Not with Diarmod for my safety; not with his words of bondage
+still sounding in my ear!”
+
+She rose to her feet as if the very words gave strength to her, and
+her eyes looked proud even while her face went pale at the louder
+screams of fierceness down below.
+
+“Dervail, that dream has died with your Dark Comrade; such is my
+thought. Diarmod is no longer safety for you. His own life he may
+not be saving. Between you two, all Leinster and Meath can be made
+desolate.”
+
+“What then? When he is triumphant, more than Leinster may be his. His
+vows to me were made in Tara, and who more fit than he to rule again
+in the ancient place of the great kings? No! The dreams did not end
+with Duffagan—they endure! Beside Diarmod I will ride to find them!”
+
+Ardan turned to Kauth.
+
+“Bring cover for the dead,” he said, “and robe your queen for a
+dreary journey—and a speedy one.”
+
+Kauth covered the dead face of Kieran and then backed, sullen and
+defiant, against the wall.
+
+“I have no queen in this place,” she said. “Because of her, Duffagan
+is beheaded, and his head on a pike below. I saw what I saw done
+on that holy man who is dead, and I hear what you hear below in
+the shoutings. I think it is truth they tell down there in their
+cries—she is a malediction! Death to all is her one thought, so that
+she walks safe—that is her thought. In thrall to her was held Tiernan
+and Duffagan—they were a bridge for her feet. But I am no longer in
+thrall to her! I have seen unholy and unlucky things, and the words
+of dead Kieran are a curse against Dervail for always. If you, Lord
+Ardan, are brave to walk beside her now—you are the only man brave
+enough for it.”
+
+“Madness has fallen on her,” said Dervail. “The death of her man took
+her little wit.”
+
+“Not all of it,” said Kauth, who had a most evil look with her red
+eyes and swollen face, and her grin of malice. “This is the one man
+who never took the gift of you at your offer—and he is the only one
+of all your lovers to brave your enemies to reach you this day of
+your days.”
+
+“Go!” screamed Dervail in white fury. “Scullion, whom I lifted and
+strove to make human! Join your mates below ere I have you thrown to
+them from the battlements!”
+
+The woman slunk to the far end of the room of shadows, but cowered
+there, fearful of going down to the screaming mob. Dervail turned
+away and covered her ears with white, jeweled hands to shut out the
+clamor.
+
+“Ardan,” she whispered, “it is not all a lie she tells. They _have_
+scurried away from me like rats after a singeing! Rhudri of the
+Faelain has gone, and every woman of them is out of sight.”
+
+“I know the truth of that,” he said, “for the men of the woodland are
+bearing brush and straw and great timbers. They will smoke you out
+unless you take the Breffni road with me, and the choice must be now.”
+
+“The choice?” she muttered, and walked wildly from window to window
+looking down on the horrid, waiting, upturned faces. “The choice?
+Ardan—soul of me always! Yours was the choice for me, and mine the
+rebellious heart! Yours was the true vision, for the vision of
+Duffagan has led me here to this trap! Yours was the hand I should
+have held to; yours was the white way for me, Ardan, the white way of
+the sun; and I am at last saying it!”
+
+She flung herself on his shoulder, and her tears of self-pity touched
+his hand as he took her in gentleness toward the seat by the window.
+
+But the seat was not reached, for the reason that Diarmod and
+O’Faelain came into the room at that minute, and Diarmod, in a rush
+of rage, caught the shoulder of Dervail and flung her until she
+stumbled and fell across the dead body of Kieran.
+
+“The shouts below are the shouts of the prophets,” he said, “O royal
+harlot, who, in making choice, passes no man by!”
+
+Ardan turned toward the king with lifted hand of protest, and Diarmod
+whipped out his dirk at that moment and thrust downward a mighty blow.
+
+“You to the white way of your choice!” he said. “You to your white
+road—the two of you!”
+
+Ardan fell under the weight of the blow, and blood stained his white
+garment, but a strange thing chanced at his falling, for the dagger
+was caught and wrested from the king’s hand.
+
+“A deep stroke, Diarmod, and an unlucky one. The youth is under
+misjudgment; my faith on that!” said O’Faelain, lifting Ardan and
+tearing open the white undergarment.
+
+He crossed himself at what he saw there—and it was strange enough.
+
+The slender blade of the king did not go deep for the reason that
+the point was bedded in a golden ring, and the ring on a golden flat
+chain fastened around the neck of Ardan.
+
+O’Faelain undid the chain and handed it to Diarmod with the dagger
+pendant.
+
+“God and Mary have no wish that you do murder or vengeance for this
+woman—and the sign of it is here,” he said.
+
+Ardan struggled to his feet—bloodstained and pale, his hand
+staunching the wound.
+
+“You have robbed me of a thing precious,” he said. “To a king and a
+lord of Erinn it can have little worth, but as for me, if it is my
+time to die, I would wish to go into death with that token.”
+
+Diarmod looked from the gold ring on which there was graven a circled
+star and words in _ogham_ and as his eyes met Ardan’s eyes, he was
+more blanched than Ardan, and his voice was husky and strange.
+
+“How is this precious to you—this thing more ancient than you can
+know?” he asked.
+
+“It was on the breast of my mother at her death, and more than that I
+do not know. Dall Clairineach bade me use it as a token to any king
+of Leith Mogh if danger threatened me. For myself I would not use
+it—but if it has virtue I will use it that Dervail the queen rides
+safe.”
+
+“She will ride free,” said Diarmod in a dull, strange way. “Look,
+Rhudri—see my punishment.”
+
+O’Faelain looked, and crossed himself, and lifted the hand of Ardan
+to his lips.
+
+“O perfect prince—and the first born,” he said, “you are a grace, and
+no punishment.”
+
+Dervail leaned forward, breathless at the words and at the look of
+Diarmod: she was forgotten by him and by O’Faelain. Their eyes saw
+only Ardan.
+
+“You knew your mother?” asked Diarmod.
+
+“I did not know her. Death took her. Dall Clairineach alone knew my
+blood, and he gave me no word. I am of his clan—so I am thinking.”
+
+“You are of the race of Conaire Mor, and your mother was Dhira of the
+Dark Hair whom they forced from me and hid away—a veiled woman! None
+told me there was a son, but her son could be only mine. You are the
+heir of my youth.”
+
+“Dhira!” said Dervail, her head thrust forward like a golden-headed
+serpent with its stroke of poison. “_That_, Ardan, was the nun he
+took from sanctuary—that was the thing of which I told—and the thing
+you would not give your faith to—and you the living witness!”
+
+Ardan looked at Diarmod in frowning question, and it was the eyes of
+Diarmod that wavered and fell.
+
+“This is between these walls,” said Ardan, and reached his hand for
+ring and chain. “Beyond the portal it is never to be spoke. If the
+token brings me fealty of a guard I will make use of it to lead this
+queen back in safety to her kingdom.”
+
+“See to it, Rhudri,” said Diarmod. “All that he asks of Leinster is
+his. You had my love, boy, and today I am knowing that her eyes were
+ever looking out on me from your own.”
+
+Ardan made no reply. He was staunching the blood with linen torn in
+strips by O’Faelain.
+
+“Diarmod,” spoke Dervail, “has an old love weakened you to pleading
+for crumbs? Is it true that Turlough O’Conor and Tiernan of Breffni
+have cast the shadow of their spears against you and weakened your
+courage? You hear Ardan say he will guard me out of your kingdom, and
+you speak no word of protest? Did I then ride south beside you for
+only a holiday or a fair?”
+
+“You came, a stolen queen as hostage,” said Diarmod, “that is the
+tale to tell. The hours are past for words of that: you must go with
+the prince if you would keep life in you; the spears of two armies
+are already across our border to force your return to Breffni. I will
+have vengeance for the loss of you but that will be on another day—on
+this one there is only flight in all haste for you.”
+
+Thus he spoke, but his eyes were on Ardan and she saw it.
+
+“You are not Diarmod the king this day,” she said. “You are only a
+man in a trance who has the looks of Diarmod. This dead monk had
+devil’s words of you, and of me. He called me ‘Dyveke the Dove’ and
+said you were under _geis_ to hold no white birds under snare. He had
+lies of old magic, and a curse for me in all of them. Are you knowing
+that baleful rune he mouthed? Know you that he met his death striving
+to do murder on me?”
+
+“It is known, and it is a sorrow,” said Diarmod, “and his is the
+first death of the many ere the end comes; thus has his life paid
+for his prophecy. Ulster will join me to war against Turlough and
+O’Ruarc; in another year Leinster will have allies and strength, and
+you will again ride south to rule.”
+
+“Your lips speak,” said Dervail coldly. “You are not the king of the
+night on Tara.”
+
+Rhudri returned with a frightened maid and the cloak of Dervail.
+
+“I pledge myself to send your goods on a morrow,” he said; “it cannot
+be now. While the humor of the mob gives sanction to your going, is
+the time to go.”
+
+The smile of Dervail was bitter and dreary as she looked at the three
+men. She was no longer the first thought in any mind there. Ardan the
+prince, and the first-born of Diarmod, was suddenly most wonderful
+and pleasing in the eyes of the two men. Even the disdain of Ardan
+gave them pride in him.
+
+“You to have royal rule when it means naught to you!” she said,
+looking at him, “and I to be robbed of it when it is breath of life
+to me!”
+
+“I claim no rule—nor will I,” said Ardan. “My mother died in
+sanctuary, and thus will I. Enough sons are in Leinster to divide the
+spoils. Cover well your head in the veil, for rain is falling. Give
+extra cloak to the maid, and I ask grace for her, and comfort if her
+courage lasts through the trials of the way.”
+
+“She shall have honor that she heeds your word, and the children of
+her shall have honor after her, O prince,” said Rhudri O’Faelain.
+
+It was an awkward moment and strange, as Dervail stood, veiled and
+gray, beside the body of Kieran, waiting to go.
+
+“The curse came when he came,” she said, looking down on him. “It
+seems a thousand years past—and it was but yesternight.”
+
+Smoke drifted up on the heavy air, and curled blue-white through the
+windows. Some of the mob, impatient of delays, had fired brush, and
+the falling rain drowned it, yet it bore its warning!
+
+There was a lull in the shouting as the guard of the king formed
+without—and then the great gate of the castle opened and a horse was
+seen with woman’s furnishings, and a roar went up.
+
+“Dervail! Dervail! Dervail, the accursed of Leinster!”
+
+Dervail stooped and picked up the dagger let fall when she ceased the
+torture of Kieran.
+
+“Dervail, there will be another day for us,” said Diarmod the king.
+
+“Your lips speak, O king!” said Dervail.
+
+She felt sullenly that the dark-eyed nun—long dead—had thrust herself
+between them at the end—and in a strange way she felt that the monk
+who had saved his last breath for curses had some way brought all
+this evil to be when he sunk his knife in Duffagan: that, and his
+words of mystic things, had changed the world for her.
+
+He had caught her imagination and enthralled her soul by the mystic
+things he left in shadow, and the shadow and fear remained on her
+like a heavy cloak of gray.
+
+Suddenly she turned to Ardan.
+
+“Use your new strength—do not let the king show himself beside me. I
+do not choose he should hear the wild beasts and their hate of me.”
+
+“It is their fear of you, Dervail.”
+
+“To the blind monk the thanks for that; but do not let him come.”
+
+So, in the gray rain, drearily falling, she rode out beside Ardan in
+the center of twice sixty of the king’s guard. Her name was echoed by
+them a thousand times with all the terms of evil they could invent or
+remember, and more than once a bowman sent an arrow hurtling overhead
+as a warning to haste.
+
+Once she looked back, thinking to see Diarmod on the wall, but she
+saw only Kauth staring down over the gateway on which the head of
+Duffagan was spiked.
+
+It was the first day of the deaths of the prophecy, the “thousand
+years’ tribute of blood,” for Dervail of the Shadow!
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Many souls were sent for judgment in the slaughter done by
+Diarmod—and done against him in his revenges for the shame of losing
+her again to Breffni.
+
+So great was the rage against her that even the castle of O’Ruarc was
+no safety. Widows and the children of slaughtered soldiery cried out
+against the curse of her beauty for which men died, and she became a
+secret woman in the sanctuary of Cluain-mac-noise from which great
+wealth went out through her hands for holy walls and holy vessels,
+and endless prayer.
+
+And ever, for the rest of her life, on the sweet spring nights of
+Beltain, she knelt on the cold stone of the chapel floor to undo the
+false magic of Duffagan on the hill of the druids. He had seen truly
+there, yet his reading of what he saw was not true; and the proof of
+it was the bridge she had built for evil to cross on.
+
+It was not that she doubted the magic of druidcraft, but it is an ill
+and unlucky thing to go to the old gods after the saints have rung
+bells against them. Even the true things are twisted after that.
+
+Her beauty was still on her, and the dreams of Tara were not dead.
+
+But the fear of the words of Kieran remained as the shadow of a gray
+ghost, sending her to frightened prayer.
+
+The curse of the blind monk was too heavy to be cast aside even by
+penance, and she walked veiled and dreamed of a day when Diarmod
+would again be chief of victories and change the gray cloak of dread
+to the royal robe of seven colors.
+
+When the word came of his solemn banishing out of Erinn by vote of
+the Irish nobles, she brooded, and reckoned the wealth still hers,
+and waited message.
+
+When he came again, with his English allies and the curst name
+“Diarmod of the Foreigners” on him, her step was light with hope, for
+the soldiers out of England would make him king indeed over all the
+proud nobles who had banished him away! The dream of Tara was still a
+sweet, yet fearful dream.
+
+But when the death of Diarmod was come to him in horror, and the head
+of Tiernan O’Ruarc was sent to England, while his body was hung by
+the feet on the north wall of Dublin, then again did wild rage of the
+Irish burn high against the name of Dervail of the Shadow.
+
+It was sung in songs linking her ever with the hated invaders. Even
+through convent walls that hatred came—hatred against her and against
+the arch-traitor who had brought the English enemy to help win the
+throne of Erinn, because of her beauty and her daring dream.
+
+In secret and in darkness, she was guarded to Mellifont and a new
+name given her for safety, and among the nuns she was never known to
+have worn the royal colors of a queen. And the dream of Tara was a
+gray horror—yet it had been told by Duffagan that kings who battled
+for her would sink in death, while she alone survived—and it was so.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+But a monk whispered her name in the sunny walk of the garden one
+day in spring, and she looked again into the dark eyes of Ardan, who
+should be King of Leinster.
+
+He held out to her a pearl and a ring she knew.
+
+“These were to go back to you, and I made promise,” he said. “I was
+with him at the last, when no one else was with him.”
+
+“Did his blessing come with them?” she asked. “It is said he died as
+Kieran died—cursing Dervail.”
+
+“They should not have told you that.”
+
+“Nay, none are telling me; it is on the air wherever the invading
+enemy are known and hated—Diarmod and Dervail, Dervail and Diarmod
+of the Foreigners! In my dreams I am hearing the curses on the two
+names!”
+
+“Duffagan made such prophecy of your name and its echoes in the druid
+circle.”
+
+“He did. Give the pearl to some altar and wear you the ring of your
+father. They are tokens of fear to me—fear of what I dared in my days
+of daring.”
+
+“There are other sons to wear the ring. Mine is now the monk’s robe.
+I am a builder and a carver of stone. If the churches rise against
+the invading English, I will be a soldier to help undo the curse of
+Diarmod.”
+
+“And the curse of Dervail,” she said, and wept.
+
+He made no answer.
+
+“Ardan,” she said, “Kieran the monk said, a thousand years’ bondage
+on Erinn for me, a thousand years of the yoke—the yoke on the bent
+neck of Erinn! You have had the true vision all our lives; you were
+the only true thing, Ardan. Can you read the days to come, and tell
+me the end of that curse? For the yoke is on Erinn, Ardan.”
+
+“I dare not read, or make prophecy, Dervail.”
+
+“A white road to you! The bell of vesper sounds, and it is
+Beltain—and a time of fear to me! Ardan, I have long had a thought
+unspoken. A tomb will be mine some restful night. I would that your
+hand had the carving of that bed. Your hand, comrade, will carve the
+tomb? It will be the end of the flight of the bird, Ardan.”
+
+“I will do that: I saw the form of it when we rode out through the
+smoke and the furious pack there at the castle in Kildare.”
+
+“And it will be—?”
+
+“The circled cross—and a gray falcon there with broken, trailing
+wings, Dervail.”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: RANDUFF OF CUMANAC]
+
+[Illustration: Coulin]
+
+[Music: _Fourteenth Century._]
+
+
+                         RANDUFF OF CUMANAC
+
+      Such is the record of Kearmit;
+        —Kearmit the holy of Cumanac,
+      Truthful the word he has written
+        Truthful the warning.
+      This is the warning to pass through all lives to our people:
+      Leave all unchristened the axe arm of Erinn forever!
+
+
+  From Archibald T. De Nise, Attorney-at-Law.
+  To Major Matthew Forbes.
+
+_My dear Major_:—A week ago when we ended our after-dinner talk (in
+the small hours of the morning), I little thought that I should
+so soon have evidence on your side of the argument concerning the
+shadowy other life in our midst. I can’t say that the new evidence
+has convinced me, but it certainly has me rattled.
+
+I am sending you brief excerpts from a curious old Irish volume I am
+eager to have you see, and also, a verbatim copy of the letter which
+came with it. I recall that your family was of the last hereditary
+historians of Ireland in the seventeenth century, and with your
+bookish tendencies, added to your predisposition to delve into the
+uncanny, it gives me a hope that your inheritance of knowledge may
+help me to a glimmer of light in this case.
+
+I am sure that in reading the letter I enclose, you will not fail
+to recollect the statement of your friend Dartan, whose portrait of
+“Girl with the Hound,” was in the spring exhibition. He told us that
+the addition of the hound to that picture was at his suggestion, and
+that it required considerable time and trouble to find the right
+type of hound for the desired composition. By this you will note that
+the hound did not enter that family through any special desire of any
+member of that family.
+
+It is easy to decide that an impressionable mind, under the influence
+of powerful inherited tradition of brutal ages, could work itself
+into a state of self-hypnosis wherein the dream became the fact. I
+tell myself that such is the reasonable solution of the mystery.
+
+I work it out beautifully along those lines as I would a theoretical
+game of chess—and then that red-eyed hound of the picture walks
+across the board, and makes chaos of my chess men!
+
+You know how much the unusual personality of the boy has
+interested me from the beginning. The excitement over him has been
+tremendous—the absolute lack of motive—her beauty, and his youth (he
+is not yet twenty-three)—all this would be enough to make the affair
+celebrated even without the very important financial position held by
+his brother.
+
+I have begged the boy to help me clear up the mystery of it all, and
+he evidently thinks he has really given me that help in the letter I
+enclose, but to my mind it furnishes two mysteries instead of one.
+
+When you have read it I want you to call me up, no matter what hour
+of the day or night it is, and then come and talk it over—if ever a
+friend needed a lifeline in the strange sea of the uncanny, I am that
+friend. I worked personally all night on the copy I send you—it could
+not be given to a copyist.
+
+There are many who are confident that he is not the guilty one, but
+that his finding her there, in that condition, shocked him out of
+sanity. He gave himself up at once and accused himself without any
+excitement whatever. He has steadily refused to tell his motive for
+the act, and has made not the slightest attempt to vindicate himself
+at any time—not even soliciting the help of an attorney.
+
+When I offered him the services of my office he only said: “It is
+a kindness of you to give help at this time, and there is money in
+plenty to pay you, Mr. De Nise, but the work is not worth the doing,
+and it is I am telling you it.”
+
+More than that he has not said, and his speech has the unusual
+quality of fineness in it, at the same time that he uses curious
+phrasing suggestive of a brogue, though it is not a brogue. Perhaps
+it is that Irish music in his voice makes him fascinating. I have
+heard nothing quite like it. I hope you remember that in our former
+talk I spoke to you of it, and you said that prior to Elizabethan
+days, much learning and most of the music of England had been
+borrowed from the Irish scholars who took the brogue with them across
+the Irish Sea and made it fashionable. I assure you this lad’s manner
+would become fashionable if it could be easily imitated. It belongs
+to a world older than our day. That is the baffling impression given
+when he speaks. It is not the words alone—it is a certain lilt in
+intonation as if he had been trained in rhythmic chants. Strangely
+enough his half-brother, who is old enough to be his father, and has
+had much the same educational advantages, has not a particle of this
+manner. He is a plain, practical, very well-to-do Anglo-Irishman,
+interested in certain American mines, and is a local bank director.
+
+You will think me obsessed by this matter of a personality individual
+and strange—but I am only impressing on you the fact that I spoke
+to you a week ago of that baffling fascination in him. I want you
+to remember it, otherwise we should both fancy that my present
+impressions are merely borrowed from the book and letter I send you.
+
+Yesterday, in desperation over having the case called for next week
+and not a single word or suggestion of help from him, I repeated what
+I have said to him so often:
+
+“Fergal, since you have promptly accused yourself and implicated
+no one but yourself, why—why in the name of all that’s holy, do
+you not tell to me, your lawyer, and your friend, at least the
+cause of the crime you have confessed? Why will you not give me
+something substantial to work on? As it is, I have nothing but absurd
+theories—shadows to pit against a prosecution.”
+
+He looked at me with the quiet, unyouthful gray eyes, which look
+black under jet lashes. Then he stretched his arms drowsily as if I
+had fairly beaten him into speech.
+
+“Aye, Mr. De Nise,” he said, and shook his head with its purple-black
+wave of hair, like nothing so much as a crow’s wing, except that a
+crow has no curls to its feathers. “Mr. De Nise, the wonder is on
+me, sir, as to what you would be saying if you heard in truth of the
+shadow I have fought in this—and the shadow I feared long—and the
+shadow by which I was overcome. I am not the one saying to you that
+shadows are little things to fight.”
+
+“You try me and see what I would say,” I suggested. “Tell me every
+word and every thought you have on this matter; that is the right
+thing to do for me as well as for you.” I was only too keen to
+encourage him, for it was the first time he had shown even a sign of
+sympathy toward my solicitations.
+
+“And you would not be thinking it moonshine from some Irish rath
+of the fairies? And you will not be having your laugh with the
+councilors and the judges over the crazed Irish head of me, after I
+have gone the Way?” he asked.
+
+I assured him it was too weighty an affair for laughter, and that I
+was convinced that his head had the usual requisites for a head. He
+appeared to consider that statement thoughtfully, but finally he said:
+
+“No—no, it has lived with me so long in silence that no words come to
+me for the telling. No—it will not be spoken.”
+
+I saw that he was actually striving to nerve himself for some ordeal,
+and I kept silence, looking over some notes I had made for the
+defense: few and shadowy they are, too! My presence without speech
+must have got on his nerves, for as if to get rid of me he spoke at
+last.
+
+“I may write it as the other records of our home were written—I—may
+do that. Yes—that is where it would be having the right place—in the
+record of the clan, for it is the ending of it—yes—and the right
+ending.”
+
+I knew I could make nothing for his defense out of that sort of
+statement, so I ignored it, and left the jail after sending for
+paper, pen, and ink. I looked back through the bars and he was seated
+again, his head on his hands. I should not have been surprised to
+learn that he had forgotten the pen and paper were there. I have not
+seen him since.
+
+But this morning there came to the office his half-brother, Raymond
+E. Brennan, from whom this crime has separated him beyond hope
+of reconciliation. Now that I think of it, they are not exactly
+half-brothers but by courtesy, since Brennan’s father married the
+mother of Fergal some years after he was born, and she a widow.
+
+In his hand he carried a small square package.
+
+“It is the book—” he said, “the book done by Kearmit the monk in a
+past century. I brought it myself, for the boy asked that you be let
+read it. It is a treasure of his house. He knew it by heart, and
+thought it a great treasure—as I fancy it may be, as such things go.”
+
+His tone indicated that such things did not go far with him, though
+he was tolerant.
+
+“Is it something concerning the case?” I asked.
+
+“Not at all,” he said. “It is a collection of legends and songs of
+his mother’s house, done by a kinsman of theirs who was a monk. It is
+a very ancient house, Mr. De Nise. According to the records, there
+were princes and abbots among them when Ireland was in her glory. The
+work on the book is of the finest and worth seeing.”
+
+“But I have made no request for the book, nor ever heard of it,” I
+said, for as the wrapper was taken off and I saw the richness and
+value of it, I hesitated to keep it. He looked at me in surprise.
+
+“No? That is strange,” he said. “Ah, the poor lad; his head is wrong;
+that is it.”
+
+“Did he tell you I wanted it?” I asked. “Please repeat to me exactly
+what he said; I am much interested in his case, and he speaks so
+little that every word is precious, as it may help to reveal hidden
+things.”
+
+“I know that, and am glad he has a good friend in you. I cannot be
+that. I feel that it is his head is wrong, for he was ever a strange
+lad, delving in ancient records, and at home with thoughts too old
+for his years. His mother was a safe, natural woman and there were
+times he seemed ‘fey’ to her. He was born the night his father died,
+but he was like neither father nor mother. She told me that when she
+followed my father, and asked me to care for the lad. I did my best
+while I could, but I do not want ever to hear the old Irish of his
+voice again, or touch his hand again while I live.”
+
+“What do you mean by the ‘old’ Irish of his voice?” I asked, and he
+looked at me with a little frown of perplexity.
+
+“Do you know, Mr. De Nise, that is a hard question to answer to a man
+who has not heard the Gaelic about him. That lad was not brought up
+to the Gaelic speech, nor his parents before him, nor their parents,
+yet when he spoke first—English words, mind you—he spoke it with the
+sound on his tongue of the old Irish. That is not because he has not
+gone about and heard other speech: three years he was in France and
+in Spain. There was an old branch of his people came to Galway from
+Spain in the very old times. His mother said he came by the blackness
+of his hair from the Spanish kindred, for her people were fair
+always. But, as I was saying, no travel took the touch of the old
+tongue off him. You must have noticed, sir, yourself; it is as if he
+speaks in English but thinks in the old Irish.”
+
+Now that explained exactly that baffling music of his intonation, and
+I was glad to have it cleared up for me; if cleared up it is!
+
+“Yes—he has always been strange, but he was a lovable lad at that,”
+said Brennan. “I know it was his head went wrong all in a flash, and
+I hope the court so decides. But when I try to think kindly of him,
+there comes again before my eyes that awful sight of—ah—I cannot even
+speak of it yet.”
+
+He walked to the window and stood with his back to me. I could see he
+was much agitated.
+
+“Do not try to speak of it,” I said, “only try to tell me the word he
+sent concerning the book.”
+
+Brennan gave me a letter from his pocket and walked again to the
+window while I read it.
+
+There was no heading to the letter; it began abruptly in clear,
+decided penmanship.
+
+  “I know the sorrow of you—yet it may be there is a deeper sorrow
+  I am now hiding. I know the hate of your heart for me—and all the
+  world is with you in that.
+
+  “I am not sending to you in any complaining, for things are
+  written, and the reasons are not shown to mortals, yet we must
+  abide by that writing.
+
+  “I am sending to ask a favor for the man who would save—if he
+  can—the last of my family, which he cannot. I would have lent to
+  him for his reading, the book of the annals of our house. Not the
+  genealogy in Gaelic with its translation, but the smaller book
+  with the ivory cover and the silver clasps. It is the legends and
+  songs of our bards in the other days before the harps of Ireland
+  were broken by the mailed fist of the enemy. The man I want to
+  have read it is a lover of books, and nothing like the ‘Book of
+  Kearmit’ has he seen; not but what kindred clans had jewels of
+  books, and more of them than in other lands, but the Saxon, like
+  the Dane, in their plunderings, stripped them of the precious
+  coverings, and left the vellum to rot or burn. They are few and
+  rare at this day.
+
+  “The sorrow is with me for the reason that your life is in
+  shadow. Always first in my heart was held my love of you. I am
+  proud now to be knowing that, and on a day to be ... you will
+  know it!
+
+  “On that day I may again call you brother—and the waiting for it
+  is long to me.
+
+                                                           “FERGAL.”
+
+“That is the first word he has ever sent me, since that night,” said
+Brennan, “so I brought the book at once. I would do much more to be
+of use to any mortal in misery, but hear him, or see him, I hope I
+shall never.”
+
+While he spoke a messenger came in with a package for me. I still
+held Brennan’s letter in my hand. As I glanced at the envelope
+just received I saw that the writing was the same—it was the first
+communication I had ever received from Fergal.
+
+I opened it quickly, and found many large pages closely written;
+folded around them was a note. It said:
+
+  “Good Friend—
+
+  “A book of old Irish legends will be brought to your hand this
+  day. Before reading the letter I send in this, I will ask you to
+  read the book. There is one tale of the olden days I would have
+  you reading. It is called _Randuff and White Enora_.”
+
+I turned to Brennan. “I should like after all to look at the book,” I
+said. “Fergal will no doubt tell me why he wishes me to see it.”
+
+Then thanking him for coming with it personally, I let him out as
+expeditiously as possible in my eagerness to see what the boy had
+sent me. It was a great temptation to read the letter first, but I
+put it aside and opened the book.
+
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+It is a curiosity in book-making and binding. The ivory panels of the
+back with their scroll work of silver were done by no prentice hand,
+and the lettering on the vellum is so fine I had to use a magnifying
+glass to get all the beauty of line in the illuminated initials. How
+the deuce did those Irish monks of the old days do such work with
+quill pens and no glasses? Whoever “Kearmit of Clan Cumanac” might
+have been, his work was that of an artist, as you will see when you
+come.
+
+I did not linger long over the artistic binding or ornamental pen
+work, but turned at once to the story Fergal had mentioned. It was
+called _The Sad Tale of Randuff and White Enora_. It was written in
+verse, as many others were. I find that Randuff means “The Dark,
+Handsome One.”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+In Tormond, north of the Shannon, dwelt the clans of Cumanac before
+the foot of the invader brought the curse on the land, and sent
+westward their mercenaries to wall themselves in, and to carve
+prayers in the stone over the gates, that the sons of the land
+might not rise in their vengeance and make ashes of their women and
+children as have the Saxons with the “mere Irish.”
+
+But Brian is dust in Dunpatrick, and Cormac the wise has been dust a
+thousand years in Rosnaree, and besides them no king has arisen in
+strength to hold together the tribes, and strong to do righteousness
+on the adventurers who have their hirelings in mail to help them make
+profits off the land.
+
+And of the last law of Edward’s councilors has come the evil of the
+death of Randuff—the sweetly dark one, cried now by the woman, and
+mourned by the very trees of the forests he had love for! Randuff of
+the princes of Cumanac, Randuff of the sweet voice, and that voice
+chanting the glories above all sweetness of mortal: Grief on the loss
+of that one!
+
+Her name was Enora of the Saxons, and when she spread her net, and
+looked on him, it was a drug to his soul. The robe of a scholar he
+forgot, and holiness he forgot, and only marriage with her was the
+dream walking with him all the night. To his brothers in kindred
+he told his love and it needed not the telling, for all could read
+the wonder of it in his eyes—shadowed eyes the women of Cumanac are
+wailing!
+
+The new law of the invader forbids bonds of marriage between their
+Saxon men and our Irish women—and much more is the strength of the
+law against daughters of English taking a name from an Irish clan,
+even though it be a princely clan. Grief on that day!
+
+So it stands, and what is one man, even the youth Randuff, to do
+against that? What is one man to do with the pride of his clan like
+a black rage back of him? And their friendship and their love hidden
+from him? And their rule hard against him for that he would not tear
+the face of her out of his breast; and would not forget the White
+Enora of the sea-blue eyes?
+
+Sons of lords of Spain sailed into the Shannon mouth. In their own
+ship they came, and young they came, and they were his kindred. Love
+in their own hearts made them brothers to Randuff, and they alone
+knew of the stolen nights of him in her secret chamber. Only they
+knew that he fared forth as a _duine_—leading the steed of her father
+... as a servant unknown walked Randuff, son of princes, to follow
+the white feet of the woman of the other shore. Grief on that day!
+None but the sons of the lords of Spain knew it, and they knew it.
+
+Sweet the plot for love was the plot of Randuff and the sons of the
+lords of Spain—and sweet the sailing to be when the bird of love flew
+south with them, for that was their dream!
+
+But the maid of the secret nights had a long look in the blue eyes of
+her, and the look was long for a man who could put her near to the
+throne in the court of Edward. Such was her look, and such was the
+hope, and that was not in power of Randuff, son of prince of Cumanac,
+nor of any other of Erinn’s princes, and she grew in fear of the
+love-nights she had loved so rashly, and in fear of the lover who had
+dared much, and would dare more.
+
+The Night of nights came when the sails were loosed, and horses were
+under the wall, and the lover in the secret door for the last time.
+And in fear of his wrath when she should say to him “No,” and in fear
+of her own kindred if they thought the truth of her—she took by her
+side a wolfhound of her knowing, and a keen knife to give help to the
+last. Grief on the night!
+
+With fair treacherous words, and sad words, she told him the will of
+her kinsmen was heavy on her, and the fear on her was a great fear,
+and never again could the moon light their love-nights. Her beauty
+had been coveted by an earl of England, and her parting from wild
+Ireland would be a long parting.
+
+So it was, and when in love his arms went around her, the wolfhound
+leaped to his throat, and her knife found the way to his heart. Grief
+on that night!
+
+The cries of her were the cries of a child in fright, and her words
+were of terror, and these were her words: That to save herself pure
+from a man of the Irish wilds, she had used the knife, and she stood
+there holding back the hound from the blood of Randuff, and told this
+thing, and the eyes of Randuff on her, and the breath of life going
+from him!
+
+Her kinsmen came there—and their rage was a great and terrible rage,
+and above all the rage was that of Alwynn, a priest of her blood,
+and it may be he is druid, too, for he is not christian surely; and
+it was the curse of curses he put on the youth there, not alone that
+he should die unshriven, but that no sons should ever again be born
+to the name, and the pride of the race, and its fruitfulness should
+die out even as the youth’s blood was flowing from the heart of him.
+Grief on that night!
+
+And the strength of that hate, and the words of it, wakened Randuff
+out of the death spell, and in a great slowness he spoke again, and
+the people who heard it went cold, and the wanton white thing fell
+swooning, and none of them are forgetting it, and this is what he
+said there:
+
+      “When the last of our clan’s blood is gone from this life,
+      Will but be when Enora finds death by this knife.
+      If no sons shall be born to keep honored our name,
+      From the grave one will rise to give death for this shame.
+      And you err, White Enora, at thought that the moon
+      Will no more light our meetings: a vision—a swoon
+      Comes gray on my senses, yet through it I see
+      Another life living for you—and for me!”
+
+Death took him, and no mortal is knowing what meaning was in his
+words. The Spanish kinsmen told their tale, and sailed for the south,
+and earth glory and sinful glory are the portion of Enora of the
+wolfhound. She is near the throne surely, and the children of her are
+honored by her own name forever by the royal will.
+
+This is the tale of Randuff and White Enora. It is put down by the
+hand of Kearmit of Cumanac as a sign against that family forever. No
+honor, no friendship, is ever to be taken by gift or grace of the
+people of her blood, and no other thing forever but war should be
+with that people. As White Enora with her wolfhound, and her knife
+for the lover, so is that blood to the blood of the tribes whose land
+they have coveted, and have left ravaged. May memory be with our
+people in the Day of days!
+
+“By the Elements, and the Father, and Son, and Sanctified Spirit.”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+In a different but clear hand two pages were added:
+
+      Such is the record of Kearmit, Kearmit, the holy of Cumanac,
+      Truthful the word he has written—blessed the writing!
+      Truthful the warning to tribes of the Cumanac,
+      Truthful that warning!
+      Against Alba whose own sons they sold in the market,
+            and they not in hunger,
+      Against that people whose daughters were coming like calves
+            and sold like the cattle,
+      Against that land whose mothers were sold
+            and they with the unborn!—
+      They are the men lacking blood but the blood of the liver,
+      They are the men. The diolamhan fight all their battles.
+      Loud is their laugh that Brabanters are fighting their battles,
+            loud in their mocking!
+      Evil was ours in the buying of children and mothers,
+            evil in bringing that breed.
+      Shadow to us for that breeding:
+            treacheries born from the blood of their daughters.
+      Weakness of heart in our clans buying slaves out of Alba.
+      Slaves have been made of that buying;—slaves are our princes!
+      Sad forever the purchase—Erinn in shadow is witness!
+      Sing death forever ’gainst compact or truce with that people.
+      Leave us forever unchristened one hand of our clansmen:
+      The axe hand of battle for these who have sold us their daughters.
+      Watch you forever ’gainst smiles, or sweet words, or hand
+            claspings.
+      Think on their mothers once sold to our men for our usage,
+      Swearing of friends’ oath with them! Unchristened the axe arm of
+            Erinn.
+      Unchristened the axe arm forever to use in the cleaving
+      Of tribes who would barter a friend as they sold their own
+            daughters.
+      This is the warning to pass through all lives to our people,
+      This, and the maid of the wolfhound, and she with the dagger.
+      That is the soul out of Alba—the white maid Enora!
+      Leave all unchristened the axe arm of Erinn forever!
+
+             *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+I finished the old chronicles, wondering why I had been asked to read
+of the intensity of the ancient hates, though I acknowledge that the
+form of the original is better than my faulty translation from the
+Latin. Then I opened his letter of which I send you an exact copy. I
+can’t let the original go—yet I want you to be entirely acquainted
+with all the evidence of which I am possessed. Call me up soon as you
+read it. Here is the letter:
+
+  My Good Friend—
+
+  Now that I have put my hand to it, you shall have your wish. To
+  tell you will lighten the heart of me, and now that the end is so
+  near I can see no harm coming from the truth. No man with the
+  cleverness of you would take into court a letter such as this
+  must be, and you will not tell the one man it would hurt—that you
+  could not do; the worst you will do is to think me mad.
+
+  If it is so now, then I was mad at birth. Yet no one thought it.
+  I was different but no worse than that, and I will tell it you.
+
+  My mother was of the blood of the Cumanac, though the name
+  of the tribe is dead. Sons were not born—only daughters. The
+  genealogy of our people is clear back to the days of Diarmod of
+  the Foreigners, who is in hell if there be one! The women of our
+  house married scholars, and into families of scholars. The record
+  of that blood was the record of a province, and there was no
+  generation of it lost.
+
+  I am different from my family. They were fair, I am dark as our
+  ancient Spanish cousins. My mother wept often on my birthdays
+  but would not say why to me. Later I learned that I was born the
+  night of the death of my father. There were times when she cried
+  out that I was born with his brains, and my questions of ancient
+  things frightened her, for I spoke as a child of things I could
+  not know as a child. She thought I had “the sight,” and she was
+  frightened by it, for she was a quiet, God-fearing woman, with
+  only dread on her for the side of life she could not see.
+
+  Because of that dread I grew silent about many things. I wanted
+  to ask why, when I closed my eyes to sleep, I so often rose above
+  my body and drifted there, held only by the thin invisible cord,
+  waiting for the slumber of the body to release me until I could
+  go free—where?
+
+  I wanted to ask why certain people, though dressed in sober
+  friese, yet had rainbow rays of light visible—while others had
+  clear white—and others the color of gloom.
+
+  I wanted to ask of the faint, sweet music of harps, heard in
+  nights of clear cold and white snow under the moon—often I was
+  out at dawn to find track of the musicians whose playing was
+  unearthly sweet.
+
+  But I was only a boy, and I had learned to watch and learn if
+  others were in the same wonder, but it was of no use. There were
+  no tracks in the snow, and no one seemed to me to have ears or
+  eyes for my mysteries.
+
+  So I grew to live much within myself, and my mother was a lonely
+  woman. When the father of Raymond wed with her, it brought more
+  content to us both. I think she feared the care of me as I grew
+  older, and Raymond was the sort she could best understand.
+
+  It was after the marriage that I first saw the land of our
+  ancient people. In Galway my mother’s husband had bought an old
+  estate, and Raymond had great joy in plans for showing me the old
+  castle—the secret dungeon—the hidden stairway and subterranean
+  gallery whose exit they had not yet discovered.
+
+  That was the time I had the first glimmer of light as to where I
+  had flown while my body slept!
+
+  For I turned to the hidden stairway before Raymond could tell me,
+  and I took them to the ruins of an old monastic cell, and told
+  them to lift a slab there to find the underground entrance—and it
+  was there as I said.
+
+  My mother wept when they told her. I said I had dreamed it.
+
+  In looking over the ancient documents of transfer of the lands,
+  its history was clear to the days of Edward the Third, when
+  a beautiful daughter of the Saxon owner had become a court
+  favorite, and left the wilds of Connaught to carry her graces
+  to the eastern market. The name of her was Enora. I was reading
+  Latin by that time and found her name in our own records
+  by Kearmit. Raymond came by some deeds giving names of her
+  descendants, and it was a game of interest to trace them down
+  through the centuries.
+
+  Happiness was with me in that place; I had never heard the Gaelic
+  until I heard it there, and the knowing of it seemed breathed
+  into me with the air, for I was soon delving in every corner
+  for songs of the ancient bards and seeking out old singers, and
+  hearing over and over their tales of the breaking of Ireland’s
+  harps by England’s laws that her music might be killed forever.
+
+  The tales were sad enough, but I was only a lad and no sadness
+  stayed on me, for I was in more happiness than ever before.
+  In my early childhood I had been long ill, and debarred from
+  ranging in freedom the field or the mountains, but in old
+  half-Spanish-looking Galway I walked into new life—and new
+  strength. The nights and days were filled with the harmonies of
+  mere living. I was as one who has hungered long for full warm
+  heartbeats and who grows drunken with the rhythmic music of that
+  pulsing—all the world and the harmonies of it were as chorus to
+  me.
+
+  I enjoyed life with every breath of me—not as my mother and
+  Raymond did, in quiet and serene, but with the lilt of a singing
+  gladness that was but a reflection of every flower—an echo of
+  every bird-song and the joyous, thunderous rhythm of the tide
+  with its menace of mysteries.
+
+  The Gaelic came to me as though in sudden remembrance, and I
+  lived in the very spirit of the ancient legends of the Land
+  Wonderful where turrets of sunken cities are seen in a clear day
+  at the ebb, and the magic island of the “Land of the Ever Young”
+  rises above the waters to the west every seven years.
+
+  Ireland is the tragic “different” land from every other. The
+  wish is with me that I could tell to you the influences in that
+  land—the inherited influences by which an unread peasant can
+  recite the loves and battles of Queen Maeve, and the flight of
+  Grania and her Diarmod, as if the passions of them had been in
+  our own day rather than twenty centuries back in the shadows.
+  Every well and river, every hill and battle-plain, has its legend
+  of god or goddess, of the Danaans or the later wondrous Fionn
+  and the Comrades. Nothing is old there, because the spirit of it
+  is young. It is why the music of it has had soul enough to reach
+  through the world—Teuton and Briton and Gaul borrowed and renamed
+  the music of Ireland and the legends of Ireland, even while
+  Britain smashed Ireland’s harps lest the bards keep alive forever
+  her kinship with the Spirits of Beauty.
+
+  Only fragments of the music are left to her—death and exile were
+  the penalties for giving shelter to a bard, or giving ear to
+  his harping. An old man of Laherdane told me a human life had
+  been paid twice over for every note of every ancient Irish song
+  preserved to us in this day. All that is left are a few airs to
+  which the moderns strive to fit words, or a few verses to which
+  they strive to fit music, yet the beauty of the fragments are
+  worth all the strivings.
+
+  By this you will see that, as a lad, I was overswept by the great
+  wave of ancientness of the land—and the charm of it. You have
+  seen Raymond, and you will know without any telling that he lived
+  beside me for years, yet never saw the Ireland I was enthralled
+  by. We had the different eyes and the different heart for its
+  reading.
+
+  I thought often enough how strange it was that while he was near
+  double the years of me, yet it was the new things of today
+  he was alive to: the trading of nations, and the financing of
+  American mines, and such like, with never a thought of even the
+  policies of kingdoms further in the past than his own generation;
+  while I lay hidden from my English tutor on the cliffs above the
+  bay, and tried to picture the gray-blue mist by which the magical
+  Danaans made a wall between themselves and the foreign invaders
+  while their hidden palaces under the green hills were being made
+  ready for their using.
+
+  I knew the magical and majestic Danaans of the land had dwindled
+  in earth-power with the centuries, until in our day they are
+  spoken of as fairies, or earth-spirits, but that lessened none of
+  their interest to me. They had, for some mystic reason, drawn the
+  veil of the invisible over their life. But the life did endure,
+  and was often close akin to certain living mortals.
+
+  For hours I would lie thus in the grasses, listening to the
+  whisper of winds and waves, singing with them at times, listening
+  for echoes, until the soft flight of velvet-winged bats from the
+  cliff caves sent me home in the dark to tell my mother and my
+  tutor the many echoes of ancient years I had heard out there with
+  only sea and sky, bird and wind voices for my telling.
+
+  I did not mean to speak falsely when I averred, despite lectures
+  from my tutor and scoldings from my mother, that the birds did
+  speak, and that the wind did bring whispering voices which none
+  but I could hear. I heard them, felt their presence, and at times
+  the veil between this and that other life was so thin that I
+  could see the glad sunlight on faces that came—I knew not whence!
+  Slowly, as I grew older, they faded—as do the many other dreams
+  that come to children.
+
+  But the echo of the whispers remained; through all of life they
+  have seemed to prepare me for what was to come. And if my
+  sentence from the court is death, I feel that the same voices
+  will greet me again, and will say: “Rest you now; the time has
+  been long to you since you wandered away. Your work in that life
+  is over. Rest you with us.”
+
+  So I grew up, my mind full of fancies; and they were odd and
+  foolish, and frightening to my mother.
+
+  “Sorrow of me,” she would say, scoldingly. “You are like a
+  changeling of different blood. You do naught but dream in
+  idleness, and see unchristian things that are the outgrowth of
+  lazy brains.”
+
+  It would be of no use in the world to tell her that at times I
+  dreamed true—like the secret stairway, and the lost underground
+  hall to which I had found the lichen-covered door. To say
+  aught to her of these things in argument only sent her to her
+  prayers—or to her priest, who deemed me but a hopeless liar, and
+  an unrepentant one.
+
+  Only Raymond did not scold. “Never you mind, mother, he is but
+  a boy,” I have often heard him say; “and why should he do aught
+  but dream and sing old songs if his happiness is in that? He has
+  income enough to be at no one’s expense but his own.”
+
+  In our house were many old books of the tribes of the Cumanac,
+  and quaint old pictures of our people. My mother never looked
+  at them. She only had care of them because her mother had known
+  them as treasures. Kings had been of our family in the past, and
+  mystical druid rulers in the dim shadow ages. The old legends
+  and traditions over which I pored as I grew older told me of the
+  beauty of our women, the bravery of our men, and the high esteem
+  in which they were held even by their enemies of the east and
+  north. They lived in the feudal grandeur of those days—kings in
+  their own territory.
+
+  Then the curse came!
+
+  All those tales of a life so different to that around me made a
+  lasting impression on my imagination. I seemed to live in the
+  lives of those who were gone centuries before I was born. And
+  when alone in some old room of the castle with my books about me,
+  or alone in the hills in the night with my memories of dreams
+  about me, I had strange temptings at times. If my self-confidence
+  had equaled my convictions, I would have turned scribe and
+  supplied many missing chapters in the old histories. Strangely
+  enough, it was not history at all that I wanted to write, but it
+  was the lost songs of Ancient Ireland, and they held themselves
+  high in the air—the words never came near—only fugitive melodies
+  and the thrilling harp!
+
+  I think now I should have written the history as it came clear in
+  my mind, and at times in scribbling idleness to my pen’s point.
+  The flashes of the ancient life were as a schooling for my mind
+  and my hand. I think the songs would have followed if I had done
+  good work.... It is my grief that I have lost the chance for this
+  life. They come not again to a closed door.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+When I was seventeen my mother died. That left Raymond and me all
+alone, for his father had already gone the Way. He was like a father
+to me always in his care and the quietness of his love. One day he
+came to me with some papers he had found in an old desk. My mother,
+and her mother before her, had taken no heed to them; but they
+concerned a property in Scotland to which he said I was the heir
+through an ancient branch of our family.
+
+“What will we do?” I asked him. Scotch cousins did not seem near to
+me. That people had helped break the harps.
+
+“I must go myself and see about it,” he said; “it is not a large
+property and may have gone to the Crown through being unclaimed. But
+by going I may at least find in it some old books such as you fancy,
+or some old pictures for you to dream over.”
+
+That is what he said: “some old books or old pictures for you to
+dream over.”
+
+Aye! The dreams he made true for me by that going!
+
+In that way he went from me to be back in a month, but letter after
+letter came, pleading business details to be arranged. My claim was
+made good, but it required much attention to settle the matters
+connected with it. So time went on until many weeks had passed. Then
+at last came a letter which explained all, and it said:
+
+  “Fergal, my brother—
+
+  “I have news to tell you—news I hope you will be glad to hear.
+  Tomorrow I am to be married. It all seems very sudden to send
+  you word thus, but she has been left alone in the world by
+  death—herself the last of the ancient family of the Galway
+  castle, who, I have heard you say, were your forefathers’ enemies
+  ages ago. Her name is Ednah; she is the last of their line, and
+  you the last of yours. I give her to you as a sister, and thus we
+  will bury the old hates of Erin and Albion.”
+
+I read this letter as in a dream. I had never thought of the marrying
+of Raymond. I re-read it, trying to remember all the tales of our old
+feud with her people. Why did that one of Randuff and White Enora
+come first and keep uppermost in my mind? Parts of the others were
+forgotten It alone remained undimmed in my memory. I tried to put it
+aside and think only of Raymond. I thought I succeeded, at least in
+the daytime.
+
+I was out on the cliffs when they arrived, and did not see them at
+once. I came in vexed with myself for forgetting the hour he was to
+come. I found them in a room where our family portraits were hung.
+I could see them through the door—he so large and massive, she so
+slight and fair. His arm was about her shoulders.
+
+I hesitated; I was only a lad, and our family had been one with
+family affections, but little of outward sign given of them—no
+kisses, no embraces, even from my mother; and the sight of that
+half-embrace was a strange one to me. It made me feel more keenly
+my own aloneness. Because of the shyness on me I waited until they
+should move. They had stopped before my picture.
+
+“Who is that?” she asked, and her voice was music.
+
+“It is my brother Fergal,” said Raymond. “He should be here now—the
+idle, dreaming fellow. He has forgotten. Come, we will go and look
+for him.”
+
+“Wait,” she said. “I want to look at his picture. How different from
+all the rest it is. Somewhere, sometime ... I have seen a face like
+that, or a picture, but where—where?”
+
+“I have no doubt there are many such happy, careless faces among
+boys,” said Raymond.
+
+“But is it quite careless?” she asked. “When one looks at it long it
+grows sad, then stern—and the eyes—ah, those eyes! If he looks at me
+in that way I shall fear him, Raymond.”
+
+Raymond put his hand over her eyes, and laughed and kissed her on the
+mouth. I went chill in the heart at that kiss.
+
+“What a foolish child you are,” he said. “You and Fergal are alike in
+your imaginings.”
+
+Then they turned and saw me. Raymond looked so happy and so
+different that I was glad. But I do not know if I can find words to
+tell how she looked.
+
+She was fair and babyish, with little ways and movements like a white
+kitten. Her hair was the yellow of the cornsilk, and her eyes as blue
+as the violet which grows always in the shade. She reached out her
+hands to me in a pretty childish way.
+
+“We are to be brother and sister,” she said. “I hope we shall all be
+very happy together.”
+
+I barely touched the hands of her—such pretty hands—but that
+touch tingled through all my blood. I stammered and blushed with
+embarrassment. I had known so few women, and none well, and I had
+never seen any as beautiful as my brother’s wife. She was dainty and
+delicate as the snow maiden that fades when brought down to the level
+where humanity lives.
+
+Perhaps that was why I feared to touch her, even. If I did by chance,
+my hand would tremble and my face flush. She laughed over it to
+Raymond.
+
+“He will never be my brother,” she said. “He is as shy of me as if I
+were still a stranger.”
+
+One day Raymond spoke to me of it:
+
+“Why are you so foolish,” he asked. “Ednah wonders why you have
+dislike of her. You are almost of an age—born in the same year—and
+should be better friends. Yet you range the mountains alone more than
+ever. Even the books are forgotten by you.”
+
+In answer I asked to go away to school, or to travel. I had never
+before cared for anything but our old house and the forest near, or
+the musty books in the time-worn cases. Now the air had grown close;
+all the quiet of the forest, all the hum in the grasses, could not
+bring to me their old, drowsy rest; and the wind no more carried
+echoes of whispering voices!
+
+“Perhaps it is best that you should go,” said Raymond. “Travel may
+cure you of this strangeness and shyness. I shall give up this place
+for a while and cross seas. Ednah has horror of these old walls, and
+will stay in no room of them alone. When you join us again you will
+find us in some sunnier place.”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+So I made my farewells and went wandering. For three years I never
+saw Ireland. All that time I was going, going—never at rest. And
+though through every hour of it I longed to go back, and feared to, I
+could not explain whence the fear came.
+
+Then Raymond wrote to me in Spain to join them here. I was almost
+twenty-two. There were property matters to be arranged, and my
+presence was required. I am not sure if I was glad or not. I did not
+sleep at all, and I sailed on the first ship.
+
+Once on the sea the fear fell away. Almost the music of dreams came
+back to me. The three years of wandering had driven out the dreams
+and remembrance had not been happiness.
+
+But the ship to the west brought me into starry nights of sweetness
+and wonderful dreams when all the world was of hope, for the fear was
+gone on the waves.
+
+Raymond did not expect me so soon, and I found their new home all
+alone. Only Ednah was there. She ran down the steps to meet me. Back
+of her was a tall hound.
+
+“Fergal, Fergal!” she said, and the blue eyes of her were bright as
+if with tears.
+
+I am not knowing if I spoke to her—I think I did not. But I took
+her hand. She offered her cheek as if for a brother’s caress, but I
+did not touch it. I only looked at her, and we walked up the steps
+together, and the hound followed.
+
+“I am glad it is today you came,” she said. “I am all alone. Ah, we
+have wanted you so often! The world felt so empty—empty as all my
+life used to be! Now all will be different—you are here.”
+
+She showed me a portrait lately finished of her with the hound at her
+knee. The artist had asked that one be secured for the painting, and
+Raymond had tried to find one to look most like an Irish wolfhound
+for the harsh note of contrast with her own whiteness. She told this
+frankly as a child, and laughed because the dog would not follow
+Raymond when she was near. Then she showed me all their wonderful new
+home, and the Italian garden above the river, and a wonderful pergola
+where yellow roses and crimson roses burned like flame.
+
+We sat in that dream place through the sunset. I listened and
+said little. Her glad voice was as cool, sweet rain that falls on
+sun-scorched sands. I was beside her until the dusk, drinking in
+tones of music, but never once did I look in her eyes.
+
+And Raymond came when the night fell.
+
+I scarce know how to tell of the days to follow. The fear and shyness
+came back to me. But I was older and could hide it more than when
+she first came to my sight, and Raymond had pleasure to think I was
+feeling more friendly toward the lovely wife. But I avoided being
+alone with her, and with the tall hound ever her shadow.
+
+Even when she rode horseback above the cliffs of the river the hound
+was at the heels of her horse, and was known widely by the new
+friends of Raymond. The portrait was shown in a great gallery, and
+was called “Beauty and the Beast.” But you have seen that, and know
+the pride of Raymond that she was his. He housed and dressed and
+adored her as queen of the world.
+
+But it was herself gave long, strange looks to me, and looks of
+question they were, too. Everyone sought her except myself, and she
+was noting that, even though the eyes of Raymond were blind by his
+love for us both.
+
+One day I came in with scarlet blossoms for which she had asked.
+
+She was coming down the great stairs and smiled at me.
+
+“How lovely,” she said; “we have dinner-guests tonight, but I shall
+wear no jewels. I want only those scarlet blossoms in my hair; bring
+them in here to the musicroom.”
+
+I followed her, and stood there holding the flowers; but she did not
+take them. She only looked at me and laughed a little.
+
+“One would think me an old witch-wife of your Irish hills, you shun
+me so, brother Fergal,” she said, “and I think I shall make you do
+penance here. You must fasten the blossoms in my hair with your own
+hands. You should learn to be gallant, Fergal, else when you meet
+your ladylove you will never know how to woo her.”
+
+I held the flowers in silence and tried to fasten them. My fingers
+were shaking. The perfume of her hair made me drunk as wine.
+
+“Your hands are nervous doing work so new to them,” she said, and
+laughed. “You foolish boy, what can I do more than to fit up this
+room for you only, with its Irish harp and its Irish music and a pot
+of Shamrock in each window. It is enough to make any other man love
+me—but not Fergal!” she said, and sighed, and then laughed.
+
+I could not answer her words of light mocking, and the great hound,
+stretched at her feet, arose and the bristles on his neck stood
+upright as my hands touched her hair. He was ever on guard for her,
+and it was a jest that she had to put chain on him for the lessons
+with a dancing-master. He would allow no stranger to touch her, and
+me he was ever watching in jealousy.
+
+Raymond’s wife noted it, and laughed.
+
+“He has the jealousy of a man in love,” she said, “but you know
+nothing of that jealousy, for it is only books and old music you have
+in your mind. You are almost a year older than I, and have traveled
+around the world, yet are afraid of women. And to think I once
+dreamed of fearing you—or your picture—that is amusing to me now!
+I have never once seen your eyes look in a rage as I thought they
+might. But it is seldom you favor me even with a glance. I doubt if
+you could tell the color of my eyes.”
+
+So she chattered on, smiling up at me, mocking at my silence and at
+my shaking hand.
+
+“I have fear that this will not be done to your pleasure,” I said at
+last.
+
+She laughed again. “Fergal,” she said, “is it all women you are
+fearing, or only me?”
+
+As she spoke her head was turned to look up at me. I still held the
+flowers in her hair. My wrist was near her cheek. In turning, her
+lips touched it. Perhaps it was accident. I do not know.
+
+The golden hair of her was over my hands, her red mouth on my wrist,
+and the wonderful child-eyes of her looking into my own. She raised
+one hand and clasped my arm. I threw it from me with a force that
+staggered her back to the wall, and the tall hound pressed close to
+her and growled deep threat to me. The flowers in my hand I dashed to
+the floor, and I left her there like that. As I went down the steps I
+heard my name called by her, but I never looked back.
+
+That night I spent in the forest.
+
+When morning came again I told Raymond that my wandering years were
+not over. The Foreign Legion of France might need another sabre. I
+was willing to offer one to her—or to Ireland, if need arose in the
+south. And it was not a time for youth to be easy in comfort in any
+house.
+
+Raymond laughed, and said I could send money enough to buy them a
+seasoned soldier instead of myself, and told me he would take it
+ill if I sailed before Ednah’s birthday, for it was in his mind to
+give an entertainment that I might meet their many new friends. His
+wife joined us in silence and clasped his arm and stood with eyes
+downcast. She looked very white and very childish. We had not spoken.
+
+“You young people have been dull here,” her husband said. “Suppose
+we have a ball for your birthnight; something to repay the great
+hospitality of the people. What do you say, my child? I must not have
+you lonely.”
+
+She spoke her pleasure, and, the choice of entertainment being left
+to her, it was a masquerade she made choice of. “It is more gaiety,”
+she said.
+
+“A masque it shall be, then,” said Raymond. “And you, Fergal, must
+have no thought of leaving us until after that.”
+
+“Are you going again?” she asked, and her blue eyes had pleading in
+them.
+
+I could make her no answer.
+
+“So he threatens,” said Raymond. “You must help me to persuade him
+to be sensible and stay where he is. Perhaps we can find him a
+sweetheart at the ball. You must get a fine dress, Fergal, and we
+shall have it the night Ednah is twenty-two.”
+
+I was arranging some books in a case while they talked. I did not
+want to look in her eyes and see the appeal there. One of the volumes
+slipped from my hand to the floor. It was our old book of legends,
+and it lay open at the tale of Randuff and White Enora.
+
+“Here is my dress,” I said, and tried to laugh. “What was good enough
+for our ancestors centuries ago is good enough for me now. I shall
+wear the dress of Randuff of Cumanac. Here is a description of it in
+the legend.”
+
+Ednah stared at me. “Randuff of Cumanac,” she half whispered, “do you
+mean that ‘Randuff’ of the Lady Enora’s song?”
+
+“Yes, if that is what you are calling him,” I said, “but the song I
+never heard.”
+
+“How do you know of him?” asked Raymond.
+
+“I heard the rhyme of the killing often when I was a child,” she
+said. “My grandmother never tired repeating the old tales of our
+ancestors. It gave me fear of the wild Irish. How bitter those old
+traditions made the people! The Lady Enora was sung as a very brave
+maid. Grandmother always spoke of the Cumanac as our enemy. Had she
+lived she would not have allowed me to be under the same roof with a
+descendant of theirs—never!”
+
+“How ridiculous in this age to remember the old feudal hates,” said
+Raymond. “I do not think the mother of Fergal knew even the legend.
+She read only books of piety, and was too sensible to take heed of
+hates so unchristian.”
+
+“It may seem silly to you,” said his wife, “but my grandmother was
+thought a wise woman.”
+
+“What will be your dress?” asked Raymond, stroking her hair in a
+caress.
+
+“I think I shall not tell either of you that,” she said. “It will be
+much more amusing to puzzle you. I shall receive my guests in evening
+dress and then mask in whatever I decide upon. You must not coax me
+to tell. On my birthnight you must let me have my own way.”
+
+My friend, this story may seem strangely long to you, but when I
+write of it, every word, every look, is coming back to me.
+
+No persuasions could induce Raymond to mask the night of the ball.
+“I am too old,” he protested. “At forty-five, people lose zest for
+masques.”
+
+My dress they called a success, but Ednah said:
+
+“There is one thing needed for that costume: you have no dagger.”
+
+“It was forgotten by the costumer,” I told her, “and I had none that
+would answer.”
+
+“Wait,” she said, “I have one—an heirloom. How old it is I do not
+know. We had several in an old chest. Grandmother knew the history of
+each, but I never could remember them. I kept a very ancient Spanish
+one for a paper knife: I am sure it will do.”
+
+She left us, running along the hall, the great hound leaping beside
+her in play, her white ball dress fluttering like wings; to see her
+thus none would have thought such a childish butterfly could be the
+hostess of the evening.
+
+Raymond looked after her in pride and great content.
+
+“Like a child she is,” he said. “Just as thoughtless and innocent;
+twenty-two today, and does not look seventeen. Ah, Fergal, there is
+only one life for a man: you must also get a wife. You will be more
+content to stay home from wars then.”
+
+I had no answer for him, and he laughed at me as he watched her come
+back with the dagger. It swung by a silver chain and there were
+jeweled clasps to the chain. The handle formed a cross, and the
+sheath was oddly carved and inlaid; the blade ... but you have seen
+it!
+
+I tried to clasp it, but the fastenings were difficult to manage.
+
+“Clasp it for him, Ednah,” said Raymond. “I must have this hound
+chained for you, else no mask will serve you or no stranger be let
+dance with you.” So he spoke and laughed and left us alone.
+
+The chain of the girdle was in her hand and her eyes on mine. “Shall
+I?” she asked.
+
+“If you please,” I answered, “since your husband bids.”
+
+“I am more kind to you than you are deserving,” she said, and sighed.
+“You have not even said you were sorry for hurting me that day.”
+
+“If ever I have hurt you, I am sorry,” I said as coldly as I could,
+but I feared while I spoke that she would know the tremble in my
+throat. I might have been brutal that day, but to tell her so I did
+not dare; I was afraid. And looking down at the bent golden head of
+her, I told myself that never another day should see me under the
+roof with my brother’s wife.
+
+“You are hurting me now,” she whispered. “Fergal, you are hurting me
+always when you speak to me with that ice in your voice.”
+
+“Never will you hear it after tonight,” I answered. “I am going
+tomorrow.”
+
+She stared at me, and put out her hand as if about to speak, then
+dropped it and walked away.
+
+The ball was a very gay one. I surprised Raymond by showing no
+shyness whatever among the ladies who thronged the rooms. He said the
+mask gave me boldness. He was trying to discover his wife, and had
+failed.
+
+“Several times I thought I had found her,” he said, “but I am always
+mistaken. She has been very cunning. If you find her first, Fergal,
+bring her to me.”
+
+I danced and jested with many, but in none did I discover her.
+
+At last, wearying of all the gay pretenses, I went out into the
+night. The Italian garden above the cliffs was deserted by others for
+the dance, and the pergola of the yellow roses was my own. It was
+there I had sat that first evening of her witcheries. And there I sat
+again with my head in my hands—wishing for the dawn that would take
+me away without offense to the man I felt deep love for.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+The moon was at full and the grounds almost as day except under the
+thick vines. Music came faintly to my ears through the open windows,
+and dew lay over the grass like dust from the stars. A bed of
+petunias near me exhaled that fragrance which the moon, but never the
+sun, has power to draw out.
+
+The peace of it all oppressed me. The perfume of the flowers was
+sweet, but I hid my face in my hands. I knew that the time was past
+when the scent of flowers or music of winds or my own dreams would
+bring content to me. Better, I thought, if I were dead and forgotten
+as the Randuff whose dress I wore.
+
+How long I was sitting there I do not know. At last I felt that I was
+not alone, and looked up. By my side was a girl in a dress such as
+I had never seen save in antique pictures. It was of something with
+lights in it like the waves of the ocean when the moon shines. Her
+face I could not see for the misty lace over it.
+
+The glamour of the scene was about me. I forgot the crowds dancing
+within; I forgot all save the presence of this girl, or was it a
+dream-girl like the visions of my childhood?
+
+“Who are you?” I asked, and there was awe and wonder on me.
+
+“Do you not know?” came the answer in a whisper. “Have you forgotten,
+Randuff of Cumanac?”
+
+“Randuff?” I repeated, scarcely knowing what I said. My brain seemed
+whirling and the music of the dance drifted away. Through it I heard
+the muffled, far-off bay of a hound!
+
+The girl touched me with her hand, and I held it fast. Her presence
+was an intoxication of joy to me. I have no words for the telling
+of the witcheries I felt myself yielding to. Was I Fergal or was I
+Randuff? I could not tell.
+
+“Of course, Randuff,” she whispered with her lips on my throat, “and
+I am your Enora who has found you again. This night only is ours out
+of all the years of life. Were you wishing for me?”
+
+“I was,” I said, and I spoke truth. It seemed to me that all of life
+had been nothing but waiting for that one night, and her near me.
+
+“And you are not afraid now?” she whispered.
+
+And I said: “There is no fear on me of anything but to lose you
+again, as we have lost each other until now.”
+
+“We have only this night out of all the others,” she repeated. “Give
+me your kisses, Randuff.”
+
+And then I knew what a woman’s kiss meant to a man, though it was not
+as a woman I was thinking of her, but as a spirit of the far past
+come back for that one night. My arms were about her—her face to
+mine; broken, tender words were whispered in my ears. What I replied
+I do not know. I felt her kiss on my mouth; I heard her breathless
+whispers.
+
+And back of it all I heard the wild baying of a hound!
+
+“One night of life together, my Randuff,” she sighed. “Is it not
+worth more than a long lifetime apart?”
+
+I could not speak—I could not! She lifted her hand to bring my face
+again to hers. Some jewel in her bracelet caught in the lace mask,
+and the veil of lace fell from about her head.
+
+The moon shone full in her eyes through the rose vines of the
+pergola, and the soul of me was frozen there, for the girl who had
+witched me by the touch of her fingers—whose lips I had kissed, whose
+love I had taken—was the wife of my brother!
+
+I tried to rise; I could not. I tried to speak, but my tongue seemed
+paralyzed. She must have felt something of what I wanted to say, for
+terror was on her, and she clung to me, whispering:
+
+“Don’t, Fergal; don’t look at me like that! I could not have you go
+away so. Now, though you go, I will know your love is mine. Nothing
+can change that. Your love is mine!”
+
+I knew she was speaking the truth. Our lives were each other’s,
+though the bond of it was sin. I heard her whispers in a strange,
+double sense, for in clearness, as though there was no other sound
+under the heavens, I was hearing the bay of a hound, and him on a
+trail!
+
+She came closer to me. Her lips were touching mine which were locked,
+giving no response to her caresses. I was as a man struck dumb with
+the horror. My brother—who had been like a kind father to me, always!
+
+When I could hear her again, she was whispering:
+
+“Why must you go—ever? Do not be leaving me. Raymond need never know—”
+
+Then it was that I killed her, as the hound, in great leaps, entered
+the pergola, dragging his chain in the moonlight. One blow of the
+dagger, and she lay on my arm, white and innocent-looking as a
+sleeping child. The hound leaped for me, but the same dagger caught
+him in the throat. Another stroke left him twitching and quivering at
+my feet.
+
+I stood between them, watching them long, to be sure no breath of
+life was there to come back.
+
+Then I lifted her in my arms and bore her to the house. On straight
+through the rooms I went, where the masked dancers scattered with
+shrieks from my path. At last I saw Raymond, and carried her to him.
+
+“I have found your wife,” I said, and laid her in his arms.
+
+And for that, the judges, who cannot know, will be giving me death.
+
+                                                               FERGAL.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE DARK ROSE]
+
+                     [Illustration: Roisin Dubh]
+
+                      [Music: (_The DARK ROSE_)
+
+                                                _Sixteenth Century._]
+
+
+
+
+                            THE DARK ROSE
+
+
+             *       *       *       *       *
+
+             *       *       *       *       *
+
+      _And gun-peal, and slogan cry
+          Wake many a glen serene,
+      Ere you shall fade, ere you shall die,
+          My Dark Rosaleen!
+          My Own Rosaleen!
+      The Judgment Hour must first be nigh,
+      Ere you can fade, ere you can die,
+          My Dark Rosaleen!_
+
+
+The lad Hugh scarce knew he was breathing the words, singing through
+his mind. Old Shamas Ronayne had been telling over the tale of Red
+Hugh O’Donnell, dead in Spain three hundred years ago, yet alive and
+youthful over all the land where his song of the dark rose was sung.
+
+      _My Dark Rosaleen!
+      My Own Rosaleen!_
+
+“And he also had the name of Hugh on him. It’s myself is wishful I
+could see a man like that in our own day—Shamas swears they don’t
+make them any more.”
+
+He followed the sheep up through gorse and fern in the Kerry hills,
+and cut himself a rude flute of alder, and strove to catch the notes
+of the song on it, and tried again softly whistling with a blade of
+grass held over his lips, and gave both up for the murmured words:
+
+      _O my Dark Rosaleen!
+          Do not sigh, do not weep;
+      The ships are on the ocean green;
+          They march along the deep!_
+
+The drifting glory of the clouds, silver and luminous and softly
+gray, made wondrous forms and pictures against the blue of the sky,
+and the deeper, darker blue of the far sea. He drowsed there over the
+mystery of _Rosaleen_—had she been a maid beloved and estranged? Or,
+was she, indeed, a dear secret name for the shadowed land for which
+O’Donnell had fought and from which he was self-exiled?
+
+The _suantre_ of the sleepy winds lulled the lad into slumber before
+he decided the centuries-old mystery, but it remained with him in a
+misty dream, and in the dream he saw that the dark rose—the hidden
+rose—was a Leanan Sidhe, a fair mistress of the Secret People whose
+magic palaces were hidden under ancient raths of green, and where
+legendary heroes waited the mystic music of the awakening on Erinn’s
+day of destiny.
+
+There was, in this confused dreaming, more than a little of the
+tellings or the singings of old Shamas by the peat fire in the long
+twilights. A glen on the Kerry coast, where the sea-rovers of thirty
+centuries agone left records on the white strands, is a wonder-place
+for dreams. Queen Banva of the rath on Slieve Mish gave her name to
+the island in that place and was consort of King of the Forest in
+far-dim days when the forests were mighty and the great brown deer
+ran in countless herds and were gentled and gave milk only to the
+music of the voices of maidens—and the soothing and crooning and
+gentling harmonies of that music remain today, and is called the
+“music of Fairie,” and men wonder at the sweetness of it, and the
+living spirit of it.
+
+The giant deer are gone, and the forests of wonder are gone—and the
+speech of that day was long forbidden—only the spirit of the music
+has lived in the hearts of the children of Banva.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+So the lad, Hugh, whose head was ever filled with one old legend, or
+another old song, merged crowned Banva the Fair, and a nameless fairy
+sweetheart, and the dark mystic rose-maid, immortalized by Mangan,
+into his dream there on the hillside in Kerry, and had grief that
+each was sad, for their tears were falling and his words of comfort
+were useless, and the music of the song came to his help, and he
+awoke himself with the whisper:
+
+      _O my Dark Rosaleen!
+          Do not sigh—do not weep!_
+
+But it was not tears at all that were falling on his face and his
+hands: it was a swift, showery rain falling between two great blue
+and sunny plains of the sky—just one drifting cloud of rain from
+Slieve Mish, and it above him!
+
+The sheep were over the hill and beyond, and guilt was on him as he
+ran after, pelted by the rain.
+
+Through the gray mist of it he could see the patch of white they made
+on a sunny knoll toward which the shadow of the rain-cloud was moving.
+
+But a nearer sound came to his ears through the swift drive of the
+shower—the bleat of a lamb, astray from a heartless parent. He stood
+in his tracks hearkening to it, for it sounded from the druid rath
+above, and it was a queer place for the straying of a lamb up there
+among the bare stones when there was good grass, and that green, all
+below it.
+
+But he ran across the old hill road and up the other side of it to
+where one hawthorn shone white in bloom at the summit.
+
+It was a stiff run in the pelting rain, but the sounds were nearer
+each step. He crossed one circle of the long crumbled earth wall,
+then another, and plunged in between the standing stones and,
+breathless, dropped down on the stone paving with the rescued lamb in
+his arms.
+
+He was guided to it more by sound than sight, for the shower was now
+a tempestuous gray wall of falling water, and with his treasure-trove
+he moved back under the shelter of roof formed by three enormous
+slabs. Once it might have been an underground temple, but the earth
+about it had washed away, and it was like nothing but a shadowy
+tunnel of great stone—and other great stone slabs fallen about.
+
+He wiped the water from his eyes, peering out the way he had come,
+and then settled the lamb beside him and leaned back to wait the
+sunshine or the lessening of the downpour.
+
+But he straightened quickly at what he saw in the shadow of the other
+wall, and the heart in him gave a great leap, for he had met one of
+his dreams, or a queen of a legend come alive again!
+
+For a girl sat there in a greenish-gray dress, and touches of scarlet
+in the lining of the cloak over her shoulders. It was the cloak made
+the picture so complete in the ancientness of the suggestion—he could
+not know it was an idealized copy of a Connemara hooded cloak.
+
+The two young things sat gazing at each other as if entranced. The
+face of Hugh was white, yet not with fear. There was awe on him,
+but there was also joy, for, much as he had dreamed of the queens
+of beauty in old legends, not one dream held as much of charm
+as the uncrowned maid whose garb was so near the color of green
+lichen-covered stone that he feared she would fade back into the
+shadows of it.
+
+Then she smiled in an adorable way.
+
+“I saw you sleeping in the bracken as we passed up the old road,” she
+said. “You looked like a picture of Shelley I have.”
+
+Hugh had not ever heard of that name, but there surely were many
+names in the old legends not known to Shamas, who was his one great
+historian.
+
+“That is an Irish name, I think, but it is not mine,” said the lad
+politely. “I am Hugh of the glen below, and I am thinking it is
+yourself would be Banva or Maeve but for the dark hair of you—and the
+dark brightness of the eyes of you.”
+
+“Maeve—Maeve?” she repeated and regarded him with twinkling humor.
+“Is it Queen Mab you mean—of the fairies?”
+
+“It is—but she was a fair-haired woman, and nothing like you at all.
+I could not make guess at the name on you, yet it has the right to be
+a bright name, and beauty in it.”
+
+“You would not guess it ever, for it is no queen in a book,” the girl
+said with a little ripple of laughter. “It is common as the bracken,
+and more common than the hawthorn in bloom there by the stone pillar,
+for it is Rose.”
+
+“Rose! the dark rose? Dark Rosaleen?” And the voice of Hugh was a
+whisper of awe. “I think now you are Maeve indeed, witching me with
+that name!”
+
+“You are silly from tending sheep too much,” said the mocking
+beauty. “Why should a fairy witch you? And why should it be with
+my name? The dark rose! Am I then so dark? You are not polite as I
+thought you at first—and I wish the storm were over.”
+
+Hugh caught his breath in a real terror at thought of her anger.
+
+“Ah, it is tricking me you are,” he said, “for how would you not be
+knowing that the dark rose is the dearest flower growing to every
+one of the real Irish? Since Hugh O’Donnell was making that song
+away there in Spain, and since Mangan turned the verse of it to
+‘Rosaleen,’ that rose is the sacred thing in many a breast. Shamas
+Ronayne was telling that to all of us boys, and he is wiser than
+most. I went asleep thinking of you, and singing the song, and—glory
+be to the name!—was it that was bringing you here to this far-away
+rath?”
+
+“Thinking of _me_—and singing the song? Hugh of the glen, how could
+you think of a stranger you never saw or heard of? And what was the
+song? I said you looked like Shelley, the poet, and maybe it’s a song
+you made yourself.”
+
+The color flooded his face at that, and she clapped her hands
+gleefully.
+
+“It is—it is—it is!” she chanted, and smiled at his blushes.
+
+“It is not then!” he denied awkwardly. “I have tried to find words
+for songs, and I did sing them to the sheep—as you maybe know,” he
+added cautiously, “but how could a shepherd know all the man-thoughts
+of ‘Rosaleen’? No, young, dark rose-lady, it was only one man made
+that—and the heart of him dying in him with the sickness for home.
+He had only thirty years of life, had Hugh O’Donnell, and Shamas was
+telling us that the poets of Ireland die in youth for the reason that
+the People of the Hidden Raths want verses and music under the green
+hills, and they call the young away while their dreams are on them.”
+
+“You are a very queer boy,” she said, “and I won’t believe there was
+a song of any rose until I hear it.”
+
+He looked at her doubtfully.
+
+“You may be having the Gaelic?” he ventured, but she shook her
+dark-ringleted head. In his heart he thought she was but trying him,
+and probably knew all the tongues of all the lands of the earth.
+
+“Then I’ll be giving you the Englishing Mangan made of it; but the
+words will not sing themselves to the Irish air O’Donnell made; but
+that is right enough, too, when you think of it. Second-best music is
+good enough for the English who smashed the Irish harps, and this is
+a verse of it. There are many verses to ‘The Dark Rose.’”
+
+And with the lamb snuggling under his arm and the slanting rain
+making a gray veil of all the outer world, Hugh threw back his head,
+unconscious of lack of training as a meadow lark, and sang—
+
+      _I could scale the blue air,
+            I could plow the high hills;
+      Oh! I could kneel all night in prayer
+            To heal your many ills!
+      And one beamy smile from you
+            Would float like light between
+      My toils and me, my own, my true,
+            My Dark Rosaleen!
+            My Own Rosaleen!
+      Would give me life and soul anew,
+      A second life, a soul anew,
+            My Dark Rosaleen!_
+
+The girl leaned forward, watching him, as startled at the unboyish
+song as he had been at sight of her.
+
+“That is a song I never heard,” she said, “and it is a lovely one;
+but what does he mean by ‘a second life’?”
+
+“I never heard anyone asking that,” said the lad, wrinkling his
+brows. “I will be the one to ask Shamas of it, for I heard him say
+there was no line of that song without a meaning to it.”
+
+“Who is Shamas?”
+
+“Sometimes he is a tinker, and he has made more than one circle of
+Ireland in his time. He was the one to be teaching us ‘The Dark
+Rose,’ and telling us of the poets of the ancient old days when a
+poet was highest man in a kingdom, and no gifts too great for him—I’m
+thinking that was even before Padrig was coming over with the bells.
+I’m wishing you had the Gaelic. Shamas has poems by the hundred,
+from the songs of Dierdre, and Liadan (whose home was right here in
+Kerry itself)—down to the March of Brian, and the Coulin, which he is
+singing at me often enough—and him laughing! But it is in Gaelic all
+the words of them are, and no English words fit the music at all. I’m
+thinking you should have the Gaelic, Dark Rose.”
+
+“I wonder if I should? My nurse knew Gaelic, but they laughed at her
+songs until she grew silent, and then they told me she died. I was
+little then.”
+
+She sat thinking a moment, humming softly in a gentle croon and
+moving her head to keep time to the melody while the eyes of Hugh
+grew bright.
+
+“You do know it, you do!” he said joyously, but she shook her head.
+
+“No—the words will not come, though once I did know that sleepy-time
+song of Kathleen, but all I can remember is—
+
+      _Sho heen sho lo, O lulla lo!_”
+
+“But you have the memory of the ancient music, and it is old beyond
+count! Also there are English words put to that one, and I hearing a
+girl back from America singing it—and this is the English of it:
+
+      _I’ve found my laughing babe a nest
+            On Slumber Tree.
+      I’ll rock you there to rosy rest,
+            Asthore Machree!
+      Oh lulla lo, sing all the leaves
+            On Slumber Tree!
+      Till ev’rything that hurts or grieves
+            Afar must flee._”
+
+The girl sat looking at him, and the tears were bright in her eyes.
+
+“That is it—that is the song of poor old Kathleen. To think I would
+hear it in this cave on a Kerry hill.”
+
+“And why not? This is not a cave, but a druid’s temple where they
+tell that the new fire was given out to the people at Samhain, and
+the druids had the making of that fire on an altar here and the
+giving of it. But children and mothers and their _suantre_ songs were
+before that time surely, and many a one could have been crooned in
+this place, for great gatherings were here. Even the old people are
+liking to hear the music of the slumbersongs. They say it brings back
+the voices of mothers—here.”
+
+He touched his breast, and had a smile, gentle and deprecating lest
+she should think it childish indeed that old folks should care for
+lullabies, but she was gazing at him curiously.
+
+“You strange boy!” she said, and laid her slim hand on her own
+breast. “I never knew anyone like you; you made me hurt—here—when you
+said that! You make me want to cry—yet there is not a word in the
+song for crying! I think I have a hundred cousins, but none of them
+knows the things you know; yet, one time we were Irish, too.”
+
+He smiled at her mysteriously.
+
+“To be sure you are, else how could you be the Dark Rose and come to
+this fairy rath of the hawthorn tree? It is ‘fairie’ they are naming
+in these days the great mystic people of old in Ireland, and great
+and good they were and are, in spite of saints, bells, and banning.
+(May they hear me say it!) Shamas says Irish blood must ever waken
+to send back its answer to Irish music—and that is what it was doing
+when you said it hurt you: it is my thought that it was only calling
+you awake.”
+
+“You strange shepherd and wonderful boy,” she said, and her voice was
+so full of sweetness and kinship that he leaned forward and looked,
+slightly smiling, yet very earnest, into her eyes.
+
+“Tell me—Dark Rose—have you been wandering away and only now found
+your way back? Or have you gone far out on some tide of forgetting,
+or of slumber, maybe—and the lullaby and the heart-song of the Dark
+Rose is calling you awake?”
+
+“Are you a wizard in shape of a boy that you know even my thoughts?”
+she asked. “For I was thinking that song of Kathleen must have been
+sleeping in my mind a long time—a very long time, and all of the
+words gone. Yet the music did wait to be called awake, and it was you
+called.”
+
+“I think it was Maeve and Banva calling, and both of them queens
+calling to you! But you are awake again—and you are surely the Dark
+Rose living again!”
+
+“I wish my cousins could hear you call me that,” she said, and
+laughed; “they would think it a new sort of compliment. When they
+want to praise, they say a girl is fair and not dark, and they never
+heard the song.”
+
+“It may be that the sleep is on them, too, and it may be you will
+call them awake. I am thinking there will be many to answer a call
+when you cry it.”
+
+A rainbow shimmered through the mist, and a curious radiance heralded
+the breaking of sunrays between the clouds. The storm ended quickly
+as it began, and Hugh rose to his feet with the lamb content on his
+arm. The raindrops still shone on his gold-brown curls, and the time
+had been short in the strange shelter, yet he did not feel as if it
+had been: all the generations since O’Donnell made the song seemed
+to have been bridged over by the dark, bright beauty of that strange
+girl in the gray shadow.
+
+She also arose, but did not emerge; her eyes were on him, slender and
+at ease in his homely garb of homespun, weather-stained and worn. The
+sun touched his hair into a shimmer of radiance and the white of the
+lamb was made whiter by the arrows of the sun now far down the west.
+She could not but note a certain patrician cast to his features, and
+the slender shapeliness of the hand holding the lamb, and she saw him
+as a picture in whatever light he moved, first Shelley, and now—
+
+“Shepherd Hugh of the glen, you would have given me a fine fright,
+rushing in here after me, had you been anyone else than yourself,”
+she said, “yet I know not a thing of you for all our talk. I am sure
+you are a poet, and if there were Irish princes left in Ireland, I
+would know you were one of them, but after all I only know your name
+is Hugh, and that you have a friend, Shamas, a tinker.”
+
+“And I am only knowing that you are the Dark Rose, and that the
+fairies brought you here on eve of Beltain that I might see you once
+and be content: my great thanks and my love to them—may they hear me
+say it!”
+
+“Content?” she murmured—“not even asking who I might be?”
+
+“Not even asking,” he said, smiling back to her. “I care not a rush
+the name others may be putting on you. Queen of fairies, or maid of
+the cinders, they may be calling you, but the Dark Rose are you to
+me!”
+
+“There may be a day when I come again to Kerry,” she said. “Would I
+find you if I asked for Hugh of a glen?”
+
+“I am foster brother to Michal Donn, and his shieling is back of
+beyond on the other side there. I am of the Siod.”
+
+“Siod?” and she stared at him; “Sidhe, I read that in tales of
+fairies—it is their name! I do not need to be Irish to know that. I
+thought you were not mortal!”
+
+“And I knew you could not be,” he retorted in her own mood. “If you
+are again on this hill of Kerry, I will be telling you the tale of
+that Siod clan. There was a woman who came out of the mists long
+ago, as you have, and left thought and mind on a mortal clan. It is
+told around the peat fires at fall of night, but they speak of other
+things when I join their circle.”
+
+“Was she also a flower?”
+
+“No—she was born of the sea, and the name put on her was Moruadh
+(sea-maid), and it became, in time, Maurya. A prince of the Children
+of the Sea took her for wife and was banned for it by the druids—and
+that was even before Padrig was brought captive slave from Gaul.”
+
+“A prince of the Children of the Sea?”
+
+“Munster clans of the west are called that, for their fathers came
+over the sea from some lost land—yes, that is what has been told of
+them always.”
+
+“I am coming back some day, Hugh of the Fairies,” she said.
+
+A long signal call came to them. His eyes met hers in question. She
+nodded her head.
+
+“They are far away yet,” she said, and she seemed reluctant enough
+at the sound. “So you are of the sons of Irish princes, yet you herd
+sheep on the Kerry hills?”
+
+“So do others whose genealogies reach to the generations when the
+Son of Mary was born; true that is, though many would be doubting
+it. Some souls are born for palaces and walls and roofs—others for
+the surge of the sea and stout decks—and others to feel ever the
+springing grass under foot. I am of that last, and Shamas was telling
+my father never to house me, or break my reed pipe until I had
+reached height and made my own choice; and I have yet some growing to
+do.”
+
+“And what will you be then: herder of sheep?”
+
+“I think I will just be playing the pipe to the sheep and singing old
+songs until you are coming again.”
+
+“To the fairies’ rath?”
+
+“I think it will be in the fairies’ rath.”
+
+She broke a spray of the hawthorn bloom, and stood looking at him.
+
+“It has been very wonderful,” she mused. “I will not believe any of
+it when I wake tomorrow, but I will take a bit of the hawthorn for
+proof. If—if I come back to these hills I will send you a message of
+hawthorn, and you will come again and tell me of Ireland’s music and
+her poets—perhaps you will then have poems of your own.”
+
+“I am the one would be thankful if that could be,” he said.
+
+Voices were heard on the wind, and the bark of a dog. The sun was
+touching the very edge of the far sea.
+
+“Do not move from that pillar, and you will be out of their sight,”
+she said. “I will give them a fright to think I was alone in this
+waste place. I will tell them a fairy prince was my host: they will
+never believe me, but I know it is true.”
+
+She broke the spray of hawthorn in two parts.
+
+“Why did the tinker laugh at you when he sang the song of the
+coulin—and what is that? Is it another mystery?”
+
+“It is not. It is the ancient Irish way for men to wear the hair,
+long and tied back. Under the old English laws men were punished
+for keeping that old custom or using Irish speech. It is me he
+is laughing at, and telling me I’ll be sent to the Castle yet in
+punishment for my long hair.”
+
+“It makes you look like old pictures,” she said, “and surely a boy
+can do that much as he pleases in these days. This is your hawthorn
+to prove I was here and had shelter with you. What is the name of
+this place?”
+
+“It is Templard—the high temple—and should be sung in a song because
+the Dark Rose has stood under the hawthorn shade in this place,” he
+said, and she laughed silently at that.
+
+“How they would joy to hear me called dark anything,” she said.
+
+The voices were nearer, and one man’s voice calling, “Rose! Rosa!
+Rosalie!”
+
+“It is one of the hundred cousins,” she laughed. “You will see, Hugh
+of the Siod, that they call my name in many ways, but only you have
+called me Rose the Dark. Fare you well, shepherd boy, until you make
+music to call me back to Kerry.”
+
+“I will be making that music,” he said.
+
+She let fall the spray of hawthorn lightly on the white lamb in his
+arms just as a dark hound halted on the summit of the earth wall; she
+ran to meet him, poised there like a green bird with scarlet wings as
+her cloak blew back in the wind.
+
+There were shouts, a clamor of voices, and then the one voice.
+
+“Rose! You here safe, and the peasants searching the bogs for you!”
+
+“Whist!” she called down to them mockingly, “this is no place for
+your shouting and your hounds. I have been spending an hour with the
+fairies in their rath of Templard, and the rest of you are not to put
+foot in it. Not at all after the sun is down,” and she pointed to
+the ball of celestial fire sinking beyond oceans—“the mystic hour is
+past.”
+
+Then she darted down, laughing, and only the hawthorn spray was
+left to show she had not been a vision, laughing, mocking, weeping,
+adorable in young beauty.
+
+Once Hugh caught sight of her again. A carriage with black horses
+waited on the old road used by the peat-cutters of the bog beyond.
+Toward it she walked with a tall man and the hound between them.
+A half-dozen men and boys followed through the whins and rocky
+pasture—they did not look back, and he knew fear was on them for all
+her mocking; and no maid or man of the glen would choose the ruins of
+Templard for a resting place at setting of sun on any day.
+
+She halted once on a velvet-green knoll and for a few heartbeats she
+stood—a flash of crimson against the deep purple of the sky. She
+did not look back, but with upflung hand made a gesture of hail and
+farewell, and Hugh smiled at that, and waved in return though he knew
+she would not see.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+It was late twilight when he brought down the sheep to the fold, and
+Molly Donn, his foster sister, put before him a brown loaf baked in
+the hearth oven, the pitcher of new milk, and boiled potatoes, while
+a white-haired little old man puffed at his pipe and looked him over.
+
+“You ranged the ewes over far when you took them to the rath of
+Templard,” he remarked, and Molly rested the needles in her knitting
+to stare at him.
+
+“Shamas man, have you indeed ‘the sight’ that you look over all the
+pasture range—and you not beyond the boolie this day?” she asked, and
+the old man with the grave mouth, and merry blue eyes, puffed his
+pipe and chuckled.
+
+“Have thought with you, Molly girl,” he suggested. “What need of the
+second sight, when he sports a twig of hawthorn flower from the fairy
+rath on that hill? That hawthorn is ever the first to be blooming.”
+
+“You have sharper eyes than the youth about you, Father Shamas,” said
+Hugh, and laughed at the fear in the eyes of Molly. “I was in truth
+on that hill, and fell asleep and dreaming in the bracken until the
+rain fell—that was when the sheep strayed a bit, but all are safe
+home again.”
+
+Molly made the sign to ward off evil, and looked her horror at him.
+
+“Asleep in the bracken of Templard and this on the eve of Beltain!”
+she whispered. “Saint Bride to your saving! Fear would be on me over
+the dreams of Templard.”
+
+“Save your fears, Molly asthore. The dream was a beautiful dream, and
+I am the richer.”
+
+Old Shamas regarded the glowing eyes of the lad. “The dreams of the
+young are seed for the harvest of old age,” he said. “It is good to
+dream in beauty, else the old days will be gray days.”
+
+“It’s only guessing at that you are, Shamas,” retorted Hugh, “for
+there is no age on you—nor will ever be.”
+
+The old man and the lad looked in each other’s eyes with the smiling
+content of comradeship, but Molly, turning the heel of the hose, did
+not see the look, and was slow in imagination for a Kerry coast woman.
+
+“It’s glib you are growing with the tongue, Hugh, lad,” she
+admonished him. “I was never daring to cross my elders, nor was
+Michal at your age. When your father is coming back, or sending for
+you for the schooling, he will be putting blame on us for the bold
+words of you—and God and Mary know it is no fault of mine!”
+
+“True for you,” laughed Hugh, “it is not—Shamas is the one to blame.”
+
+Michal came in at that, shaking the water from his coat-amore, for
+the rain was again falling.
+
+“Lucky it is it held off so long,” he said, “for the hunt was up
+for a bit of a girl straying on the mountain, and lost from the old
+castle.”
+
+“What is witching you?” demanded Molly. “You know well the castle of
+Argial is a forsaken place.”
+
+“It has been, but the new heir, Hector Laud, must be giving it an
+overlooking, and brought along friends for gay doings.”
+
+“Fine it would be to have a new and young lord of Argial again—that
+has never been known in our time,” mused Molly.
+
+“This one is new but not young; Denis and Tim Doherty saw him. He is
+a pale, masterful kind of man, and proud at that. They say it will
+be a great wonder if he gets the girl he is wanting as mistress of
+Argial, for she has lightning in her blood, and the devil’s share of
+courage. Well, Time tells the story! That girl it was started the
+hunt, and Tim was after getting two shillings for taking his gray
+pony and going the bog boreen in the search. No, he was not the one
+to find her. She was found, and he earned the two shillings in ease
+and comfort.”
+
+“Who was the lost one?” asked Shamas, for Hugh made no question.
+
+“It was the daughter of a Maurice, and she English, and knowing not a
+path of all Kerry.”
+
+“Maurice is not a name of England,” mused Shamas, “not at all of
+England.”
+
+“Well—God knows! That is their saying, and she has only her beauty
+for wealth and her uncle keen on the match when the time comes. She’s
+only a bit of a slip yet, and time in plenty ahead! Denis was fair
+enchanted by a glimpse of her behind the black horses of Argial, and
+them galloping to put fear on a soul! His saying was that the cuckoo
+would sing in falling snow for that daughter of Maurice, whoever she
+may be.”
+
+Molly on the creepie by the hearthstone clicked her knitting needles,
+and glanced her impatience at Michal, busy with his supper.
+
+“That would be the man of it,” she said in disdain of masculine
+weaknesses. “Every man-jack of them agog over a bright eye, and never
+a knowledgeable word from you of where the child was lost, and who
+had the finding of her.”
+
+“Ah, blather of you, Molly! That’s the woman of it—wanting to know
+the ins and outs of all things going. Give me another mug of milk,
+girl! No one was finding the stray at all. She walked out from
+Templard when she got ready, and no fear on her and not a hair of her
+head wet! She had mocking and laughter for Laud of Argial and told of
+a King of the Fairies who made music for her in the ruins, but Argial
+had blackness of thunder in his looks and drove like the devil down
+from the mountain.”
+
+“Glory be to God!” breathed Molly, crossing herself. “A slip of a
+girl like that to venture in Templard this day! Hugh, lad, when the
+sheep were straying over there beyond did you get sight of her?”
+
+But Hugh was sprawled on the hearth with a bit of paper and pencil.
+He was tousling his curls for straying thoughts, and making scribbles
+there by the glow of the peat fire. Molly repeated her question
+before he gave heed to it.
+
+“I saw no daughter of a Maurice there, and no bride of Argial,” he
+said stolidly. “What I saw on Templard was a different thing. Did I
+not tell you I fell asleep in the bracken and had a dream? Whist,
+Molly dear, and let be, for I heard music there and am making a song
+of it.”
+
+“Oh, Shamas man,” begged Molly. “Say something for me to put the
+fear of God on that lad! You know well it is ill luck to sleep on
+a fairies’ rath, and ill luck to make songs to their harping, and
+worst luck of all for a maid or man to follow fairy king, or fairy
+mistress, to a rath on a Midsummer Eve, or on this eve of Beltain.
+Tell it to him, Shamas, for—Bride and Mary to our helping!—it is only
+to you he will hearken.”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+And in the old Kerry castle of Argial, a dark old man, in an
+invalid’s chair, frowned at the girl called by Hugh the Dark Rose,
+and all the laughter and joy were gone from her face.
+
+“I will not have you mock your host and my friend!” he said, and his
+clenched hand fell on the tea-table and set the china and silver
+a-tinkle. “I will not have it from you! Gerald and you have bread
+and comfort under his roof—and that is more than I can give you;
+and bread alone is more than I may have at the last—with stocks
+going smash, and no hope of retrieving losses, I will not have this
+rebellion and mockery of yours!”
+
+The girl looked from his angry eyes to the brandy and soda on the
+tea-table.
+
+“I meant to ask you about that, about the little inheritance of
+Jerry’s and mine—if—it is gone—?”
+
+“Of course it’s gone—gone long ago—with my own! I tell you there is
+only one way of school and comfort for both of you.”
+
+“But, uncle,” the girl went over and stood back of his chair as if
+speech were less hard if his eyes were not on her; “Jerry and I have
+endless numbers of cousins somewhere here in Ireland—”
+
+“All poorer than church mice; and the ones with means have all gone
+to America or the continent. Sensible enough they are, too!”
+
+“Yet there might be some left who would let us make a home with
+them—even a home on a farm would not be bad. We are not quite
+paupers; surely, we have a little left, and I would work—do anything—”
+
+His laugh with a deal of scorn in it, halted her.
+
+“Do anything! Then do the only sensible thing there is to do. Settle
+your mind to be civil and be mistress of Argial when the time comes.
+Hector is enough of a connection of the family to accept favors
+from. Gerald will be provided for; he will get his bit to secure a
+commission, and he would think you a fool to talk of work—and perhaps
+a clerk’s grind for him! Why, it is a dower for a princess Hector
+Laud is offering for you—and you talk of a group of unknown Irish
+cousins, poverty-stricken as yourself! It is too absurd for words.
+Don’t let me hear any more of it.”
+
+There was silence for so long a time that the man in the chair grew
+restless and turned half around; his voice was more conciliating.
+
+“Be a good girl now! You must know you are the only hope left. Hector
+adores you, and your mockery is serious to him. You are too young
+to know what is best. Why start a fool’s hunt for Irish cousins you
+never saw when an English cousin offers you the key to his treasure
+chests?”
+
+“I care little enough for the treasure chests—though I do love the
+Kerry hills,” she said at last.
+
+“Well, that’s something! You can have all of them you want when
+married, but not a foot shall you go alone on them again while we are
+in the castle. And that will only be until tomorrow. You will go back
+to school until common sense has ended your flighty rebellion. It is
+a choice between starvation and the income of a girl-queen. Poverty
+is an enemy to fight against—it will conquer you in the end!”
+
+“It may overpower me when I think of Jerry and his future,” she said
+quietly, “but to be overpowered does not mean to be conquered.”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+In an early April a woman rode down the boreen of the glen from
+Templard, and her eyes rested often on the simple growths—from cress
+of the brook to the buds on the prickly thorn. She reached out and
+touched the green ivy in the dusky wood, and pinned a bit of it on
+her coat of darker green.
+
+Molly Donn, catching glimpse of her through the open door, flew
+hurriedly to combing her hair with one hand, and pushing Shamas
+toward the door with the other.
+
+“Go on now—it is herself! Have manners and give her greeting whilst
+I make myself tidy. God save her! No word of anyone has overpraised
+her!”
+
+Shamas, a little older, a little whiter, did as bidden, and looked
+his wonder when the rider spoke.
+
+“You are Shamas? Are you not?” she asked, and her dark eyes had
+searching kindness.
+
+“It is Shamas, indeed, I am called, my lady,” he made answer, “though
+there is many another of the same name on the Kerry coast, and I’ve
+no monopoly.”
+
+“There can be only one here at the foot of Templard,” she said, “one
+with—
+
+      The ever young blue eyes,
+      Beneath the thatch of snow.”
+
+“Ah then, you’ve been seeing the lad’s bits of verse, and songs of
+the Kerry hills,” he said; and the old face was illumined. “Sure
+enough he did not forget his old friends—not even a pet cow or a
+sheep! Why, I find myself giving looks to the bog-berries and the
+bracken under foot as never before—and all because he bore them in
+his mind and put them in his songs across the sea beyond.”
+
+“Yes—I’ve been seeing the songs—and hearing them. My brother is home
+from the front and tells me they are sung in the trenches by the
+soldiers. He is not well enough to ride, so I have come alone. I
+thought you would perhaps tell me a little about the boy who wrote
+the ‘Legends of Desmond.’”
+
+Molly appeared at that moment, eager and voluble with offered
+hospitality.
+
+“Who could tell you if not Shamas Ronayne?” she asked. “Didn’t he
+teach the lad them old tales and songs of old battles?—Indeed, he
+did then, and it’s proud we are of Hugh, and joyful that his heart
+has remembrance for the glen folk. It’s proud, too, we are that the
+lady of Castle Argial has his name among the many who would crave
+remembrance of her—and will you please to come within, for a rest on
+the way?”
+
+The lady of Argial dismounted, and looked with interest at the low
+room, stone-floored, and the walls brown with peat smoke. The simple
+furnishings were clean, but the bareness of it all seemed to appall
+the visitor.
+
+“And this was the cradle!” she said at last, and looked at Shamas, as
+to one who would understand. “Tell me of him.”
+
+“It is not much to tell,” said the old man. “He was ailing as a young
+lad, and was left behind when his father sailed for the western
+world. The grass under his feet here was the right cure for him. Ere
+the day came when his father struck the rich luck of mines and such
+wealth as is to be had for the looking over there, the lad Hugh had
+a mind full of tales of old Munster—and more than the tales, for he
+had the feel of the land and could sing it—yes, he could do that!
+When tutors and the learning of books were coming his way, he made
+that learning serve for telling the old tales in a new manner and
+saving the old songs in print, so cheaply that even the husband of
+a one-donkey farm could afford the price of it. Many wise men were
+making record of old Irish for the scholars and the learned—that is
+what he is saying, but the thing he was wishful for ever was to make
+it easy for the lad of the cow-path—and the digger of peat—and the
+herring fishers along the shore. Yes, that was the wish of him.”
+
+“He has his wish,” she said. “Hugh Siod is a name well loved by
+many.”
+
+“Aye, and hated as well,” murmured Shamas. “You’re not the first
+to ride this path asking of him; the sergeant of constabulary has
+gathered in more than one copy, and others are hid as the history of
+Keating was hid for generations among the Irish. My own is under the
+hearth.”
+
+“Whist man,” muttered Molly, who was setting the black kettle on the
+hob for making of tea, “why bury a crock of coin only to lift the
+cover off for the passer-by?”
+
+But Shamas smiled at the visitor, and lifted the stoneflagging where
+a flat package reposed in the excavation beneath.
+
+“Let be, Molly,” he said tolerantly, “the lady of Argial has blood in
+her of the nobles who had banishment—‘to hell or Connaught’ put upon
+them by the invader. The daughter of Maurice could not be an informer
+against her own.”
+
+“She could not,” said the lady of Argial. “My grandfather was killed
+for Ireland—and my father went into exile to escape the same enemies.
+I am only learning these things now, for it was long kept hidden from
+us.”
+
+“Aye! That is often the way of it,” agreed Shamas. “The young in free
+lands could not have understanding of it, and what use to put shadow
+on them? Look at this now”—and he opened the package and turned the
+leaves of the little volume to a tale, _The Wife of Desmond_. “There
+now is a lament, second to none ever written: not Dierdre for her
+lover—not Nuala in her exile, ever had the heart wail for hearts’
+losses equaled by the Irish bride of Desmond at the slaughter of her
+infant sons and their father, who had dared Saxon laws to marry in
+honor an Irish maid!”
+
+“That was a true tale, and a terrible,” agreed Molly, who was at the
+open door watching the path, “but fear goes with it, and what profit
+in the printed words of such, when troubles might come to all of us
+for the very sight of it here?”
+
+“It teaches the young from songs what they never would glimpse from
+the books of historians,” said their visitor. “I had taunts given me
+in schools that my people were of jails, and exiles. I carried the
+shadow of that in silence all my youth. This book told me they were
+not criminals—they were patriots—and my pride in them now is beyond
+word. Think of that!—I—who scarcely dared speak the name of them all
+my life!”
+
+“And you a grand lady, too!” breathed Molly in amaze. “And it is
+noble I am sure your forbears were, and not to be spoke of by the
+likes of me who has no reading of books to my knowledge. But indeed
+now there have been no bad killings this while back, and it is a good
+herring year, and the new litter of pigs gives us promise of comfort
+for the winter, to say nothing of the nest-egg Hugh himself has been
+sending me! No, my lady, it is myself is glad enough to hear speech
+of these things, for Shamas here, and Michal, who is gone to the
+harbor, give me no light on it at all; but when a good year is with
+us why put in time with reading of the old-time slaughterings?”
+
+“To justify our fathers who sacrificed themselves for freedom. It is
+a wonderful word—freedom! The pity is that few value it until after
+it has been lost.”
+
+There was weariness in the sweet, deep voice, and a moment of shadow
+in the dark eyes, and the old man nodded his head slowly.
+
+“It came your way early,” he said, “but it has been bringing
+understanding with it.”
+
+“No,” she said lowly, “this little book brought the understanding. I
+owe much to it; I drifted in discontent from port to port until it
+found me! I bought a hundred copies for my brother who is afire with
+hope these days. Surely, our Irish regiments, fighting abroad, must
+win us justice at last here at home!”
+
+“A blessing on the day!” said Shamas. “It is a proud time for us,
+Lady Argial, that your heart is with the cottagers here in Kerry.
+There’s many an Irish estate give over to cattle and keepers and
+mayhaps some gentleman for the fall hunting, and no spirit of life in
+it at all, and it kills the land, that does. It kills the spirit of a
+land—or—drives it too far afield to find the way back again!”
+
+“Wouldn’t himself be proud to see you here now, drinking tea from his
+own cup, and with the book of his writing to your hand?” said Molly,
+beaming hospitality—and settling herself on the doorstep with her own
+cup of tea after presenting her visitor with a gilded guest cup. “Now
+wouldn’t it be a proud day the day he would see you so?”
+
+“I did see him once; it seems very long ago. He was a slender young
+lad with a wonderful smile and odd sayings. He sang a song on the
+mountain—a song of Ireland—it had charm and mysteries in it. That was
+years ago.”
+
+“And the song was _Kathleen na Hulihan_?” ventured Shamas. “He ever
+was singing or whistling one of them, and there have been many.”
+
+“No,” said Lady Argial, with the book open at _A Legend of the Dark
+Rose_—“no—it was a different song. But my brother has a new song of
+Kathleen and he says the boys are singing it in camp. He found it in
+an American paper, but the poet’s name I could not learn. I think the
+writer of this book would love it, though it is the sad song of an
+old man.”
+
+“I am wondering if you would let us have it?” asked Shamas. “Not so
+many new songs come up the glen—it would be a favor of grace, if it
+would not be asking too much?”
+
+“How could you ask too much? You who taught a bird its song here in
+the Kerry hills,” she said, and the flush of pleasure mounted to the
+white thatch of his hair. She finished the tea and sat looking over
+the far green.
+
+“I do not sing, but I can repeat three of the verses:
+
+      _O Kathleen na Hulihan,
+        It’s old I am and gray,
+      The autumn leaves they drift around
+        The ending of my day.
+      The red leaves—the dead leaves—
+        They drift about my way,
+      Kathleen na Hulihan, today!_
+
+      _O Kathleen na Hulihan,
+        I wandered far from you.
+      I took a woman to my wife
+        And kind she was and true,
+      But your gray eyes looked out on me
+        Within her eyes of blue;
+      And, Kathleen na Hulihan,
+        My soul went after you!_
+
+      _O Kathleen na Hulihan,
+        Your face is like a star!
+      Your face has led me to your feet,
+        Through wastes and waters far!
+      Your face has made a day for me
+        Where only twilights are!
+      O Kathleen na Hulihan, my star!_”
+
+There was silence for a little when she ended and Shamas looked at
+her with a glint of tears in his eyes.
+
+“My star!” he said, nodding gently, “a star indeed—and a poet of
+another land knowing it and singing it! This is a day to live for—a
+day of great comfort, and you bringing it to me! Now, Molly, woman,
+you’ll have no more moments of fear for Hugh, and the tales he has
+retold, when that telling has brought the lady of Argial here to a
+shepherd’s cot, and her bringing a new Kathleen to us—a star indeed—a
+star indeed!”
+
+“It is myself is proud as any of Hugh,” said the cautious Molly. “But
+the boys are wild over him, and many a poet of Ireland has died in
+exile for less than he has dared say—and you know that well, Shamas,
+and this is a time of fear at the best, and you are knowing that,
+too!”
+
+Lady Argial was reading the kindly, yet careful, inscription in the
+book from under the hearth.
+
+“And this is his own writing to you—others will envy you his love
+written there. Tell me if there is anything in which he needs help.”
+
+“Nothing we can know—not wealth surely, for the father has left him
+enough and to spare. Every penny the book brings goes to a fund for
+Ireland—and more besides!”
+
+“I did not know that—there was no one to tell me,” she said, rising.
+“It was a fancy I had that he was maybe poor and alone. But perhaps
+he is not alone either?”
+
+“He is alone except for Dark Rosaleen, or Kathleen na Hulihan,” said
+Shamas, “and I think he will be having no other sweetheart.”
+
+Their visitor stood in the doorway and looked back into the dusky
+room of the one window, and then to the almost frail little old man
+whose spirit was not at all frail.
+
+She clasped hands with him, and with Molly Donn, and mounted the
+black horse from the stone wall at the stile.
+
+“I do not mean that Argial shall be merely a hunting lodge ever
+again,” she said. “Come to me as a friend if ever there is favor or
+justice you have to ask.”
+
+On the hill above she halted to look back and wave her hand.
+
+“Like a queen on a throne she looks there!” said Molly all a-flutter,
+“and like a queen, too, she sat, simple as the likes of us—on a seat
+here under our own eaves! Shamas, dear, did you ever hope to see the
+day?”
+
+But Shamas did not answer. His eyes were on the dark horse and its
+rider outlined against the shining glory of gold-and-primrose clouds
+behind which the sun was passing in partial eclipse.
+
+She looked like a statue there, for horse and rider were flat,
+dark outlines against the sky—themselves in passing shadow and the
+radiance beyond.
+
+But it was not the picture by which the old man was held—it was a
+sudden forward movement of hers as if peering down the sea road at
+something not discernible by the two watchers of the cottage. The
+horse moved and half turned, restless and eager to be gone, but she
+halted him there—waiting.
+
+Then the cart of Michal came over the brow of the hill, and a tall
+man beside Michal lifted his cap in recognition, and the woman,
+leaning forward, waved her hand.
+
+“Glory be!” muttered Molly. “And who would be the stranger there with
+Michal?”
+
+But old Shamas knew!
+
+“It’s himself,” he said, and his voice trembled. “I can go the Way in
+content now that my eyes are on him again—it’s himself come back to
+us!”
+
+The stranger leaped from the cart and strode over the upland green
+where the woman waited. His cap was in his hand, and the shock of
+bronze-gold curls were gone; one lock over his forehead was the only
+reminder of the golden crown she had remembered.
+
+“O Fairy Prince of a holiday!” she said, and smiled in quick
+appraisement.
+
+“O Dark Rose of a dream!” he answered, and bowed before her. “This is
+a more wonderful coming back than I could have hoped—it has taken ten
+years to earn it!”
+
+He apparently did not note her half-extended hand, but stood as a
+courtier might before a queen, yet with a sort of gay comradeship in
+his smile, and the caress in his voice. The horse reached forward
+with pointed ears of inquiry, and then snuggled its nose against his
+shoulder. He lifted his hand and stroked the black satiny skin.
+
+“It is a fine welcome to Kerry he is giving me,” he said, with
+laughing touch of brogue. “Ah! It’s great just to be breathing the
+air again!”
+
+“A welcome to Kerry is what we all give you, Hugh Siod,” she said.
+“You forgot to pipe to the herds here until I came again, but you
+kept well your boy-promise to make songs for Ireland!”
+
+“For the Dark Rose,” he corrected her, and smiled. “I think I
+promised to make them on the fairies’ rath, but we human things drift
+in strange currents sometimes, and my songs were made in another
+place.”
+
+“They go to my heart,” she said, “and not mine alone. My brother
+idolizes you; I must tell you of Jerry and his comrades. Your songs
+have been an inspiration.”
+
+He stood while she told him of the wounded brother, and the hopes for
+Ireland founded on the Irish troops, drilled to fight, if need be,
+their ancient enemy for equal rights, yet putting aside, temporarily,
+their own great cause, and marching to battle beside that enemy when
+devastation threatened a larger world.
+
+The glint of laughter went out of his eyes as they talked there—and
+they talked long.
+
+She grew pale and still as he told her of things beyond the seas, of
+foreign alliance by which all Ireland could be made a battlefield, of
+the political groups who stayed at home to undo the work of the Irish
+regiments in which her pride was so great.
+
+“For that I have come—and come in secret,” he confessed. “Because of
+what I have written in my passion for Irish freedom, strange things
+have been told to me. All my heart is with them—but this is not the
+time! I have crossed the ocean to tell them that, and to bring word
+from men more important than I. I go to Cork and then to Dublin to do
+what I may.”
+
+“And then?”
+
+“I have been helping recruit in Canada, but others can carry on that
+work now. If I escape alive from my Irish friends when I tell them
+the truths I bring—well—if there is room for me in an Irish regiment,
+that is where I will be. There is yet work to do.”
+
+Her hand crept up to her throat as she listened to him.
+
+“Once you made me weep when you crooned a lullaby,” she said, “and
+now, for all my gladness and pride in your work, you are giving me a
+great fear! You make me understand things that were dark. I fear—I
+fear my brother may know of that group you came to reason with, I
+fear it greatly! And—you maybe know the position and inclinations of
+Lord Argial—”
+
+“I know,” he said quietly, “yours will not be the only family divided
+in Ireland—there will be tragedies as dark as any I have sung, and
+the day is past when they can be hidden as of old.”
+
+“You know the censor has suppressed your _Legends of Desmond_?”
+
+“I ought to,” and his smile twinkled out again. “But sailors sing
+the songs of them aboard ship, and teach them to sweethearts ashore,
+and I heard a shepherd whistling one of them as we crossed over the
+plain below—so—one way and another they will bear their message, if
+it is worth the bearing!”
+
+“It is—it is!” she said earnestly. “You have wakened many of us
+to greater pride in our heritage. I am only one of them. Did you
+know—have you ever chanced on the trace of a link between your family
+and our own? My brother found it in some old record of genealogy of
+Munster. I—he takes great pride in it. I—am able to claim myself as
+your kinswoman—though far removed.”
+
+“Not so far!” he corrected. “You may remember that I recognized you
+as kindred even when awed by you, and O’Donnell’s Dark Rose was
+called by him ‘The Flower of Munster.’”
+
+She looked at him as he spoke lightly of the things of which he had
+written as a religion.
+
+“I have found many of my Irish cousins in the ten years,” she said,
+“but not one of them is like you. I rode up to Templard today, but
+all is different; there is no hawthorn blooming and no white lamb,
+and no shepherd of songs!”
+
+“I never went there again,” he said very quietly. “It is a place
+to dream about. When I have done something of use to Ireland—of
+real use—I will go up again to the old temple. It has always been
+sanctuary to me. I would wish that the hawthorn might be in bloom
+when I go again—and that I might see you there!”
+
+She had the same wish, and he knew it without words. The childish
+promise of tryst when his songs called her back to Kerry was not
+forgotten by either of them. Ten years of life in the world had
+dragged their long days between a lad and a maid whose hands had not
+even touched, yet nothing in that life had been more real than their
+dreams of each other.
+
+“I must go,” she said. “It is wonderful that you returned here
+today—the day I came just to look at the place where you had once
+lived! I wonder if I will ever see you again, Hugh Siod.”
+
+“I think you will,” he said; “wherever they send me I will find my
+way back some time. You wear the green—dear color of hope, which is
+all that is left to Ireland! Hope then with me that the hawthorn may
+be in bloom when I do come—hawthorn time is the glad time, and the
+winter left behind.”
+
+“I will—I will!” she said.
+
+They looked at each other steadily and turned away. He halted once
+to watch her riding swiftly up toward the far summit, and then he
+followed Michal to the cottage.
+
+“Would you look at that now?” demanded Molly watching afar, “not even
+a handshake did she give him—and she all fine words here in praise
+of his writings! Sure, the quality folk is a puzzle any way you take
+them, and it would hurt her none at all to be human to him as she was
+to us!”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+The stars were out when the lady of Argial rode along the great oak
+avenue from the forest, and had joy in the night odors of swelling
+buds, and the promise of earth that winter was indeed gone.
+
+A leaping light against the windows told that a cheery fire had been
+made, more for the brightness of it than the need of warmth. And she
+thought of the long talk there she would have with Jerry over the
+strange hour at Siod’s old Kerry home.
+
+But when she reached the hall, angry voices came to her ears, and she
+faced a strange scene from the library door.
+
+Jerry, on his crutch, stood, a picture of helpless fury, and watched
+Hector Laud of Argial tear leaf by leaf a book apart, and toss them
+on the blaze.
+
+“I will have no smuggled seditious books under my roof,” he declared,
+“and no plotting traitors!”
+
+“You are the sort of man to make traitors!” said Jerry hotly. “You
+are the sort of man against whom people rise in ever-widening circles
+until it is called Revolution! Can you put lock and key on thoughts
+by burning a thinker’s books? I will not stop another night under
+your damned roof if I have to hobble on crutches over the mountain!”
+
+“Jerry!” She was beside him, with her arms about him—and staring hard
+at Laud, who calmly continued his task instead of flinging the volume
+at once to the flames.
+
+“Rose, Rose! It is the songs of Siod! My songs! It is brutal,”
+muttered Jerry, and before either realized what she was doing she
+darted forward and tore the remnants of the volume from the grasp of
+her husband.
+
+“They are Ireland itself, the very spirit of Ireland! And no fire
+ever made by you—or made by your blood—can burn that spirit out,
+Hector Laud!” she said.
+
+The men were no more astonished than herself at her act. Laud stared
+at her, sneering, incredulous.
+
+“Irish bombast!” he remarked. “So my wife is also a reader of this
+forbidden drivel of old legends! It is as well I came unexpectedly to
+note what was holding you so long in the wilds of Kerry. Is my castle
+one of the several used in these days for traitorous sedition?”
+
+“Our blood breeds no traitors,” she replied evenly, “neither do we
+permit insult. Jerry is right. You can have your roof for your own
+usage. A thatched cottage will give us more of self-respect.”
+
+“Don’t be absurd!” suggested Laud. “You know perfectly well I won’t
+allow you to go, and will not have a scandal. That thing in your hand
+is smuggled literature of a pernicious sort. If I choose I could
+put your brother under arrest for having it here. Burning it is the
+simple way out.”
+
+“Legally, I suppose he is right. Rose,” said Jerry at last. “I don’t
+want to make trouble for you. Let it be burned rather than that.”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+The boy had sunk in his chair—rather pale and shaky from his brief
+fury. She put her arm about him with a wonderful smile in her eyes.
+
+“There are different ways of burning,” she said. “Sacrifices are
+offered in that way.”
+
+She knelt on the hearth and held out the book in both hands, looking
+across at Jerry.
+
+“This is my sacrifice for my soldier brother,” she said, “that he
+may, without blemish, fight ever in the right, for Ireland!”
+
+She laid the leaves on the blaze and knelt watching until there was
+left only a glowing curl of ash. Hector Laud regarded her somberly.
+Never before had she so openly defied him. He was in sullen rage,
+knowing that he had gone too far, and his rage extended to the book,
+and the writer of it.
+
+And he knew himself justified in his rage when she rose from her
+knees and smiled on Jerry.
+
+“It is gone, soldier boy!” she said. “The pages are gone out of
+sight, but the real book is here,” and she touched her breast. “I
+know it all by heart, as does more than one of the Irish, and I will
+teach it all over to you again!”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+A fortnight later the hell of revolution broke loose in Dublin, and
+a reign of terror ruled. Wild fear dominated the official group, and
+strange jail-yard killings sent a shudder around the world. Hector
+Laud was sharer of that obloquy, and his wife, to whom no one would
+tell the truth, divined the unspoken. She shut herself in a room
+apart, and refused to look on his face.
+
+Jerry was brought to her there, shot and speechless, and gave work
+for her hands. The wound temporarily affected his speech and he had
+lain apparently dead for over an hour in the barricaded street where
+the bullets sang their death-song over him. Then some stranger had
+gone into that inferno after him and got him to safety. Civilians
+were forbidden within that street, and the stranger had been taken
+before the military authorities to answer for his humanity. No one
+could learn what had become of him; no one but the sister of the boy
+was especially interested, and it was difficult for any friend to
+seek answers to her questions, knowing that her husband was the one
+man whose information concerning suspects, arrests, and executions
+was absolutely accurate. He could tell her if anyone could—but no
+one could even hint that to her! Every friend of hers was shrouded
+in gloom because of the bond between them—they called him “Butcher
+Laud” when out of her hearing.
+
+The second day Jerry could articulate, but his nerves were a jangle,
+and his eyes pleaded with her.
+
+“Kerry, Kerry!” he whispered over and over. The physician listened
+and assented.
+
+“Get him out of this if you can. Everyone he sees here is filled with
+the devil’s own horrors we’ve been going through. By all means get
+him to the hills where there is peace.”
+
+Jerry whispered for “Siod,” once or twice, but no one knew where to
+find Siod.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+It was the last week in April, gloriously bright, and the warm sun
+calling out patches of bloom in every southern nook. The green grass
+was springing, and the coils of fern uncurling in wood and sedgy
+marge.
+
+She rode west to Kerry in a curious trance-like state with the
+wounded boy and a nurse. There were moments when she felt the
+after-effects of some shock she had lived through, though the actual
+shock, or the nature of it, had been forgotten!
+
+She wakened herself sobbing of some unknown sorrow, and the eyes of
+Jerry followed her in mute question. He could whisper disjointed
+words, but was forbidden attempt at conversation. Rest and nursing
+were his only need. The wound coming so soon after his former
+convalescence had been too heavy a strain for quick recuperation—yet
+he would recover and, as the physician said, live to fight again.
+
+The very birds of the air appeared to be bearers of disaster to the
+hills, for there was no welcome there for the family of Argial;
+herdsmen and farmers who once met her with the smile of welcome on
+every road now turned aside in the hidden boreens, or crouched back
+of hedges as she walked abroad.
+
+Shamas Ronayne alone came to her, a frail old white figure in gray,
+and driving the white donkey of Michal Donn.
+
+“None other would be coming for question to a Laud of Argial, and I
+am the one coming,” he said. “What may happen to me is as nothing at
+all, for my time is near, and none to sorrow.”
+
+“I will sorrow,” said the lady of Argial. “The very land itself
+sorrows for every man like you who passes. You are of the living
+records of the unwritten things—the sacred things.”
+
+“It is of the lad,” he said. “He was to come back once, or send word
+back to us once, when he had given his message in Dublin and joined a
+regiment. No word has come, and it is nearing a month. He was not of
+the revolution, for his message to them was a different one entirely.
+Kerry and Cork he reached in time, but Dublin he could not have. His
+name is not heard of, though many are asking.”
+
+“Yes, my own brother is asking—and my own heart is asking.”
+
+He looked at her with a new, wondrous look of comprehension, and
+tears shone in the unfaded blue of his strangely youthful eyes. He
+touched her green sleeve, as he might have touched the sacrament.
+
+“Ah! ‘Rose of Kerry!’ I should have known, I should have known!” he
+said. Her eyes, darkest gray, shaded darker by black lashes, met his
+gaze steadily and in pride. His own eyes closed, and he murmured a
+prayer at what he saw there.
+
+“It has been always, I think,” she said. “I was as a child walking in
+sleep—and he called me awake!”
+
+“Aye! And your voice would now be calling him to answer if any voice
+could,” said Shamas. “I have been walking the glen paths in the
+night with a great fear on me, and no shape to that fear. ‘Before
+the hawthorn is in bloom,’ was what he said at his going away, but
+the buds have opened surely on Templard, and no word coming! The man
+they wedded you to is the man who knows all things of them in prison,
+and them who were killed there. I—we all had thought that you would
+surely be knowing.”
+
+“Shamas,” she whispered, and then again in growing horror—“Shamas!”
+
+“Aye,” he answered. “There are fearful hearts waiting the words, but
+none would be asking an Argial, barring myself—and it is you I am
+asking.”
+
+“And I am no Argial!” she said. “I am only a woman of Ireland, this
+day. If a crime has been done against him, Argial must answer!”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+She sent message by wire so imperative that some reply must come
+back. After that there was nothing to do but the waiting, and Shamas
+she would not let go.
+
+They talked long, and their speech was all of him, and she told him
+of their childlike game of the fairy queen and the Irish prince who
+found her in the shadows of the druid temple on Templard.
+
+“I mind well the day,” said Shamas, “for on the hearthstone that
+night he wrote the poem-tale of the Dark Rose of Red Hugh O’Donnell,
+and it blooming again in Kerry for fragrance to all Ireland—alive
+and blooming after three centuries of heavy feet trampling it in
+the mire! He worked all the night at it, and his eyes alight and no
+weariness on him! Molly was in a fair fright over it, for he said he
+was writing a dream he had in a fairy rath—and it the eve of Beltain!
+As this is.”
+
+“This?” she said, and stared at him.
+
+“Aye, what else? In the cities the people are forgetting them old
+days of the fields and the new bloom, but here we are not forgetting,
+for it ends the black winter for us and gives us hope of harvests to
+come.”
+
+“And I forgot!” Her voice was incredulous. “Shamas, my mind has been
+full of him, yet for the first time in ten years I forgot! Since last
+Wednesday I have walked as in a trance, and I seem to have lost dates
+or records of time. Beltain to come:—and I to forget! Why, it was
+like a tryst-time, a day to wish myself back on Templard, and hear
+his voice again there—his young voice singing.”
+
+“Wednesday,” mused Shamas. “That was the night I walked sleepless.
+The restlessness would not take itself away. So—Sunday and all as it
+is, I could stand it no longer, and took the road to you.”
+
+“Sunday?” she repeated. “I had forgotten that also! The hour has gone
+by when an answer could reach me by wire on a Sunday! It will be
+morning now before we can get it, but you must not go back until it
+comes. You are the only comforting soul near me.”
+
+“I could not sleep under the roof of Argial,” said Shamas.
+
+“Neither will I this night,” she said, “but you can rest, and wait,
+and what I can do for your comfort I will.”
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+The twilight crept through the dusky wood, and quiet settled over the
+sombre mass of gray Argial. A star glimmered here and there in the
+deepening sky.
+
+She paced her chamber alone—waiting!
+
+A lad passed through a far meadow singing a love-song to some mate
+of the thatched roofs, and she paused at the window listening until
+the last sound died away—but it was another voice of which she was
+thinking.
+
+“And this night!” she murmured. “This sleepless night of the
+tryst-time! Ah, to be but once on Templard under the stars—and his
+young voice singing there carefree as before!”
+
+She walked away from the window and the witcheries of the thought.
+She lit a reading-lamp, and picked up a little book—Meyers’
+translation of the fragments of verse of _Liadan and Kurithir_. The
+ancient love-story of the two poets had its own fascination for her
+always, but this time her eyes rested on one verse and did not go
+beyond. It was Liadan’s recognition of the forbidden voice singing
+its love to her—
+
+      “_Belovéd is the dear voice I hear!
+      I dare not welcome it,
+      But this only do I say:
+          Belovéd is the dear voice!_”
+
+She sat quite still, looking at it. Her dark eyes grew darker,
+wider; every sense seemed suddenly alert in a new way. Her breath
+was stilled to listen; no sound broke the darkness or echoed in the
+halls—yet far away beyond—above—she felt the vibrations of wordless
+harmonies!
+
+They passed, and left her staring at the words:
+
+      “_Belovéd is the dear voice I hear
+      I dare not welcome it!_”
+
+She arose, took from a closet a long-hooded cloak of green, and
+turned out the light.
+
+“But I dare,” she whispered, and slipped out and down to the stables
+in the moonless night!
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Through the gray forest, darkening to green, she rode. And over the
+high moor the black horse sped like a night-bird skimming the earth.
+She was filled with a great exultation—the cloud under which she
+had been oppressed seemed to lift when she emerged from the forest
+of Argial. She knew she was doing the thing she had longed to do
+always—and if there was but hawthorn abloom on the height it would be
+recompense!
+
+Willingly and joyously the horse ran to the first circle of the rath,
+but beyond that he would not go! In vain she whispered—in vain she
+petted and caressed him. He planted his feet and pointed his ears
+and reared only to come down again in the same spot. She walked him
+quietly to a different point and tried again—nearer he would not
+approach.
+
+She slid from his back and petted him—he was wet and trembling.
+
+“This then must be the place of parting,” she whispered. “Why should
+you have fear of it?”
+
+She wondered why she whispered where there were none to hear, but
+could not answer her own query. There seemed to be utter stillness
+on the world, and she scarce heard her own footfalls as she went up
+and up over the circles, her eyes straining for first glimpse of the
+hawthorn—if it should not be in bloom!
+
+But it was. Even in the night without moon she could see the soft
+white of it, and as she crossed the third circle the whiteness of it
+grew more clear until she glanced above to see what sudden light of
+star was reflected by it.
+
+The sky was the same, and the stars were the same; the mass of bloom
+gave out its own soft radiance in the night.
+
+And besides the bloom there was a movement. She heard a breaking
+branch, and halted there, breathless, listening!
+
+Then his voice—the voice she had listened for—the voice like no
+other—spoke.
+
+“Come no nearer!” it said. “I broke the hawthorn for you and have
+waited four days and four nights—longer I may not. Hush! Do not speak
+to me! I know the thing you would know—and the thing Shamas has
+asked—and it is for you to see.”
+
+She did not speak, for she could not! A strange cold wall seemed to
+circle her, and her eyes were drawn to the shadow of the cromlechs
+where the two had once sheltered from storm. She peered forward as
+dim light fell on the darkness under the arch—and through it—as if
+far away, and seen through reversed opera glasses, she perceived men
+in uniform—other men in civilian dress—a stone wall very high—and a
+man there who appeared to dominate—it was Hector Laud of Argial. Men
+with rifles passed across the scene, and a man under guard entered.
+He wore a cap, and her heart leaped and then grew cold—cold as her
+speechless lips.
+
+He was questioned by Argial, and by others; he shook his head. He
+spoke, but she could not hear the words. Once he smiled at them in
+a tired way, as at some question many times answered. Argial turned
+aside and made a sign; a man with a white handkerchief folded it
+and moved forward, but the man alone by the wall waved him away. He
+removed his cap and let it fall beside him on the paving; he spoke a
+brief word or two, looking straight ahead as if into her eyes, and
+then stepped back against the wall and made a signal. The wind tossed
+aside the lock of bronze-gold hair on his forehead and he stood an
+instant with his hand over his eyes.
+
+Then something happened, and he sank forward and lay there and
+shadows blotted all out as the men, Hector Laud among them, bent over
+the fallen body!
+
+“That is how it was,” she heard him say. “I have at last done
+something for the land, and so dared come again to meet you here. O
+Dark Rose—I have sung your songs as I could—but strength is going
+again. Hush—do not speak! You will rest and wake to find the hawthorn
+abloom. You will grieve—but green hope will cover your life! You will
+not be without love—without music!”
+
+He moved out from the screen of the white bloom, and the radiance of
+it shone on his face, grave and pale. In his left hand he bore the
+broken branch; his eyes were luminous and wonderful in the starlight.
+
+A puff of wind blew aside the curls over his forehead, and she would
+have cried out if she could, for a dark mark was there—the open path
+of the lead of death! He lifted his hand, and it also was pierced.
+
+“No,” he said, reading her thought, “they do not use nails in palms
+today for their crucifixions, but we still die—guiltless!”
+
+She strove to break through the frozen silence in which she was
+locked—only to speak to him once—once! Only to tell him—
+
+But his luminous eyes forbade, though the smile there was the smile
+of perfect understanding. Music came from somewhere about them—the
+_suantre_ by which earth-cares are silenced—she felt her eyes closing
+under its magic—many harp strings were sounding softly afar off—was
+it the lullaby he had once sung to her under the druid arch? She did
+not know—she was so nearly wrapped in slumber.
+
+But through that mist of far harmonies there came one clear, low
+voice—his young voice singing the prophecy of the _Dark Rosaleen_.
+
+      _Your holy delicate white hands
+        Shall girdle me with steel!
+      And I will rear your royal throne
+        Again in golden sheen!
+      ’Tis you shall reign, and reign alone
+        My Dark Rosaleen!
+        My Own Rosaleen!_
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+It was there they found her asleep in the early dawn, wrapped in the
+green-hooded cloak and the spray of hawthorn across her breast.
+
+Only Shamas and Hector Laud came over the third circle, and Shamas
+crossed himself at the sight.
+
+“It is a priest we should have brought with us to this place,” he
+said, “for no living woman would sleep on Templard.”
+
+Laud of Argial was blanched by fear, and halted on the edge of the
+rath and called to the man holding the horses below.
+
+But she wakened at the shout, and stood up. The languor of sweet
+sleep was still on her eyes and she smiled at Shamas, whose gaze was
+the first to meet hers. The hawthorn fell at her feet; she lifted it,
+looked at the dew on it and on the cloth of her cloak—and remembered!
+
+Her eyes were dark lightning as she faced Argial.
+
+“Not one step nearer, so long as you live, and may yours be a long
+life—and remorseful!” she said. “My question to you has been answered
+without you, and this place is too sacred for your feet!”
+
+“You are a raving madwoman,” he cried, and his face flushed red in
+anger. “Who else would range the forests at night and sleep on the
+moors alone?”
+
+“I was not alone, Shamas,” she said, ignoring Argial and looking
+only at the old man. “He was with me here. Yes—he kept tryst with me
+on Templard and sang me to sleep with a song of hope! It is true,
+Shamas! He came back from the dead to do that, and he left this
+broken bloom here as witness when I would waken; it is true, Shamas!”
+
+“I believe it is true,” said the old man, “for sleep was put on me,
+too—a heavy sleep of rest—and that is the first sleep coming to me
+for four nights—his soul is no longer calling us to hearken—God and
+Mary save him!”
+
+“Four nights,” she repeated. “Yes, that is what he said—four days and
+nights he was waiting for me, and the blossoms held for me here!”
+
+Laud of Argial glared at the two and uttered an oath of destruction
+on the old man.
+
+“Are you both maniacs?” he demanded. “How did you know to tell us to
+follow her tracks to Templard? And who is the lover who sings you to
+sleep. You—you—shameless with your peasant mates!”
+
+“It is the man you had killed in secret against a prison wall four
+days ago,” she said steadily, but without looking at him. And to
+Shamas she said: “That is indeed how Hugh Siod died! He saved my
+brother and died for it. Did they think to silence his songs by
+killing the poet?”
+
+“You are both insane rebels!” shouted Argial. “A second time I have
+followed you to this place of secret meetings—and it will be the
+last—you shall go in a locked room of Argial until you are sane
+again!”
+
+“I will go in no room of Argial ever again,” she said. “The cart of
+Shamas or Michal will bring my wounded to me in some more simple
+abiding place; and friends will be found.”
+
+“They will surely,” said Shamas, “and honor will be yours—and love
+will be yours.”
+
+“You are moon-struck Irish dreamers, silly as children! Do you think
+I will allow you to disgrace Argial with a scandal of this sort? You
+will go back with me if I have to call those men below to bind and
+carry you!”
+
+“Man,” said Shamas, stepping between them, “go easy with your threats
+in Kerry. She has but to call out to the men down there what she told
+to us here of Hugh Siod—and you might not yourself see Argial ever
+again!”
+
+“Stand aside! I have my rights—she is mine—she is—”
+
+“No!” said Shamas Ronayne with such quiet force that Argial moved a
+step back at the intensity of the soft voice. “No, Argial! Rights
+of her you have never had, and there are many knowing that! She was
+traded to you by a gambler who did not own her—and that in her
+young, unknowing years! There was never bond of right between you
+two, and now there is foul murder dividing you!”
+
+Argial glared cold fury at the incredible peasant.
+
+“And this is your new sort of courtier?” he sneered at her; “the
+sweepings of the mud-huts!”
+
+She drew a great breath of freedom and shook back the hood from her
+dark hair. The first rays of the sun struck the gray pillars back of
+her, and the white hawthorn, and flooded her with the rosy radiance
+of a new day.
+
+“It is, indeed!” she said, and a throb of exultation was in her
+voice. “Both peasants and princes come from the huts of our land.
+They are the souls to whom he sung of freedom; they will be my
+courtiers—and my brothers, and my sons! Hugh Siod came back from
+death to sing a prophecy here to me—I will live among his people and
+work for that prophecy all my days!”
+
+Argial scowled from her to the stalwart Kerry man climbing the hill,
+and turned away.
+
+Shamas gazed at her with a reflected light of joy on his face.
+
+“_O Kathleen na Hulihan, your face is like a star_,” he murmured.
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+According to official records it was six days after Beltain ere the
+dominating political group of Dublin Castle was forced to make public
+an account of the execution, without trial, of the writer, whose
+palm and brain were pierced by the same bullet in the jail-yard on
+the twenty-sixth day of April! There had been ten days of absolute
+secrecy covering the matter, and the explanation of Argial to his
+superiors concerning its ultimate publicity gave him a bad hour.
+
+To tell them that a girl on an old rath on a Kerry hill had seen a
+vision of that death, and could not be silenced, was an absurdity not
+to be advanced.
+
+The investigating board was composed of hard-headed unimaginative
+men, and Argial preferred reprimand from them for lack of executive
+ability, rather than be ridiculed by them for repeating any such
+curious phantasies as those evolved by the Irish mind!
+
+[Illustration: Decorative separator]
+
+
+Lullaby
+
+[Music: _Traditional._]
+
+
+
+
+ACKNOWLEDGMENT
+
+
+The books mentioned below have been of much assistance to me while
+preparing these tales of Ancient Ireland, and I hereby express my
+indebtedness to the authors of the respective volumes.
+
+  Graves, Alfred Perceval, _Songs of Erin_. Boosey & Co., London.
+
+  Gregory, Lady Isabella Augusta, _Book of Saints and Wonders_.
+  Charles Scribner’s Sons.
+
+  Hull, Eleanor, _Textbook of Irish Literature_. Benziger Brothers.
+
+  Hyde, Douglas, _Literary History of Ireland, from the Earliest
+  Times to the Present Day_. Charles Scribner’s Sons.
+
+  Joyce, Patrick Weston, _Ancient Irish Music_. Longmans, Green &
+  Co.
+
+  Keating, Geoffrey (1570?-1644?), _History of Ireland_ (_Foras
+  Feasa ar Eirinn’_, preface signed by the author in 1629).
+
+  Mangan, James Clarence, _Complete Poems_. P. J. Kenedy & Sons.
+
+  Meyer, Kuno, Translation from the _Book of Lismore_.
+
+  Petrie, George, _Ancient Collection of the Music of Ireland_.
+
+  _Annals of the Four Masters._ Compiled by three scholars of the
+  historic O’Clery house and Peregrin O’Duidenan, the historian and
+  genealogist, early in the seventeenth century, and produced by
+  John Colgan in 1645. The annals begin with the deluge, and close
+  with the year 1616.
+
+The initial letters used at the beginning of the Tales, and other
+decorations in book and cover, are taken from _The Book of Kells_,
+acknowledged to be the most beautiful illuminated vellum in the
+known world. This ancient volume is the work of an unnamed Irish monk
+of Kells monastery in the seventh century. The weird and commanding
+beauty of the pages have been at once both the inspiration and
+despair of artists for centuries, and the wonder of line and color
+would be unbelievable but for the ancient manuscript treasured at
+Trinity College, Dublin. The soul of an artist went into the precious
+volume known even in tenth-century Europe as the “wonder of the Far
+Western World.”
+
+The music for the book was arranged by Geraldine G. Saltzberg.
+
+All quoted verses or chants are in italic.
+
+                                                              M. E. R.
+
+
+
+
+  TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
+
+  Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
+  corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the
+  text and consultation of external sources.
+
+  Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
+  and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
+
+  Pg 40 “His forest was ful” changed to “His forest was full”
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77880 ***
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+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77880 ***</div>
+<div class="transnote">Transcriber's Note: Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.</div>
+
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp75" id="front_cover" title="Original cover" style="max-width: 184.875em;">
+  <img class="w100" title="Original cover" src="images/cover.jpg" alt="Original green book cover with golden celtic symbol. The Druid Path, Marah Ellis Ryan.">
+</figure>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="first_half-title" style="max-width: 118.6875em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/first_half-title.jpg" alt="The Druid Path">
+
+</figure>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+</div>
+<figure class="figcenter illowp75" id="i001" style="max-width: 30.9375em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/front_music1.jpg" alt="Musical score, Una">
+</figure>
+<p class="musicTitle">Una</p>
+<p class="right i">Traditional air</p>
+<p class="center music"><audio controls><source src="music/front_music1_correctedf.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
+Audio content is not currently supported on your device.</audio>
+<span class="xml">[<a href="music/front_music1_correctedf.mxl">MusicXML</a>]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+</div>
+
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp46" id="front_music2" style="max-width: 113.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/front_music2.jpg" alt="Musical score, The Music More Lasting Than Voice of the Birds">
+</figure>
+<p class="musicTitle">The Music More Lasting Than Voice of the Birds</p>
+<p class="i">Poem by A. P. Graves</p>
+<p class="center music"><audio controls><source src="music/front_music2_correctedf.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
+Audio content is not currently supported on your device.</audio>
+<span class="xml">[<a href="music/front_music2_correctedf.mxl">MusicXML</a>]</span></p>
+
+<p class="center">
+1.<br>
+I’ve heard the lark’s cry thrill the sky o’er the<br>
+meadows of Lusk, And the first joyous<br>
+gush of the thrush from Adare’s April<br>
+wood, At thy lone music’s spell, Philomel,<br>
+magic stricken I’ve stood, When in Espan a-far<br>
+star on star trembled out of the dusk.<br>
+</p>
+<p class="center">2.<br>
+Yet as bright shadows pass from the glass of the darkening lake<br>
+As the rose’s rapt sigh must die when the zephyr is stilled;<br>
+In oblivion grey sleeps each lay that those birds ever trilled,<br>
+But the songs Erin sings from her strings shall immortally wake.<br>
+</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+</div>
+<figure class="figcenter illowp75" id="title_page" style="max-width: 50.1875em;">
+  <img src="images/title_page.jpg" alt="Title page with decorative border">
+</figure>
+
+<h1 class="fs250">
+<span class="smcap">The</span><br>
+<span class="smcap">Druid Path</span><br>
+<span class="allsmcap"></span></h1>
+
+<p class="center fs120 b">
+by<br>
+<span class="smcap b">Marah Ellis Ryan</span><br>
+</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp10" id="title_page1" style="max-width: 18.9375em;">
+  <img src="images/title_page1.jpg" alt="Ornate separator">
+</figure>
+
+<p class="center b">
+DECORATED BY<br>
+WILL VREELAND<br>
+</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp15" id="title_page2" style="max-width: 50.1875em;">
+  <img src="images/title_page2.jpg" alt="Ornate separator">
+</figure>
+
+<p class="center b">
+A.C. McCLURG &amp; CO.<br>
+CHICAGO<br>
+</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="center p8">
+Copyright<br>
+A. C. McCLURG &amp; CO.<br>
+1917</p>
+
+<hr class="smallsep">
+
+<p class="center">Published January, 1917</p>
+
+<hr class="smallsep">
+
+<p class="center">Copyrighted in Great Britain</p>
+<p class="center fs65 p12">W. F. HALL PRINTING COMPANY, CHICAGO<br></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<table class="autotable">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"></td>
+<td class="tdl">Page</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">The Druid Path........................................</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#first_half-title_2">1</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">The Enchanting of Doirenn.....................</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#i035">35</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Liadan and Kurithir.................................</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#i101">101</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Dervail Nan Ciar......................................</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#i141">141</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Randuff of Cumanac................................</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#i229">229</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">The Dark Rose.........................................</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#i267">267</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</span></p>
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="first_half-title_2" style="max-width: 118.6875em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/first_half-title.jpg" alt="THE DRUID PATH">
+</figure>
+<p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_DRUID_PATH">THE DRUID PATH</h2>
+</div>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap3" src="images/p.jpg" alt="P">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Phadraig, son of Nihil of the Ua Dinan,
+held silent his white hound on the hill
+of Cromm Cru, and looked down the far
+valley of blue mists where the sea of the
+west rolled in.</p>
+
+<p>Back beyond the sweet-smelling reaches of the
+heather he could hear the bay of the hounds of his uncle
+Kieran, Tiern over North Tormond. He could no longer
+hear the clink of their silver bridles, nor the laughter of
+their ladies, nor the scream of hawk on dove.</p>
+
+<p>But the hill of the ancient god was a sweet place in the
+silence, and he rested there, and made him a pillow of fern—and
+listened to the soft breath of the wind in the rowan
+tree. Its sigh of love for the green earth was a sweet song,
+and he slept there to that music, while the sun rushed
+beyond the wide seas of the west, and soft-footed dusk
+crept after, filling all the hollows with the gray web in
+which the night is held.</p>
+
+<p>A curious dream of white birds came to him there; the
+dream had come to him before, yet not with clearness—and
+in the dream was a dusk path in an ancient wood,
+and a well there—a well rising and sinking with the tide,
+and a vision of a maid moving before him into the shadows—a
+vision swathed in a white cloud, with hidden face
+but a voice in which was held all the music of beauty of
+life in all the world. His soul was as a harp on which that
+music played, and his body was but as a shell left behind<span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</span>
+while the wings of harmony lifted him—lifted until he
+was borne as a cloud far from the touch of the earth—and
+he heard a word over and over in his ear, until he
+strove with might to echo it, and then, in the striving,
+the smell of the heather was again in his nostrils, and the
+forefeet of the white hound were on his breast, and above
+him a star shone in the soft rose of the sky.</p>
+
+<p>He lay entranced, thrilled by the ecstasy of the perfect
+dream, and somewhere from the very earth came a song
+to his ear and an earth echo of the word he had striven
+for and missed. And this was the song he heard—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Make strong your charms against Danaan,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Danaan of the snowy breast,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Who lured the souls of the Gods of Old</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">To the land of the mystic west.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The voices were those of two boys, and with them was
+an old shepherd who bore fire in a strange bowl of thin
+carven stone, and in the arms of the boys were dry heather
+and branches of yew. And in fear they let fall the yew at
+sight of Phadraig, and at sight of his white hound beside
+him.</p>
+
+<p>“Peace to you,” spake Phadraig. “And who be you to
+sing here a song of charms? And who is Danaan?”</p>
+
+<p>“A blessing of all saints on you from Jerusalem to
+Innis Gluair,” spake the ancient who bore the fire. “We
+bear here boughs for the puring fires of Beltain, and the
+mothers of these boys bade them make a prayer and sing
+the song ere they crossed the three magic circles of the
+Tor of Cromm Cru.”</p>
+
+<p>“And is this that hill?” asked Phadraig. “As a childling
+they tell me I was nursed in sight of it, but never
+before have I stood on it, and who made the song of the
+charm?”</p>
+
+<p>“One of the anointed of the saints who loved every<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span>
+plain and black crag and forest dell between us and the
+sea. It was no other than Nihil of the Deep Wood.”</p>
+
+<p>“Strange, that is,” said Phadraig, the son of Nihil, “other
+songs of that singer I have been taught, but never this
+one until I hear it as in a dream in this strange place; and
+look, there are white sea birds against the stars—and
+they also were of the dream.”</p>
+
+<p>“On the night of Beltain strange power is abroad—and
+strange dreams! And what is the name of you who venture
+to sleep on the hill of the ancient gods in the dusk
+of this day?”</p>
+
+<p>And when Phadraig told him, the old herdsman would
+have knelt, but Phadraig took his hand and spoke to him
+in kindness, yet could get from him no other word as to
+the song of Danaan.</p>
+
+<p>“Go to Roiseen of the Glen, the wise woman down by
+the sea,” he said. “She was nurse to you and knows all
+your father Nihil would have had you know of the names
+of the ancient gods of the land.”</p>
+
+<p>“But Danaan was the name of a people—the old, old
+people, soul brothers to the fairies!”</p>
+
+<p>“Ay—it may be. And may not a people have a spirit,
+as has a person? Have we not our own this day in Erinn,
+our Mother of the Land? Ask me no more, O Lord of the
+Ua Dinan, but go you down to Roiseen of the Glen, and
+peace go with you.”</p>
+
+<p>And with his white hound at his heels and one of the
+shepherd boys as guide, Phadraig took trail to the sea glen
+and would have gone through a deep wood in the valley,
+but the boy drew back.</p>
+
+<p>“Not there, my lord,” said he.</p>
+
+<p>“Yet it is the shorter way.”</p>
+
+<p>“No way is shorter if you never come out alive, O Lord
+of the Ua Dinan.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span></p>
+
+<p>“What abides within the wood?”</p>
+
+<p>“No living thing, my lord, but the water in the Druid’s
+well, and it pulses there as if it might be the heartbeat
+of the ocean beyond, yet the water is not salt.”</p>
+
+<p>“This is a land of strange riddles I am coming back to
+this day,” said Phadraig, “but do you not hear music in
+the wood—or is it the wind through the new buds?”</p>
+
+<p>“The priest tells us it is the winds, or the waves, or the
+night birds in their shelter, and that is the thing we must
+say,” said the boy, and neither of them spoke of the white
+birds above them against the sky.</p>
+
+<p>To Phadraig it was as if he had walked into a new life
+from the hour he slept on the western hill of Cromm Cru.
+And all the path of it held music to make the heart glad of
+life—yet sad with inarticulate yearnings. The life of the
+halls of Kieran was left behind, and he trod the heath as an
+exile returned.</p>
+
+<p>In the cot of Roiseen of the Glen there was a rabbit
+stewing on the hearth, and Roiseen herself spinning the
+silver flax at the open door in the starlight.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, is it yourself come back on your own feet to greet
+me this day?” she said, and wept with very gladness, and
+kissed the young hand of him. But he kissed her brown
+cheek instead, and they talked long after the shepherd
+boy was asleep in the forest leaves in the byre.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not that night of Beltain that Phadraig asked
+of the unknown things, for he had noted the salt sprinkled
+on the threshold to bar out influences of the old gods; so
+that night they talked of Nihil, dead ere he had seen his
+son, and Kreda, his wife, dead at the birthing, and all the
+grandeurs of the house of the Ua Dinan where Phadraig
+had lived his life of training for the work of a chief. Yet
+out of it all he had come back with the heart of a boy, and
+sat on a three-legged stool at the door of Roiseen, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span>
+fashioned a flute of alder-wood, and piped on it in the
+sunshine of the morning.</p>
+
+<p>Then, when the milk was put away, and Roiseen settled
+with the distaff and the whirling strands, he spoke the
+name singing in his heart.</p>
+
+<p>“Mother Roiseen, it is to you I am coming with a thing
+to ask: who is Danaan of the birds of white?”</p>
+
+<p>“That you should ask it, and you with the name of a
+saint on you! Get you to your hawking or hunting the
+deer! And see that you pluck primroses to scatter at your
+door this night that the Ancient People send you no call
+of Danaan—the men who follow the call wander far.”</p>
+
+<p>“To the land of the mystic west do they wander?”</p>
+
+<p>“Ay, that they do; far over the green meadows of the
+waters where the horses of Lir have their pastures. From
+the cliff below you can see them running in races endlessly
+to the shore.”</p>
+
+<p>“I see the waves run in,” said Phadraig, but she was
+not to be fooled.</p>
+
+<p>“Ay, and more than the waves to you, as to your father!
+But you are idling in thought, Phadraig, son of Nihil.”</p>
+
+<p>“What other task when there is peace in Tormond?
+And the Ua Dinan, as you mayhaps have heard, cannot
+abide the sight of me near his ailing son, and Kethlen his
+wife, bitter as gall because she has borne a weakling.”</p>
+
+<p>“True that is. You stand in their eyes as a threat at
+the crowns they wear.”</p>
+
+<p>“To me a pipe on the hills instead, and the songs of my
+father to sing! Roiseen, why has the song of Danaan
+never been given me?”</p>
+
+<p>“That name has been through the ages a hated word to
+the women of your house and in each generation they
+try to smother it out.”</p>
+
+<p>“And why is that?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span></p>
+
+<p>“It gave a youth the seeking eye and the wandering
+foot, and it was said to keep young the heart of a man
+when all his mates went tottering under the sod. No—the
+women could not abide the thought of that, and they
+smother it out. Ay, that is the way with the woman-heart.”</p>
+
+<p>“Mother Roiseen, there is a deer for you in the forest.
+Shall Snard and I bring it in tomorrow’s morn?”</p>
+
+<p>And the white hound, hearing his name spoken, flailed
+the floor with his tail and rose up and waited.</p>
+
+<p>“To what would you bribe me, Phadraig, my heart?”</p>
+
+<p>“To peace and content while I tell you I heard the song
+of Danaan on the hill of Cromm Cru in the dusk of Beltain—and
+I felt the music that all the songs of Nihil,
+my father, could not give voice to, and in my dream I
+looked in that Druid well of the wood, and saw the heart
+of the ocean beat there under the stars! All this came
+to me by chance in the place of fire to Beltain, so mine
+is the right to ask what I ask.”</p>
+
+<p>And Roiseen, the wise woman, looked on him and made
+the sign and plucked primroses for her door.</p>
+
+<p>“Yours is the right,” she said, “come you away from
+the house and out under the hawthorn tree and what I can
+say with no hurt to the saints and their faith, that I will.
+It is said that while many a family trace in pride their
+fathers to the ancient barbarians, few trace their descent
+from yon Wise Ones who took themselves into the air
+with their own enchantment sooner than be conquered.
+This I heard when I was a girl in the home of the king,
+your father’s father. But Nihil of the songs learned much
+from a master of tricks, an aged man who said he had
+lived on the earth in other days when the sea covered all
+this valley, and that this was the last edge of the land
+where the Danaan lived on the earth as people, and ate<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span>
+the honey of bees, and drank the water of the Druid well
+in the wood beyond.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ay,” said Phadraig, and he looked over the green velvet
+of the valley running down to meet the white foam of
+the sea, white as the hawthorn bloom above them, and
+from the dark hills he looked to the islands beyond, and
+it was all a sweet picture of summer under the blue sky.
+“Ay, Mother Roiseen, of all places in the whole world
+where would they find another spot so fair? In truth, I
+believe your word that it is the last corner of the land
+they could let go to the hard people of the iron pikes.”</p>
+
+<p>“So it was, the last place they let go of—and they
+lingered long after the stranger-people swept over the
+land to the east. And to your father, Nihil, came a ‘sending’
+of sight through fasting, and enchantments of music,
+until he spoke aloud the word no other dared ever to speak
+for them.”</p>
+
+<p>“And what was that word, Mother of the Glen?”</p>
+
+<p>“It was of a bond of birth and blood between the Ua
+Dinan and the Tuathe de Danaan, but the legend of it is
+against all christian teachings—and we are christian now
+in Erinn.”</p>
+
+<p>Phadraig looked up to the mount of the Druid god
+where fires of propitiation had burned but a night agone.</p>
+
+<p>“Ay, so we say,” he agreed, “but tell me more of Nihil
+and his song of Danaan.”</p>
+
+<p>“He all but had the ban of the Bishop of Clare put on
+him—and it was backed by some of his own blood whose
+names I will not speak, for it is evil to speak against the
+dead! They were mortal shamed to be thought of the
+blood or the spirit of enchanters, the while Nihil was so
+proud of it that church itself was called to the question.
+That was a time of trial! For there was your mother, the
+Lady Kreda of Kilfernora, not yet either wife or mother,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span>
+but loving him and holding him to church, and there was
+the bishop with his power to bless or ban, and there was
+Nihil stout in rebellion against all but the sweet Lady
+Kreda. For his word was this: that if all the mothers for
+a thousand years could not stamp out the call of Danaan
+in the heart of a man, was it not proof that it was a bond
+of the spirit, and was for good and not for evil?”</p>
+
+<p>“And then?”</p>
+
+<p>“He was banished to a forest cell for a year and a day
+for expiation, and that was the time the Lady Kreda chose
+to ride beside him and do penance beside him. And, at
+the last, to pleasure her, he made the song of warning
+against Danaan, and he went into the forest away from
+the sea, but he was never the same man after! A true
+singer sings only the songs in his heart, and that was
+the song made at the word of another, for he, Nihil, had
+walked the Druid Path to the well over back of beyond,
+and the white sea birds of Danaan had come to him there,
+and he heard music of sweetness in the closed hills where
+the Ancient People are waiting to this day and holding
+secret the sacred things shut in for the people of the
+future who will see as your father Nihil saw. That was
+his word of it many a day as he walked above yon cliff, or
+up to the hill of Cromm Cru. And the priests beyond could
+do naught with him, though your mother hated the
+thoughts he spoke, as did all the women of your race
+of the Ua Dinan.”</p>
+
+<p>“Mayhaps they were but jealous of a knowledge not for
+them.”</p>
+
+<p>“Mayhaps, for true it is the Lady Kreda loved well his
+songs when he was wooing under her window there in
+Kilfernora but turned away her head when the songs
+were of things not of her ken.”</p>
+
+<p>“I have had few years, yet I have lived to see that with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span>
+other lives,” said Phadraig. “What power may a man
+gain for the world if he only sing songs of love to a mistress
+who only smiles from a window?”</p>
+
+<p>“You are older than your years, Phadraig, my heart,
+else it would not be myself sitting here under the hawthorn
+telling you the ancient things that the priests tell
+us are false things.”</p>
+
+<p>“I do not think in my heart they are false,” said Phadraig,
+son of Nihil. “Into the forest I am going now for
+your deer, Mother of the Glen, and then, till the next
+day of Samhain, I will live in the open to give proof to my
+own heart that Nihil, my father, saw true, and spoke
+true.”</p>
+
+<p>And thus did he, though his kinsmen raged and their
+women told the priests, and the Ua Dinan tore down the
+stone of Cromm Cru from the mount and broke it into
+pieces with iron chisels—for it is well known that spirits
+of the Tuathe de Danaan hate the touch of the iron
+brought into the land by the barbarians.</p>
+
+<p>But Phadraig with his pipe of alder was somewhere in
+the deep wood with only the white hound and his dreams
+and his calls to the tamed sea birds on the cliffs, and never
+a sight could kindred get of him unless it was in a boat,
+dancing on the far waves toward Inis Mor—or high on
+the hill where the forest veiled him if any tried to
+follow.</p>
+
+<p>And a wail went up from the shepherds that year, for
+the murrain got the sheep despite of all, and some wells
+went dry, and the herders gave sullen looks to the virtuous
+lords and ladies who had done that pious work in
+tearing down Cromm Cru of the Tor.</p>
+
+<p>And one day there came to Roiseen of the Glen a lady
+riding on a white horse with golden trapping. Her eyes
+were dark with desire and her braided hair had the gold<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span>
+of the sun glinting its brown shadows. With her came a
+priest of the south whose looks were down and ill.</p>
+
+<p>“I am Yva of Kilfernora,” said the maid, with a blush
+sweeping her face. “Have you, O woman, speech with
+Phadraig of the Wilds?”</p>
+
+<p>“That was the place his mother came from,” said
+Roiseen of the Glen, “and I have seen no sign of him this
+seven days, barring the white sea birds hovering over the
+forest of the Druid well.”</p>
+
+<p>“Woman,” said the priest, “what would drive sea birds
+to the forest on days like this?”</p>
+
+<p>“Ay, it is a big question, your holiness, and a thousand
+years have not given us the answer.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you mean the blasphemy of enchantment too strong
+for church to conquer?”</p>
+
+<p>“I would not dare, your holiness; mayhaps it is that the
+church has not striven. Sea birds are a small thing to
+take note of after all.”</p>
+
+<p>“O woman,” said Yva the brown-eyed, “will you tell
+him I have ridden the horse he loved to these wilds he
+loves, that he may know my message is a true message,
+and that I watch from my window ever to these hills of
+the north?”</p>
+
+<p>“That he may find the way to that window, O Lady?”</p>
+
+<p>“Ay, that he may find the way. The Ua Dinan and the
+head of my clan have clasped hands and emptied bowls
+of mead on the pact, and I bring my own message to his
+hills.”</p>
+
+<p>“How great is your patience, Yva of Kilfernora?” asked
+old Roiseen of the Glen, and the priest frowned at the
+forwardness of the peasant, but Yva of the dark tresses
+leaned forward in the saddle.</p>
+
+<p>“What mean you?” she asked, her lips red and parted
+over white teeth.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Would you take him as Nihil, his father, was taken,
+with his quest not finished, nor his heart content?”</p>
+
+<p>“Nihil, the Singer, died,” said Yva, her eyes staring.</p>
+
+<p>“Ay, he died! With love beside him—earthly love
+keeping step, yet not understanding, he died! Would you
+fain have Phadraig, son of Nihil, dead by your side or alive
+and free to choose after he has made the circle that was
+broken for Nihil?”</p>
+
+<p>“Woman—are you taking on yourself the weighing of
+a soul?” demanded the priest in anger. “What blasphemy
+is this of lives in circles and like enchantments?
+Is it evil craft of Druid witcheries by which the young
+lord of the Ua Dinan is held here in the wilds?”</p>
+
+<p>“I have not dared to ask him that myself,” said Roiseen
+of the Glen. “But I am an old woman, and I know the
+men of the Ua Dinan—and their women, too! By bell
+and book and candle their women have driven out or
+smothered a wild Something in the blood of the Ua Dinan
+of the west land, until the clan is weak this day because of
+it! They have not dared dream their own dreams lest they
+range beyond the church rules and the women they wive;
+and what man does any great thing without the Dream—or
+woman, either? O Lady of Kilfernora, you are beautiful
+as the wild rose on the heath, and there are many chiefs
+to break a lance at your nod; better to give your glove to
+any one of them, than enchain an Ua Dinan before he has
+followed the Dream till it makes the circle.”</p>
+
+<p>The priest was prone to chide such speech, as was his
+duty, but Yva of Kilfernora put out her ringed hand.</p>
+
+<p>“She speaks truly, and I see it,” she said. “No one has
+ever spoken thus to me before today. Think back, reverend
+father, over the years: Nihil dead with his songs
+half written; the king, his brother, a man of gloom with
+a crippled child; the old king, his father, tired of rule and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span>
+in a monastery ere his time; yet, all these men were strong
+in youth and to the fore in wild beauty. Not until now
+has anyone dared read me that riddle of the Ua Dinan.
+Woman, you are wise and you have Yva of Kilfernora for
+your friend. I ride back and dream my own dream, and
+leave him all the freedom of his. Fare you well!”</p>
+
+<p>“Now indeed may a great day come again to the children
+of the Ua Dinan,” said Roiseen of the Glen. She
+went back to the spinning of her flax, with a great jewel
+hidden in her bosom, let fall there by Yva of the dark hair
+and the burning eyes.</p>
+
+<p>And in the green-gray dusk of the twilight there was
+the flash of white wings against streaks of yellow sky, and
+the white hound came down the glen by the sheep path,
+and Phadraig the wanderer, with a hare of the hills ready
+for the twigs over the roasting fire.</p>
+
+<p>“Art tired of the quest, Phadraig?”</p>
+
+<p>“Nay, not that, Mother of the Glen. I am no longer
+alone, though I cannot tell you what walks beside me.”</p>
+
+<p>“None of us can, and for lack of faith few can feel
+them,” agreed Roiseen.</p>
+
+<p>“But Nihil, my father, spoke truth, we do belong,” said
+Phadraig. “Once I saw the shadow of her in the Druid
+well in the moon’s light, but the face was still veiled for
+me, but the music is piercing sweet, and I would I had
+my father’s gift to catch and hold it.”</p>
+
+<p>He would eat not any of the hare, but drank fresh milk
+from the cow and stood at the door looking tired and
+white in the starlight.</p>
+
+<p>“May I let stay Snard, the hound, with you?” he asked.
+“He is weary of my trail, and will not walk in my paths;
+only today did I learn I was cruel to him; and tomorrow
+is the feast of Samhain, and where I go I cannot say, but
+I think it is not for Snard to follow me.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Phadraig, my heart, do you ever think of someone
+there in the south, who—”</p>
+
+<p>“Ay, Roiseen. I thought of them all today when a
+storm cloud swept in from the sea with a clammy cold in
+it. For it was not so cold as the welcome in my kinsman’s
+home lest the day come when I claim rule there.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ay,” said Roiseen of the Glen. “That is a picture we
+all see some days in life, but Time is a good story-teller,
+Phadraig aroon, and I’ll wait the other day when
+the sun shines for you and the human call comes.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are the only human thing, Roiseen,” he said, and
+touched her hair. “You understand.”</p>
+
+<p>“How did you tame the sea birds of Danaan, Phadraig,
+my heart?” she asked, but he shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>“I only spoke to them as I would to Snard—some
+souls have the gift of taming—that is all.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ay, your father had it before you,” she said. Then,
+as he turned into the darkness, she spoke again as she
+held back the white hound. “Do you look to come back
+to me here, Phadraig, son of Nihil?”</p>
+
+<p>“I do, Mother of the Glen, though I cannot see clearly
+the path I may come—or when.”</p>
+
+<p>“I thought as much,” she said, “but Phadraig, take this
+from me ere you go: for all ills of youth and life there
+grows somewhere an herb; find it, Phadraig aroon; search
+till you find!”</p>
+
+<p>But he went across through the night to the hill of
+Cromm Cru, singing the song of his father—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">O white Danaan of the sea birds,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Danaan of the snowy breast!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">O sweet the song on the Druid Path</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">To lead me to her nest!</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">She takes my hand at the sea marge,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">She whispers low on the wind,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">She sets her sail for Tir-nan-Ogue</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span></p>
+<p>“Ay,” said Roiseen, twirling the spindle,</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">And leaves dear Life behind!</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Then, as a muttering of thunder came on the wind from
+the sea and a flash of flame cut the gray of the sky, she
+took the hound within, closing the door on the night, and
+chanted the song of Nihil, as a prayer, in the dim light of
+the peat blaze.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Make strong your charms against Danaan,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Danaan of the snowy breast,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Who lured the souls of the Gods of Old</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">To the land of the mystic west.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The feast of Samhain in that year was a time of wonder,
+for the yew branches on the old altar place of Cromm Cru
+were struck afire by the lightning, or so it was said. All
+the people, fearful of the crashing thunder, yet clasped
+hands in a circle below the mount, while the man with
+fire made his way to the top and bent to place it when the
+stroke came. The blaze from the sky flashed down, and
+flamed upward again, and the stunned man fell downward
+among his mates and was borne in fear across the valley,
+and all knew that night that the vengeance of Cromm Cru
+of the Tor could be a thing to put the fear of death on any
+man. Let the churchmen say their say ’neath every bell
+in Erinn, it would not change any man’s mind. And all
+had known it as a sign of evil to come when the altar of
+the Ancient People had been defaced.</p>
+
+<p>And there were those, fleeing under the lightning
+flashes, who vowed they passed Phadraig, son of Nihil,
+running before the wind with eager gladness in his face,
+and looking neither to right nor left, and chanting the
+song of his father as he went down to the sea.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">O white Danaan of the sea birds,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Danaan of the snowy breast!</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span></p>
+<p>And the white birds were screaming and circling above
+him in the storm as he sang—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">She takes my hand at the sea marge,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">She whispers low on the wind,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">She sets her sail for Tir-nan-Ogue—</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">And then a great wave caught the currach he launched
+and tossed it out on the night, and the white foam made
+the curtain and hid him from all of life.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-capa" src="images/a.jpg" alt="A" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Ages on the bosom of the ocean seemed to pass over
+him after that storm. There was light, and then
+again there was darkness, but he knew it only
+through closed eyes in a trance-like dream. He was conscious
+ever of the whir of wings sweeping over his face
+and knew the sea birds were there, and then he heard
+voices, and the laughter of a woman, high and sweet and
+mocking.</p>
+
+<p>The movement of the boat ceased as it grated on sand.
+There was a sudden silence, and the sound of running feet.</p>
+
+<p>“But what use to try?” said a sweet, tired voice. “All
+white things go to Danaan, and look: every bird is
+white!”</p>
+
+<p>“Danaan comes not out of the forest, and the youth is
+fair. He is treasure of the sea on our shore; if for her,
+the birds should have borne him into the lake of the
+pulsing heart. My hand shall give him to drink.”</p>
+
+<p>Then a cup was held to his lips, a drink of sweet-smelling
+fruits was offered him. He did not drink. He was
+no longer in a boat; but in a lady’s bower where bloom<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span>
+was on every bough, and the air heavy with the sweetness
+of orchards.</p>
+
+<p>“Where am I?” he asked, and out from a shadowy
+doorway of stone a tall and wondrous woman smiled on
+him.</p>
+
+<p>“You are in the Summer Land of the Long Day,” she
+said. “The birds of the sea brought you, and what thing
+do you seek? For your wishing must be great to win your
+way here.”</p>
+
+<p>“I do not know the thing I seek,” said Phadraig, whose
+mind was veiled from the things that had been lived. “I
+only feel that I shall know again when I find it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then we will wander, a-seeking,” said the woman of
+beauty, and took his hand.</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon, without seeming to take a step, he passed
+through and was a part of a wonderful people. Their
+slightest cup was of gold, and many wore crowns at will,
+and held court and ordered games at which all played
+merrily, and then the crowns were tossed aside as a part
+of the game no longer amusing. He moved with his mistress,
+whose name was Una, along the seashore where
+pleasure boats were held without rope, and he found himself
+sitting there alone, wondering how the boats were
+held together, for there was no iron in them, and
+that word “iron” was the first word his mind had as a
+link with the old life and changing skies.</p>
+
+<p>For the skies never changed in the Summer Land of
+the Long Day, and all the people laughed and played
+games as if to pass the time while waiting. No one told
+him for what, and when he asked, Una the beautiful
+would laugh her sweet mocking laugh and bid him to her
+bower.</p>
+
+<p>“Other earth lovers have come our way, but none like
+you,” she whispered. “Do you never know you are fairer<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span>
+than blossom on the bough—or golden fruit of living
+trees?”</p>
+
+<p>“Whence came your orchards where no one labors?”
+he asked, and she laughed again.</p>
+
+<p>“They are the fair memory of the sunken world to the
+south—as is this castle of stone by the water’s edge, for
+what need is there here now for walls of stone?”</p>
+
+<p>“Whose hands made it thus strong here by the sea
+marge?” he asked, and she took his hand and held it.</p>
+
+<p>“Weary would you fare in this our land if I gave you all
+the words of that building, for it is ancient as the very
+earth of which you came. There was no sea at the walls
+in that day, and the Great White Land of the South was
+in the midst of waters, and ruled the world. Then the
+lands broke away and the waters covered it, and only little
+lands of it kept above the waters or kept the old gods.
+Your Inis Erinn to the sun side of the world was one, and
+another one far on the sun-path beyond the waters is one,
+but the links between have been forgot by the people of
+Earth. It all lives here because we are the People of Memory.
+We went out from your Earth Land proudly, letting
+the body and the soul go that we might hold memory alone,
+and in that memory we hold only Day and only Summer.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ay,” said Phadraig, and he sat a long time in the tower
+looking across the moat where the tides of the sea swirled
+in, “but in all your games and pleasuring, is it not that
+memory holds you instead, and makes you as endless
+slaves to the Great Past? Would it not be rest to forget?”</p>
+
+<p>Upon which she drew away from him and screamed at
+him to begone, for his earth thoughts were cruel as is the
+iron of the stranger-people in the heart.</p>
+
+<p>He wandered away from that place, and into a wood—and
+her cries came after him calling him back, but he
+could find no gate to the moat and he could not go back.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span></p>
+
+<p>Gay companions danced about him, and made jeweled
+crowns for him in the games they played, but he looked at
+the white birds circling above him, and looked at the sea,
+and wondered whence they had led him, and at times he
+could close his eyes and see them circling above the black
+cliffs of Erinn though he had no memory of that place.</p>
+
+<p>And the day was heavy in the Summer Land for the
+reason that a quest was in his heart, but the mind kept no
+record.</p>
+
+<p>But white deer came to a lake in the wood to drink,
+and after them gay fays with shepherds’ staves; and they
+danced and sang their songs of the woodland things, and
+that touched his heart more than the games of crowns and
+castles.</p>
+
+<p>“Make me a shepherd, too,” he said, “for you herd the
+white things, and the things of white are dear to me.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why is that?” asked a maid of the wood.</p>
+
+<p>But he did not know, and they laughed at him because
+he did not know, and as they laughed, all suddenly Una,
+gorgeous and jeweled, flashed in their midst and caught at
+his hand.</p>
+
+<p>“Not yet have you seen her?” she asked. “Then come
+with me; I weary for your voice.”</p>
+
+<p>“I am a shepherd of the wood, and herd the deer.”</p>
+
+<p>“The deer need no shepherds; it is only a game to play.
+Come! I will sing my music and dance you a dance in
+the woods alone, see! Is the dance not a fair dance?”</p>
+
+<p>“Ay, but I would you could give me the word of why I
+wander here where this lake wells with the tides of the sea.”</p>
+
+<p>“Come! We will hunt in a forest far away. This lake
+in the wood is a place we never seek.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yet the white birds come—and the white deer.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is a place where earth life is remembered, and the
+dread enchantment of night may fall.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span></p>
+
+<p>“And the stars?” he asked, for all suddenly he thought
+of the night as a thing dearly beloved and to be desired
+more than the Ever Day of the changeless sun. The night
+stars had been dear to him.</p>
+
+<p>“Ay, and the moon and their mistress. Come out of the
+dusk of the wood!”</p>
+
+<p>“But I hear music of sweetness here!”</p>
+
+<p>“Come, and I will sing beyond sweetness of woman!”</p>
+
+<p>“I listen.”</p>
+
+<p>“By this lake of Danaan, I may not sing.”</p>
+
+<p>“And that is best,” said Phadraig, for out of the rockwall
+by the lake, or up from the water, there came the
+music of dreams on the hill of Cromm Cru, and to an altar
+of stone by the lake-side came a figure of a maid, and
+before her and after her swept the white birds of the sea.
+Her face was veiled as by a cloud circling her to her white
+feet—and it was the white cloud maid he had visioned in
+the well where the heart of the sea throbbed as it throbbed
+here in the lake of the wood.</p>
+
+<p>“Come with me now for pleasure,” said Una of the
+gold crown and jewel eyes.</p>
+
+<p>And he looked deep into her wondrous eyes and read
+there the shadow things of some forgotten past.</p>
+
+<p>“Somewhere, in some life, your music of Life has
+held me, and I followed after. Was I lost in some
+forest through that following, O Woman of the Memory?
+And do the white birds of the sea lead me at last
+out from the shadows of that? This pulse of the
+lake beats more close to me than the pulse of your
+heart, O Una, most beautiful! And—I follow my
+dream!”</p>
+
+<p>And at that the white cloud fell away from the maid,
+and he saw the white hands of her make new fire in the
+ancient way on the stone of the altar place, and maids and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span>
+men in green clasped hands and circled her, and chanted
+a song he had sometime known of.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Samhain! Samhain! Samhain!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Take the new fire! Send the rain!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Banish care and banish pain!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Speed the ghosts who ban the sheep,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Light the path to spirit sleep!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">This our fire to light the way</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">This eve:</div>
+    <div class="verse indentplus1">Samhain!</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>And as he heard them he saw again the hill of Cromm
+Cru and the circled bands there, but never on Cromm Cru
+or in all the world had he seen such a priest at an altar,
+for she was all of white and silver and in her hair of gold
+was a fillet of silver with a crescent moon. And he broke
+through the circle to kneel by her.</p>
+
+<p>“O new moon of the world!” said Phadraig as he
+unclasped the strong hand of Una.</p>
+
+<p>“I hear your voice but may not look on you until the
+prayer is worked. The Lords of Flame send thus the
+strength of altars to the sun! ’Tis Summer Days’ farewell!”</p>
+
+<p>“The day is endless here—and no farewell!” came the
+whispered music-sweet voice of Una. “’Tis witchery of
+Earth, her mother’s earth! I beg you come with me!”</p>
+
+<p>But he made no answer, so thrilled was he by the
+enchantment of the music of the white maid who gave fire
+to her men and maids, and bade them to the four ways.</p>
+
+<p>Then she turned and smiled upon him, and in her smile
+was the glory of dawn.</p>
+
+<p>“You have followed the quest, O King Phadraig, soul
+of Nihil?” she said.</p>
+
+<p>“Not king, O Wonder Maid! You have given back the
+name I had lost, but no king am I. I am the son of Nihil,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span>
+and am your shepherd of the white deer, or knight of
+yours if fighting men are called.”</p>
+
+<p>“Danaan calls no more battles these many thousand
+days.”</p>
+
+<p>And with the name came the strange witchery by which
+he had been held in thrall since the night of Beltain on the
+heights.</p>
+
+<p>“Danaan—Danaan!” he whispered. “I have followed
+the quest. Your white birds led the way, O snowy-breasted
+maid! I am in bond to you these many days!”</p>
+
+<p>“We all are bound by links forged by the gods. What
+quest was yours?”</p>
+
+<p>“I never knew till now. I thought it but the music of
+the past—I sought to find it through your magic name—and
+now—”</p>
+
+<p>“Ay! Wishful human hearts,” she said, and rested her
+hand on his hair where he knelt beside her. “Come you,
+and tell me of your life on other shores.”</p>
+
+<p>“I have forgotten all,” he said, and in truth he had;
+only flashes of vision came to him as she spoke, but they
+went again.</p>
+
+<p>She laid her hand on his. “Now look again,” she said.</p>
+
+<p>And he looked. And there was the great cliff and the
+glen by the sea and the sheep on the far moors. And at
+the door of the cot sat Roiseen spinning the flax, and the
+white hound at her feet looking out to sea. It was as if
+he was looking into the eyes of Phadraig, and seeing him,
+yet taking no note, and Phadraig felt a longing for the
+shore. He had loved well Roiseen and the hound. And
+Danaan beside him laughed, and clapped her hands as a
+child would do.</p>
+
+<p>“I saw it, too!” she said. “And that is the shore my
+mother loved! Once she made me to see her honeysweet
+hills. She died with the sickness of longing for them,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span>
+but never could I see it alone. Oh, lend me your eyes,
+and look for the deep well in the wood in the valley below
+the altar—it was there he, my father, found her, and drew
+her from her people. And she trod with him the Druid
+Path and came from the pulsing well here to the pulsing
+lake. Did you know that each is a mirror for all that
+reflects in the other? It is the path of dreams—and the
+guide is the living sea. It has led you as it led my mother
+from the land of Inis Erinn.”</p>
+
+<p>“And when was this?” asked Phadraig, after he had
+looked with her into the pulsing well and over the cliffs,
+and in all the places she had been told of and longed to see.</p>
+
+<p>“I only know it is so long ago that the sea is changed
+there. For the water ran in where you showed me the
+sheep in the valley. Ay, always I wanted to see that
+earth life again, and I wished it till you came to me.”</p>
+
+<p>“And I wished for the voice of Danaan out of all the
+world till my wish met yours somewhere between the
+shores, and only the sea birds knew!”</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him long, and sighed.</p>
+
+<p>“My mother came for such a wish—and for love, but
+she could not stay alive with us, and her spirit went out on
+the wings of the wind to find her way back to the primrose
+dawns and the purple dusks. How will you go out,
+O Phadraig the king, when the time comes?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why am I here but to do your will?” he asked. “And
+since you name me king, then a king’s way must I go out
+when the time comes; but bear you with me I will,
+Danaan, my soul.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ay, if that might be,” she said, and played with the
+girdle of sea pearls about her. “My mother left with me
+the earth longings else I never had wished you here”—and
+then she put her hand on his once more and had him
+look back to the land, and softly she crooned over to herself<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span>
+the charms it held for her through the sick longings
+of the mother. And when he thought of the night there,
+and the stars circling above and shining in the still water
+of the well, she arose and paced the grove.</p>
+
+<p>“Look you,” she said, “the others who abide with me
+gave up Earth and Spirit in an ancient day that they might
+live ever in the strong memory of joys that were. My
+heritage is different—as my spirit is. They never weary
+for the dusks of the night; I do, because of the bond with
+earth in me. Thus I make my own world, and do the
+moon prayers my mother knew, and make the Festivals
+of the Age of Youth, and here for love of it I have my
+night all alone where it gives dread to Una lest I plunge
+them all in shadow—they are in fear of earth enchantings.
+You are stronger than I, O Phadraig, for you have
+the soul of the Danaan and the strong earth body. You
+have fared forth on the quest of Nihil, though you know
+it not! But Nihil was not a king and the gods decide,
+Phadraig, that you are to be that. Wearily one more life
+must you serve ere you win the right to rest.”</p>
+
+<p>“With you, O Danaan?”</p>
+
+<p>“If you will it so, for you are stronger than I, Phadraig.”</p>
+
+<p>“What pledge may I keep?”</p>
+
+<p>She gave him the sharp flint spear from the altar.</p>
+
+<p>“Cut there in the wall of the rock something sacred to
+you and to the land of my mother.”</p>
+
+<p>He did so, and cut the central star of the north, and the
+wheel of the wings of it at the four seasons.</p>
+
+<p>“It is the most steadfast sign in our skies,” he said,
+“and every circling dance of prayer to the gods, old or
+new, is built on it.”</p>
+
+<p>Then Danaan, holding his hand, stood beside him at the
+edge of the lake of the tide, and with her finger drew a
+circle around the symbol there.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span></p>
+
+<p>“The forest will wither, and the heart of the lake will be
+still, ere the bond of that circle dies for you and for me,”
+she said. “If ever you doubt, O Phadraig the king, fare
+you forth again from your own shores of Inis Erinn and
+look on the wall and my pledge here. But never look back
+to it but once in your lifetime, and now—come away!”</p>
+
+<p>He followed where she led, and in a grotto by the sea
+they sat with clasped hands and she told him what she
+might of the People of Memory. Yet often she seemed to
+tell him without words. The music of a wondrous life
+swept over him in great floods of light unspeakable, and
+again he could hear an undercurrent of a lament ever dying
+away, and coming again, and he felt what that meant, too.</p>
+
+<p>“We will not be parting,” he said as he held her. “I
+say it!”</p>
+
+<p>“That is as may be,” she answered. “I am free of the
+wood and rule there, yet I belong to the Tuathe de
+Danaan, and there are bonds of this life.”</p>
+
+<p>“I broke them to find you,” he said.</p>
+
+<p>“So you did. But you have the wonderful earth body,
+and the doubled strength of Nihil and the others who have
+longed through the ages to prove the bond they felt. I
+will be alone. There will be no one to help me.”</p>
+
+<p>“I will help,” he said.</p>
+
+<p>“You have your will, and you see no content till you
+try,” she said. “But this is the time of trial, and I will
+not see you linger till your soul goes out on the restless
+winds crying for the blue of the heather on the hill and
+the primrose dawns after the sweet nights! It may be a
+long farewell you are to give me here, Phadraig, O King!”</p>
+
+<p>But he lifted her in his arms as if she had been but an
+armful of the fragrant blossoms above them, and he strode
+down to the shore with the white sea birds screaming.</p>
+
+<p>She uttered no word as he placed her in the currach and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span>
+set it on the waves, and from the castle walls no face
+looked out. It was as if all the land there, and her heart
+as well, had been made quiet by the strength of his will to
+bear her away.</p>
+
+<p>But only the whispered lament of the music was heard,
+and the world was very still. The birds had ceased whirling
+above but swept steadily onward as if drifting on the
+wind, and it was a world of green water and green sky
+they went into.</p>
+
+<p>But the cold came down, and the birds flew low. He
+touched the hand of Danaan; it was very cold, and his
+heart was sick with fear for her. He lifted her to his
+breast that his body might give her warmth. But it did
+not, and his very soul seemed frozen with unearthly cold
+as he lay beside her and held her close.</p>
+
+<p>And then she smiled, the most wonderful smile in the
+world, into his eyes, and whispered, “I did not know how it
+would be coming, Phadraig, O King. But it is the farewell—and
+it is sweet as honey on the hills in your land of love.”</p>
+
+<p>But he could not speak; he could only look on her face
+until his own eyes closed, and the currach went steadily
+on through icy air. There was no longer any thought left
+in him as to where they were borne, for he felt the sleep
+of death was over them both.</p>
+
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-capa" src="images/a.jpg" alt="A" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">And on the day of Samhain, as the sun went into the
+western mists and left a path of glory behind, the
+white hound at the feet of old Roiseen of the Glen
+stood up looking out to the sea, and the whine of him was
+like a chained soul in travail. Roiseen looked the way he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span>
+looked, and in the path of the sun on the water a currach
+came in to the shore, and over it a white cloud hovered.
+Yet when it came nearer, the cloud was only white birds
+flying low on the sea.</p>
+
+<p>“The strength of the saints to us—and Saint Brighde
+to the fore!” she prayed, for no mortal currach ever came
+in like that against the tide. And to shepherds bearing
+yew to the mount of Cromm Cru, she made a call.</p>
+
+<p>“Come you who bear cheer to the ghosts who walk on
+the night of Samhain,” she said, “come you down to the
+sea where the ghost of Phadraig, son of Nihil, is waiting
+on the waves!”</p>
+
+<p>In fear they came, and, led by the white hound, they
+went down to the sea, and there was Phadraig in the
+white sleep. But the hound crept near to him and gave
+tongue in joy, and Roiseen of the Glen lifted his head
+to her.</p>
+
+<p>“The luck is on him that he yet holds breath,” she said.
+“Men, take him up. Fiann, make you the fire. Erard, go
+you for the priest in the cave of the hills, for he is a holy
+man. Ay! Achone! Phadraig, that you should come
+back to us with the ice in your blood like this!”</p>
+
+<p>And only the bravest of the men would bear Phadraig,
+for the others stayed on their knees in fear of the white
+birds whirling wearily over.</p>
+
+<p>And the night fires of Samhain were sending their
+flames to the sky when he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>“Danaan, Danaan, it is again I have lost you?”</p>
+
+<p>“He dreams,” said the holy man of the cave where
+Saint Colman had lived his seven blessed years, and ever
+after that time the monks lived there in retreat.</p>
+
+<p>“Nay, father, call it not a dream, for it is a part of the
+life of his people—and he has been bold to go forth to
+find.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span></p>
+
+<p>And that was the time she told, under confession, the
+legend of the race of Ua Dinan.</p>
+
+<p>He was very aged, and had seen many things on earth,
+and in hearts, and he did not chide.</p>
+
+<p>“What is the blaze on the night sky?” asked Phadraig.
+“Do they burn today the yew wet by the rain last night of
+Samhain?”</p>
+
+<p>The monk looked at the woman.</p>
+
+<p>“Ay, Phadraig, my heart,” she said. “It is the feast
+fire of Samhain.” But she did not tell him he had gone
+out with the ghosts of Samhain a year agone, and came
+back with them!</p>
+
+<p>Then there was sound of horses’ feet, and voices of
+men of degree, and a chief of Tormond entered the cot
+and bent the knee to Phadraig, and beyond the door stood
+many chiefs.</p>
+
+<p>“We have guarded your claim till you came, Phadraig,
+son of Nihil, son of Ua Dinan,” he said, and the chiefs
+lifted their lances, and one by one entered the cot and
+spoke fealty and passed out.</p>
+
+<p>And thus he learned that Danaan spoke true in Tir-nan-Ogue
+of the Long Day, for Kieran the king had fallen
+in a raid of the south, and his frail cousin had gone out
+like a rushlight in the wind.</p>
+
+<p>“Come another day, and I will hearken to you,” he said,
+“other cares await me this night.”</p>
+
+<p>They went away at that, and Phadraig asked again for
+Danaan, and was told that the currach was empty but for
+himself, and was so old that it fell to pieces as the men
+drew it ashore, and that not lately could it have ever borne
+the burden of two bodies.</p>
+
+<p>This he knew was not true, and he said it, and the fever
+of him ran hot, and he talked of the trees of magic where
+white flower and fruit of gold grew on the same branch,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span>
+and where music was achingly sweet, and spoke without
+words! Back there to Tir-nan-Ogue would he go for
+Danaan, despite all, and he bade them as their king that
+they bring him a boat for the journey!</p>
+
+<p>And so prayerful were the eyes of Roiseen that the holy
+man of the cave bade him sleep in peace, for with the
+rising of the sun the boat would be ready.</p>
+
+<p>“Achone! Ay, father! But what shall we do if he
+wakens alive and holds you to that?” asked Roiseen,
+making the sign.</p>
+
+<p>“What is there to do with god or man but to keep the
+faith?” said the priest. “He is not to be bound or held to
+life for the cares of this land except he be rowed to some
+island in the sea, and have the dream blown away on the
+wind.”</p>
+
+<p>And it was so.</p>
+
+<p>The chiefs waited on his word while he walked the
+hills with the priest and listened to the music unheard
+by all but him, and called on Danaan to come alive to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Strange tales went abroad that the king walked with
+angels, and the chiefs were patient, but to the holy man
+they said he must wear the crown or forfeit it, also that
+he must wed with a maid of degree, else no chief could
+bring wife or daughter to the halls of Ua Dinan, as was
+the custom in Tormond.</p>
+
+<p>Phadraig, the king, listened and laughed with bitter
+thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>“How may I wed a warm maid of the clans when my
+arms are yet chilled with the icy bosom of Danaan?” he
+asked. “The heart of me craves only a boat, and strength
+to fare forth to the shores where I held her.”</p>
+
+<p>“And if we find a shore and no waiting maids, will you
+then take up the work waiting here to your hand?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span></p>
+
+<p>“That, if I cannot find her,” said Phadraig.</p>
+
+<p>“And will you wed the lady who waits in the south, and
+hold court as of old for the good of your race?”</p>
+
+<p>“Rather with her than another,” said Phadraig. “She
+is a fair and honest lady, and sweetly kind.”</p>
+
+<p>And the holy man kept his word. He bore sacred symbols
+and a church bell, and sailed away with Phadraig to
+the west, and the chiefs on the shore were told it was a
+vow, and waited as they might and made prayers. The
+bells were rung from every tower that day to pray that
+Phadraig, the king, come again in health and safety.</p>
+
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/n.jpg" alt="N">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">No one ever knew what island in the sea they came to,
+but come to an island they did, and it was far away.
+The wood grew down to the shore, and there were
+mighty trees cast down as by a great wind, and the desolation
+of it was so great that no living thing moved or
+fluttered a wing, and out beyond the shore rested the white
+birds of Phadraig, the king, and they rocked on the waves
+there, and by no effort could be made follow.</p>
+
+<p>“This is the farthest unknown land,” said the holy man.
+“By faith and prayer have we found it, and by the grace
+of God only shall we ever fare safely home or see again the
+faces of your clans. Look about you, Phadraig of the
+Dream, where are the ever-blossoming boughs and the
+castle of stone with the many towers?”</p>
+
+<p>“Hear you not the music?”</p>
+
+<p>“I hear only the sea wind moaning through the
+branches of dead trees.”</p>
+
+<p>“Smell you not the fragrance of orchards?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span></p>
+
+<p>“I smell only the twists of seaweed cast up on the
+shore,” and the priest pushed aside a branch of wild thorns
+with green leaves reaching out from a gnarled and ancient
+bole.</p>
+
+<p>But Phadraig caught the thorn branch, and under the
+scant green leaves was one tiny blossom, white and thick-petaled
+and with the fragrance of all sweetness of all the
+orchards in the world.</p>
+
+<p>“See! Of this I told you, and it is alive here!”</p>
+
+<p>“Then it is the sole live thing on the shore, for there is
+not even fish in this sea.”</p>
+
+<p>But Phadraig led him over stones of great size piled
+high. Broken stone was there covered by sands—and
+other stone not broken, but squared on the four sides and
+grown over with lichens and wild vines.</p>
+
+<p>“This is like the place of the tower where the sea tide
+swept into the moat,” he said.</p>
+
+<p>And the holy man went over the stone, and stood on a
+broken wall. And beyond was a great place of sand piled
+high where the walls of a moat once stood.</p>
+
+<p>“Come away,” he said, and crossed himself in fear.
+“This is no place of living things. No life has been here
+for a thousand years.”</p>
+
+<p>But Phadraig held the blossom and heard the music of
+Danaan and would not.</p>
+
+<p>“Come out first, as by your vow, to the forest,” he said,
+“for it was there I found her. Once only in my lifetime
+I was to come back if I had doubt. I have no doubt, yet I
+am here with you. Come you in.”</p>
+
+<p>It was a wilderness beyond words, and the twisted
+thorn trees were gray and dead there, with neither green
+leaf nor white bloom.</p>
+
+<p>“I am sorrowful to bring you through them,” said
+Phadraig, the king, for the priest was old and the way<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span>
+hard. “But over beyond the hill is the great forest—and
+there by the blue lake the pulse of the sea is—”</p>
+
+<p>But the forest was a jungle with no path, and the lake
+was not there; only a bog stretched from the gray wood to
+a cliff of gray rock, and Phadraig could say no word but
+sat there on a crumbling stone and covered his eyes with
+his hands.</p>
+
+<p>“Now, O Phadraig, will you come back to the warm
+blood of your own clans?” asked the priest. “For here is
+the end of the dream.”</p>
+
+<p>But Phadraig, the lover, stood up and walked to the
+wall of gray rock at the edge of the bog.</p>
+
+<p>“Not yet—O holy father,” he said. “Once only I was
+to come for proof in one lifetime, and here am I! Come
+you and look.”</p>
+
+<p>He tore away from the rock wall the gray and green
+lichen and placed his fingers into the carving made there
+for the star of the north, and its circling seven, which
+makes both cross and wheel in the night sky.</p>
+
+<p>“See! I drilled them deep as the flint knife would burrow
+the stone,” he said, “and the storm has beaten away
+the face of the rock until only the traces are here. But
+Danaan took one finger of her white hand and drew a
+circle as her bond, and it has eaten deep into the rock as
+if carved with tools of iron this day. Father, what should
+that tell to me?”</p>
+
+<p>And the holy man looked in the face of Phadraig, the
+king, and made a prayer against enchantments, and rang
+the sacred bell of church there in the gray wood before
+he would speak.</p>
+
+<p>“Since written bond it is, O Phadraig, rest your soul
+with the thought that it was a bond with a forbear of
+yours a thousand summers agone! You have only dreamed
+the dream that was born in your blood of that bond.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span>
+You have kept the tryst for your ancestors, and risked
+your life and soul in the keeping. No more of duty for
+your race will be required of you in this life—naught
+but to wear the crown and rule in the ways of the
+clans.”</p>
+
+<p>So Phadraig knelt there by the written bond of union,
+to the harmony of the circling stars, and he touched the
+circle of Danaan while he made his prayer, and then they
+went out again from the wilderness to the sea, and the
+white birds flew silently ahead of them on the sun-path to
+the home land of Erinn.</p>
+
+<p>“Look not behind you,” said the priest, “but follow the
+birds and pray for all lost souls.”</p>
+
+<p>For well he knew what would come of the church bell,
+and the Christian prayer in the gray wood. And come it
+did, for when he looked back the ancient island of enchantment
+was no more to be seen. And no living man has seen
+it to this day except its shadow every seven years far
+across the gold haze of the sunset path, and then the gray
+wood is glorified and young again—but there are those
+who can still hear the music of Danaan across the water
+in dusks and dawns.</p>
+
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/a.jpg" alt="A" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">And Roiseen of the Glen went to the great hall of
+Phadraig, the Ua Dinan, and nursed his children
+there, and gave comfort to Yva of Kilfernora, who
+was wife to him, and counseled her never to hedge in a
+child of the Ua Dinan from the open life and the old
+faiths; for in strange and dangerous ways they would
+cross the barriers, and it was safest to let them range free<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span>
+till they made the circle and came back to bide at the
+hearthstone and under the bell of the church.</p>
+
+<p>The holy man of the cave of Saint Colman was given
+merit by the bishop for saving the soul of Phadraig, the
+king, who was known to have won a strange power
+through some holy source.</p>
+
+<p>His hair whitened but his eyes were ever young, and his
+strength and wisdom grew, and his children’s children
+could not keep pace with him on the moors. He trained
+his eldest son to rule, and when the times were safe, he
+gave up the crown and wore the monk’s robe of white,
+and crossed over to Dun Aengus of the Isles of Arran.
+The singers of three centuries sang the songs of Nihil, his
+father, and the poets wrote of Phadraig, the king, as of a
+holy man by whom the white birds were tamed. Also he
+loved the stars and learned wisdom of them in the night,
+and in the blessed Isle of Arran he was always out under
+the sky when the wind blew from the west—and the
+music he heard then made him walk in beauty with the
+glad eyes of a lover who is beloved.</p>
+
+<p>And when the Time came, he laid him down in the
+white robe and bade all doors be open, and all windows,
+that the west wind come over him! And the white birds
+came on the wind and circled the room and hovered there.
+While the brother monks lit candles and chanted the words
+for the dying, he smiled in content and whispered the
+music of the song of Nihil—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">She takes my hand at the sea marge,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">She whispers low on the wind,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">She sets her sail for Tir-nan-Ogue</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">And leaves worn Life behind!</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>No pain was with him, and no sickness, but he went out
+on the wind as the birds went, and the monks who knelt<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span>
+by him, waiting some vision of his patron saint, heard him
+say at the last:</p>
+
+<p>“Danaan, the star stands steady these thousand years
+and the circle closes. I come back on the breath of the
+gods!”</p>
+
+<p>There was much learned discussion over this saying of
+his. Some thought he spoke of Daniel of the Hebrews,
+who was never a saint but was once a strong prophet.
+Others thought it was David, the king, of whom he spoke,
+for David was once a shepherd—and such were ever wise
+in the ways of the stars of night.</p>
+
+<p>As to the “breath of the gods”—they could by no
+means make out the meaning of that, which would have
+been blasphemy had it been said by anyone, high or low,
+and in their charity the monks united to disbelieve their
+own ears and content their souls with the miracle of the
+white birds—which was a beautiful miracle indeed—and,
+of course, a holy one.</p>
+
+<p>So Phadraig, the king, was buried in consecrated
+ground, and only two souls had lived in his day to read
+the riddle of his life. One was the Wise Woman of the
+Glen and the other a holy man of the cave of Saint Colman
+in the hills.</p>
+
+<p>But each had passed on, long years before, and made
+their choice between heaven and Tir-nan-Ogue.</p>
+
+<figure class="chapterseparator illowp25">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i034.jpg" alt="Decorative chapter separator">
+</figure>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i035" style="max-width: 119.1875em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i035.jpg" alt="THE ENCHANTING OF DOIRENN">
+</figure>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span></p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp55" id="i036" style="max-width: 123.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i036.jpg" alt="Musical score, Love’s Story">
+</figure>
+<p class="musicTitle">Love’s Story</p>
+<p class="center music"><audio controls><source src="music/i036_music_correctedf.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
+Audio content is not currently supported on your device.</audio>
+<span class="xml">[<a href="music/i036_music_correctedf.mxl">MusicXML</a>]</span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_ENCHANTING_OF_DOIRENN">THE ENCHANTING OF DOIRENN</h2>
+</div>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap3" src="images/bign.jpg" alt="N">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Not lucky is it for a man when his own
+clan gives him low looks, and Ruadan of
+Ardsolais saw how the wind blew in the
+rath of Fethna in Meath when his kinsmen
+brought there a counting of cattle,
+and they grudged that payment of cattle
+and grudged twice over the twelve white
+cows, for the white cows were the darlings of the herd,
+and his kinsmen were coveting them for their own fields.
+And to Fethna, who was lord of the judgments in that
+place, they spoke.</p>
+
+<p>“What is this debt to Cairell?” asked Donn, of his clan.
+“Far from Deasmond is the dun of Cairell; far to drive
+cattle, and waste of time coming.”</p>
+
+<p>Fethna would have been a cloak for Ruadan had he
+dared, but justice must have light of the sun.</p>
+
+<p>“It is no debt, and I could wish you made me no asking,”
+he said. “It is a fine, and it had to be paid when
+Cairell brought witness and made oath.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why not give to them the tale?” asked Ruadan, and
+laughed. “If Cairell and his wife Luaine care so little to
+have songs of us going round the fire, what is it to me?
+Luaine of the white hands can be queen of cattle for all I
+am caring. That is the comfortable kind of wife to have
+for old age, and she is a fair, sweet body.”</p>
+
+<p>“It would serve you better,” said Donn, of his clan,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span>
+“to take a wife of your own, that your kinsmen could
+bring their women folk to your dun, as is fitting. Neither
+monk’s robe nor wife will you take or will you
+keep.”</p>
+
+<p>“I am not yet brave enough in spirit to pledge my
+name for every man’s child a woman may take fancy to
+bring; it takes a brave man for that. Until I find
+the right woman it is cheaper to pay trespass in
+cattle.”</p>
+
+<p>“You talk heresy; for marriage is called sanctified.”</p>
+
+<p>“So the priests are telling, but it takes more than their
+words to prove it so. Make not your quarrel here, because
+there is no wife in my dun, when all these coveted cattle
+are paid by me because there was a wife in my camp in the
+forest—ill-luck on that night!”</p>
+
+<p>His kinsmen stared darkly, feeling they were laughed
+at, but Fethna spoke.</p>
+
+<p>“It is the truth: the woman followed him, he makes no
+denial.”</p>
+
+<p>“What good of it?” laughed Ruadan. “I left his dun
+and asked no company. Every jester in Erinn would
+have a song of me if I took flight from the same woman
+twice. And where would there be profit in it to anyone?”</p>
+
+<p>“There would be profit in that you would not lose the
+love of Niall, the king,” said Fethna sorrowful, and Donn
+changed looks with the others.</p>
+
+<p>“True enough,” agreed Ruadan, “but if Niall was
+pleased to give me love himself, why should he be in anger
+for the reason that his uncle’s cousin’s daughter should
+have followed after to do the same? How was I to know?
+Does a man waste time to ask about grandsires when a
+lovely woman would creep under his cloak? Out on you
+for a lot of cold-blooded fish! Niall Caille will show temper<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span>
+for a year perhaps, and I’ll be keeping my distance
+till he has need of a spear.”</p>
+
+<p>“Is the favor of a king so small a matter that you pick
+it up and put it aside as you will?” asked Donn jealously.
+“Strange tales have come to us of other heads with crowns
+and other friendships of yours.”</p>
+
+<p>Ruadan looked at his hand on which a foreign ring
+shone—a ring of deep gold and a red jewel in it.</p>
+
+<p>“Rest you easy on that. There will be no cattle to pay
+there! I was on the business of the king; and the jewel
+was given only to the king’s messenger.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ask of Niall another gille next time,” said Fethna,
+“for the last one had tales to tell of Queen Ota and that
+ring of yours! Turgesius of the Danes needs two eyes for
+her alone. Since kings and queens do not come to me to
+set fines for loves, I can laugh at that, and leave it to
+Niall. But the bards do be making songs of that and even
+the maids are singing them in their chamber.”</p>
+
+<p>Back of the arras there was a movement and a scuttling
+of feet; maids were there listening because the drive of cattle
+had made talk.</p>
+
+<p>Bevind, daughter of Fethna, was there, and held by the
+hand Doirenn, of the deep voice, to listen.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you have wonder that I give him my looks when
+queens have given him love?” she asked, but the girl
+Doirenn looked her gloom and her scorn.</p>
+
+<p>“How is it that you give looks to him whom they call
+‘God’s Dastard’ when your eyes have looked on goodness
+in Geroid who has no blemish?” she asked. “This man
+has much blemish, and is not in shame because of it.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are as hard on him as the monks, for it was the
+monks that put that name on him. It is heavy to carry,
+Doirenn. To put an ill name to a boy and hope he walks
+the white path is much to hope for, Doirenn.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span></p>
+
+<p>Doirenn looked at her, frowning.</p>
+
+<p>“I have not seen his face, yet I am thinking ill of
+him,” she said. “Geroid would have no light word of
+women and cattle such as this man speaks. Give him
+no looks, Bevind, and no words. It is said that monks
+learn holy ghostly things, and, if turned dastard to
+God, they can use power for enchantments. If a queen,
+even a pagan queen, looked love on him, and a king’s
+cousin followed him, what can it mean but enchantings?”</p>
+
+<p>Bevind gasped and rolled her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“I did hear old Aillve tell a tale of enchantment by
+love, and the man was old as the world, yet looked
+young, and he snared maids and took them to his rath
+where they were changed to white cats. <span id="hisforest">His forest was
+full</span> of beautiful white cats, waiting for a brave and
+pure youth to ride their way and make prayers there;
+and that would free them, and nothing else would free
+them.”</p>
+
+<p>“Geroid could be that one,” said Doirenn. “All his
+verses on the tablets are against enchantments in these
+days. Here is one—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Against incantations of false prophets,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Against craft of idolatry, against spells</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Of women, and smiths, and druids, I bind</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Myself to the strong strength.</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">The prayer of a saint is that prayer, Bevind, and with it
+he could ride safe to free all enchanted souls.”</p>
+
+<p>“But would he?” asked Bevind. “He is my kinsman
+more than yours, and the safe side of a good wall was
+ever the choice of Geroid when the play was getting rough.
+My brothers are wild to fight out the Danes when the
+time comes, but Geroid casts no spear for that practice.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span></p>
+
+<p>Doirenn sulked and frowned.</p>
+
+<p>“Your brothers have not souls of religion,” she said,
+“they have jealous hearts because of the high words of
+Geroid.”</p>
+
+<p>“They have jealous hearts because of your own beauteous
+eyes, and because not one of them would shut himself
+away with the monks, and feed a maid like yourself
+on letters and on the prayers of the old-time saints, and
+that is what Geroid is doing to you.”</p>
+
+<p>“The tongue of you is bitter from some poison herb
+you have chewed on,” declared Doirenn, “you have no
+good word for the godly, but many good words for that
+swaggering lover of queens and other men’s wives. The
+more shame to you!”</p>
+
+<p>Bevind laughed again. “Alanna,” she said, “he has no
+love, else he would have kept Luaine who followed his
+road. He would be fighting for her and not paying cattle
+for her—no—Ruadan of Ardsolais has not yet found
+Love, he has only found many fond women. Achone!
+That I was promised in troth before I was seeing him,
+for his kinsmen are saying it is a wife he should have, far
+away there, back of beyond where his dun is in the
+mountains.”</p>
+
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_2" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/b.jpg" alt="B" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">But Doirenn cared not where he lived, nor when he
+wived. She carried the last tablet of Geroid out
+through the arbor where she could read over again
+and again the written words of the lad who was dear and
+was far. She unbraided the red gold of her hair, and let it fall
+about her as a shimmering curtain. She had days in that sixteenth<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span>
+year of hers when the veil of a nun would
+have seemed to her a sweet thing to wear in sanctuary,
+but the cutting of that golden shower was a thing to
+shrink from; and the thought of Geroid was another
+reason!</p>
+
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_2" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/i.jpg" alt="I" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">It was there in the arbor Ruadan saw her, while his
+kinsmen fed and Fethna did a host’s duty.</p>
+
+<p>At first he could see little but the glory of her hair
+and the bare feet under the striped skirt of white and
+brown. He was above her on the wall, and stood waiting
+some movement that her face might be uncovered.</p>
+
+<p>Fethna found him thus, for she had not moved and he
+had watched her long.</p>
+
+<p>“Who is that?” he asked, “or do I dream of magical
+gold in the shape of a maid?”</p>
+
+<p>“It is Doirenn, daughter of no man now, for Marvan
+that was her father, and all his household, were swept
+into death by the men of Lochlann, and the gold of her
+hair is all the dower the child brings.”</p>
+
+<p>“What does she there?”</p>
+
+<p>“She is devoted these days because a queer twist of a
+lad is devoted, and hours she reads the prayers he is sending
+on tablets. It is a game of young years and is on the
+love path. She grows tall and nearing time to wed.”</p>
+
+<p>“And she reads the writings?”</p>
+
+<p>“She does, and who wants a cleric in a wife? Marvan
+taught her as a scribe ere he went the way—cows and
+slaves would be a better portion.”</p>
+
+<p>“I do not say that,” said Ruadan. “Ten years I worked<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span>
+on letters alone in Cluain-mac-noise and books I made
+were gifts to kings. There is a joy in that. If in this
+life I found no house, I may go back to the pen and color
+pot after I have covered my circle.”</p>
+
+<p>Then the voice of Bevind called from somewhere, and
+Doirenn stood up and shook back her golden mane.</p>
+
+<p>“She has dower in plenty,” said Ruadan.</p>
+
+<p>He listened to her voice and remembered its deep music,
+and he rode west with his kinsmen, who planted his fields
+and counted his herds.</p>
+
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a_3" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/a.jpg" alt="A" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">A month went by, and again he stood at the gate
+of Fethna.</p>
+
+<p>“Does that maid know me, Ruadan, from Donn
+or the others of my clan?” he asked, and Fethna looked
+at him and laughed loud.</p>
+
+<p>“The last time it was a cattle-fine for a wife you paid,
+and now you are coming to ask of a maid and no name to
+her!”</p>
+
+<p>“There is only one in the world,” said Ruadan. “She
+is Doirenn na Marvan, and I would have speech with
+her.”</p>
+
+<p>“Sorrow the day,” lamented Fethna, “it is not now you
+would be seeing that one; grief of the world is on her, for
+Geroid who was her lover has gone into the ‘Solitary’—far
+west has he gone down the Sionan to the ancient cell
+of Saint Senan on the shores of Lough Dearg. She thinks
+the sorrow of the world is hers.”</p>
+
+<p>“I would lift that load and carry it,” said Ruadan.</p>
+
+<p>“You mean to take her to wed?” and Fethna’s face had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span>
+a frown on it. It was not easy to shift the sails for every
+wind with Ruadan.</p>
+
+<p>“It would mean war with me, or a race beyond me to
+the man who would offer her less,” he said.</p>
+
+<p>But for all the urging of Bevind, Doirenn would not
+come where he was. She said he was the contrary in all
+ways to the pious youth who had her heart. If she loved
+Geroid, there could be only hate in her thoughts for one
+so near to the evil one as “God’s Dastard” was said and
+was sung.</p>
+
+<p>“She has not seen me,” said Ruadan when her refusal
+came. “Let her see me and hear me, and let my own
+ears hear her words.”</p>
+
+<p>It was not a pleasant day of joy for Fethna and the
+family of Fethna. His own sons were asking the same
+thing, and the girl had only one thought, and that was
+not of marriage.</p>
+
+<p>But after much argument Doirenn put aside Bevind and
+walked alone into the great hall where Ruadan—God’s
+Dastard and the darling of fond women—waited.</p>
+
+<p>White she was, and afraid, but the fear only made darker
+the blue eyes of her. Her hair was braided in long strands
+over each shoulder. Bevind had dressed her in white and
+the broidered shoes of skin were white. She was more
+lovely than a queen of the Danaan in the ancient
+legends.</p>
+
+<p>But she stood, a pale, proud, frightened child in her
+loveliness, and she looked past Ruadan and not at him.</p>
+
+<p>“I came by the courtesy of Fethna,” she said. “I do
+not come by my wish.”</p>
+
+<p>Ruadan looked at her and saw the fluttering of the
+white throat and the tight clenching of her hand. She
+looked like a bird trapped.</p>
+
+<p>“And I come despite my wish to go elsewhere,” he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span>
+said grimly. “Child, I saw you once in the arbor and I
+shall not be forgetting the seeing of you. I meant not to
+see you again, but a dream came to me in the forest and it
+brought me to you, for you were in it.”</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him then and looked away proudly.</p>
+
+<p>“Your dream was false,” she said. “It should have
+been of Luaine who claimed your cattle, or Ota the queen,
+whose love gift you wear.”</p>
+
+<p>“By the Elements,” he began darkly, but she put out
+her hand.</p>
+
+<p>“I have no desire for speech with unholy men,” she
+said. “Priest and monk say you are that, and they have
+a name for it! They tell me you speak marriage for me, but
+I have a choice: If Geroid goes into sanctuary I also will
+go; I am going. The veiled women of Cluain-mac-noise
+will take me without dower. Your dream in the forest has
+no meaning to a veiled maid.”</p>
+
+<p>“It will have in another time,” he said in patience, for
+her voice had the sound of tears, and it made a strange
+ache in his heart. “I dreamed that you were in sorrow
+and that I was to offer you shelter. I did not know your
+sorrow but I turned and rode back to learn. From Fethna
+I learned.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is not your sorrow,” said Doirenn.</p>
+
+<p>“It may be, and we may live to know it,” Ruadan made
+answer, and strove to gentle his voice to her sadness, “for
+I dreamed I saw you in a very different place—away to
+the west and in hills I know and by a shore you never have
+seen.”</p>
+
+<p>“The west!” she whispered. “Geroid is there now, a
+stone cell in the mountains of the west!”</p>
+
+<p>“I did not see the cell. I saw you there at a shore I
+know, and Bronach the Lamentable was there—the wraith
+washing the shrouds of mortals. I woke in the night with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span>
+that dream, and turned in the night to take the road here.
+To the people of my house Bronach does not come for
+naught. You were in that dream, it means a bond with
+our house, and I am here to keep that bond, and offer what
+I may.”</p>
+
+<p>Doirenn, by the arras, called Bevind and her father.</p>
+
+<p>“You told me of enchantments men make on maids
+when of evil mind,” she said. “The power Ruadan learned
+as a monk he would turn to much usage today. Was it
+by tales of dreams you witched the ring from a queen’s
+hand? And witched the Lady Luaine to the forest?”</p>
+
+<p>And then she laughed and went out and left them there.
+But when Bevind found her in her chamber she was weeping
+bitterly and would not tell them of the dream or the
+enchantment.</p>
+
+<p>And within seven days Fethna was glad of heart to
+take her to Cluain-mac-noise for the year of preparing a
+soul for the veil. Between her weeping for Geroid, and
+the raging of his own sons there was no peace for a quiet
+man in his own house.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was that the golden tresses of Doirenn were
+covered by the white novice veil and she began life anew
+in the great school by the Sionan, famed for its learning
+from Gaul even to Egypt.</p>
+
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_3" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/b.jpg" alt="B" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">But the year of her preparation had not ended when
+Ruadan again rode to the dun of Fethna. He was
+hollow of eye, and his spent horses were glad of
+rest and fodder.</p>
+
+<p>Is there aught of Doirenn na Marvan known to you?”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span>
+he asked, and the sons of Fethna, who had taken wives and
+forgotten the golden maid who had flouted them, looked
+at Ruadan and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>“How is a man to know of a veiled maid?” one asked.
+“The walls are high and the fair ones are well guarded.”</p>
+
+<p>“I was on the south shores and I heard her voice; it
+was her voice, there is none other like that. It was her
+voice calling—a troubled voice.”</p>
+
+<p>“How could you hear a voice from the center of Erinn to
+the south shore?” they said, but Fethna looked in the
+fierce face of Ruadan and bade them be silent.</p>
+
+<p>“Your father Ferdiad had ‘the sight,’” he said, “but
+my thought has been that it did not come to you because
+the priests were down on you. They can take away power
+if they think of it! What is it you would do because of
+that calling?”</p>
+
+<p>“I would answer it,” said Ruadan. “No gate of a
+nun’s dwelling would open for me, but you have women
+about you. Take one and make a gift, and let me ride
+beside you. The call was coming to me and the gift I will
+provide. I will pledge them a book more fine than the one
+of my youth made for the abbot’s gift to Clonard. My
+hand has not lost its craft—I vow this thing!”</p>
+
+<p>There was much talk of which wife would go, and the
+dress to wear, and to carry, for Bevind had wed and gone
+north to Orielle. Also the best horses were to bring in,
+and food to prepare. Hours were wasted ere they started
+on the way.</p>
+
+<p>They would have been as well not starting, for soon
+they met people in fright and with awesome news.</p>
+
+<p>While Turgesius harried the south shore and strengthened
+the Danish holdings there, Queen Ota, the pagan
+priestess of terrible things, had won to the heart of Erinn
+by the Sionan. She and her brother, Amlaf, had a fleet on<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span>
+Lough Rea and Lough Boderg. A fort of theirs was over
+at Rinnduin and the lands were ravaged by them. A
+battle at Cluain-mac-noise had won the churches and monasteries
+for the queen. Monks and nuns were killed, and
+there was much burning of all houses of farmers or herders.
+Not a handful of thatch was left on a house for miles, and
+runners had been killed with spear and with arrow.</p>
+
+<p>It was too late for help. The warriors of Queen Ota
+were on the walls and in the towers of Cluain-mac-noise.
+They held the Sionan to north and south. It was not for
+nothing that the great night-sun with the tail of fire swept
+like a besom over the skies of Erinn that year. The young
+had fear on them, and the old went in secret ways to the
+high places of ancient druidcraft and made answering
+fires that help might come their way if the way of the
+saints failed them. Though bishop thundered from the
+altar, and monk prayed in the cell, yet fires did blaze where
+the temples of ancient faiths remained, but no prayer and
+no spell swept away Ota and her mate—or swept away
+that fiery trailing thing among the stars!</p>
+
+<p>There were those who called it the war warning of the
+Dane, and the worst of all the evils it announced was the
+sacking of Cluain-mac-noise, because great wealth of
+jeweled books and costly gifts was centered in that place.</p>
+
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_3" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-capw" src="images/i048b.jpg" alt="W" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">“What of Doirenn who was fosterling of Fethna?”
+asked Ruadan of the fleeing host.</p>
+
+<p>“No one is knowing that. Ota likes not women
+about her except for labor to save her men. The young and
+strong may be taken overseas as slaves—no one can know<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span>
+that. West to the sea along the Sionan Ota has her swift
+oarmen as couriers to bring quick warnings, and a fort
+is there at Luimneach for all supplies, cattle and horses
+are held for her, and the people of the land only live by
+her mercy to harvest their own crops for her warriors.
+It is a sad time under the dreadful star for the people of
+Erinn.”</p>
+
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a_4" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/r.jpg" alt="R" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Ruadan looked about the little huddled group, pale
+with horror of what had been, and in further dread
+of what might be: with one army of the foreigner
+on the south shore, and one in the very heart of the land,
+and the fearful star of danger sweeping the heavens! He
+took Fethna aside, and when they were alone he spoke as
+follows:</p>
+
+<p>“Go you back. This is not the game of an old man.
+Bid your sons keep silence as to the call I heard; I had
+too much of hill and valley to cover and have come too
+late. I will take my gille and go a day’s ride farther. I
+may learn somewhat.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is better not to go, and not to know,” said Fethna.
+“When I was younger than you they stole the maid I
+was to wed; their ships sailed out to sea and no word was
+ever coming back. What is there to do for one man
+against an army? What is there for you to do at Cluain-mac-noise?
+We can gather men and fight them out, but
+it will take time. While we are getting our clans and
+arms together they will have ravaged the land and sailed
+away.”</p>
+
+<p>“That is true,” said Ruadan. “Send your couriers to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span>
+every point while I go on and see as I may. I will be
+back for a spear when the time comes, rest you easy on
+that.”</p>
+
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_4" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/s.jpg" alt="S" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">So, with his servant, he went on in deep thought
+and silence, striving to find ways to answer that
+call of Doirenn, who held him in bitter disdain.</p>
+
+<p>When half-mad wanderers were met, fleeing from the
+Danish scourge, and smoking ruins were seen afar, Ruadan
+halted in a grove of little oaks and washed in the stream
+and took more sightly apparel from the bag carried on
+the horse of the servant. A purple cloak from overseas he
+put on, and from the lining of a girdle he took a golden
+ring with a great red jewel of beauty, and set it on his
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>“From here you take the back road,” he said to his
+servant, “and if you would favor me, and the house in
+which your family had protection of spears, this is the
+time for the favor.”</p>
+
+<p>“Tell it and it is done,” said the man.</p>
+
+<p>“There may be half-Dane spies among these fleeing
+people. When they ask of me tell them I have made quarrel
+with my clan, and that the monks call me ‘God’s
+Dastard’ for putting off the robe and letting my hair grow
+as God meant it to.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is a hard thing you are asking,” said the servant,
+“for it is myself has had many a fight to deny your
+unfaith.”</p>
+
+<p>“I know that without words else I would not be trusting
+you. Say what you can to let them think I have cast<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span>
+off my own people to follow Queen Ota and her fortunes.
+There will be no need to say it to them, they will say it
+for you if they are given the hint. They will call me
+‘pagan’ because I follow a pagan queen. And you can
+be sad and of downcast countenance, and say a prayer
+against evil for me. Never fear it will get to Ota herself
+before you get to your home.”</p>
+
+<p>“And where will I be waiting for you, Ruadan?”</p>
+
+<p>“In paradise, man, and good luck to you on the way!
+Go you back to Ardsolais. Tend the herds and wait what
+comes. It is not with chance our life is.”</p>
+
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_4" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/t.jpg" alt="T" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Then he mounted his horse and when his servant
+looked downcast at the parting, Ruadan tried to
+cheer him, and sang words of the hymn of Saint
+Colum for a journey.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>It is alone I am on the mountain,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>O King Sun of the lucky road!</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>There is nothing to fear on that road!</i></div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>If I had three score hundreds of armies</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>To defend the body</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>When the day of my death comes</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>There is no strong place to hold out against it.</i></div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Whatever God has settled for a mortal</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>He will not leave the world until he meets it.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Although a high head goes looking for more</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>He will not get the size of a grain of it!</i></div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>He that is spent may find death in a church</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Or on an island of a lake he may find it;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>He that has luck to his way</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>His life will be safe in the front of a battle!</i></div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>It is alone I am in a wilderness,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>O King Sun of the lucky road!</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>There is nothing to fear on that road!</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp25" id="i052a" style="max-width: 47.0625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i052a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/q.jpg" alt="Q" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Queen Ota, wife of Ragnor who was called Thor’s
+servant, Thorgille—“Turgesius” by the christian
+land—was a thing of strange beauty in her first sailings
+with the fleets. Flaxen straight hair of a child was
+hers—silken straight. Her face had a slim whiteness, and
+her eyes of amber were the eyes of a white cat. Men had
+fought and slain each other for love of her red mouth and
+her round breasts. Her raids were more fierce than the
+raids of Turgesius or Amlaf, her brother, for no chief but
+knew that valor might win for him more than his share
+of the spoil if his deeds were worthy her smile.</p>
+
+<p>But many sailings had been hers and much profit from
+Erinn, and none had been greater in one place than the
+spoils of Cluain-mac-noise, in the year of the Great Star,
+for princes of Gaul and Alba sent their sons to Cluain-mac-noise
+and had sent rich gifts with the sons, until the wealth
+at the great place of learning on the Sionan had become
+the wealth of kings.</p>
+
+<p>All that wealth of gold and silver vessels and jeweled
+censor chains, and crosses of golden wonder, were heaped
+on the floor of the strongest of the stone towers. With
+them were heaped the dreaded magic altar-books of Erinn,
+in jeweled cases. Neither church bell nor church cross
+was feared by the pagans of the north seas as the mystic
+writings of the books were feared—it was dark magic to
+them, and to be burned or drowned or buried on every raid.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span></p>
+
+<p>And Ota, wearied after the battle and sick of the smell
+of old blood—though the red of it fresh flowing from her
+opponents was sweet to her as red berries ripening for
+her in a garden—went within the dwelling from which
+Ronan, the abbot, had been dragged by her men. On a
+couch of furs over which broidered silk of altars had been
+spread, she rested herself and spoke wearily.</p>
+
+<p>“Let none enter here until my rest is come to me,” she
+said, and the wife of Amlaf, whose name was Gurtha,
+looked at her in wonder that she would confess to need
+of rest, for the hatred of growing age was with Ota always.</p>
+
+<p>“But Barolf, chief of your spear men, has been twice here
+for speech,” said Gurtha.</p>
+
+<p>“I am wearied of Barolf. When he comes tell him I
+take it ill that he troubles me today.”</p>
+
+<p>But a man stood in the doorway, broad of shoulder,
+his yellow hair reaching down to his gold-banded arms.</p>
+
+<p>“O Queen, how has Barolf wearied you?”</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him and the amber eyes narrowed to
+golden slits under the silken flax of her hair. He was a
+favorite of a year gone, who was daring much! He waited
+with folded arms—and Gurtha was watching!</p>
+
+<p>“Yours was the word to the men to burn the bodies
+where winds brought stench to me, which is weariness
+enough,” she said. “I am badly served when Ragnor is
+south and Amlaf in the north.”</p>
+
+<p>“Was it ill service when my men mowed down for you
+the clerics and guard of this place, and brought the wealth
+of it to your feet?” he asked. “No man of the blood of
+the queen has done her more service than that.”</p>
+
+<p>The queen looked at Gurtha who frowned darkly. Well
+she knew that Amlaf, her man, should be first of the chiefs,
+yet because of his own nature, was not. His sister, the
+queen, was the greater warrior.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Another time we will speak of the men of my blood,”
+said Ota, “but this day of weariness it is enough to say
+that fires of the dead must not be built in these days of
+summer. Illness is on me from that burning. Your men
+are strong to dig the earth. Let them dig.”</p>
+
+<p>“It will be done,” said Barolf, “for the hounds are now
+full.” He looked toward Gurtha, and his look spoke hope
+that she be sent away, but Ota the queen chose not to see
+the look.</p>
+
+<p>“That is well,” she said.</p>
+
+<p>“And the division of the spoils, O Queen?”</p>
+
+<p>“The time for that will be when Amlaf is with us for the
+counting.”</p>
+
+<p>“And that other in the tower,” he began, but she made
+him secret sign for silence, and he spoke no more.</p>
+
+<p>“When Amlaf is with us I will give you a feast and we
+will speak of all the things,” she said with less coldness,
+and at that there was nothing to do but go.</p>
+
+<p>“He is not of quiet mind,” said Gurtha darkly, and Ota
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>“This victory makes him look long for the death of Ragnor,
+and his crown perhaps,” she said. “He forgets I have
+a brother to rule beside me in need.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yet he was high in your favor with the coming of
+May,” said Gurtha.</p>
+
+<p>“What of that? Springtime and summer bring different
+hunger. I am tired of huge white bodies and blue
+eyes, I would rest myself with other color.”</p>
+
+<p>“You had that other color on the south shore a year
+ago, and Ragnor had a knife ready,” warned Gurtha.</p>
+
+<p>“You lie. The man never was with me alone. But
+there was none like him! Wine-brown were his eyes, and
+his curls were shadows of night to nestle in.”</p>
+
+<p>“He has no kingdom, and no army to fight for a queen<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span>
+if he chose one,” said Gurtha. “He is only a noble of
+Deasmond who was once a monk in this place.”</p>
+
+<p>“In this place? That would be strange if it be true, but
+he looked not a monk to me.”</p>
+
+<p>“No. He was rebellious and cast off the robe, for some
+anger. They call him a name of their own—it means outlaw
+to their gods.”</p>
+
+<p>“And I let him go, not knowing that!” said Ota. “I
+would I had the year back—he should not go!”</p>
+
+<p>Gurtha went out and left her regretful over a year of
+coveted love with one man, after the many years of love
+with the men she had grown tired of.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i032a" style="max-width: 79.875em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i032a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/a.jpg" alt="A" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">A day went by and the spoils were not divided. She
+carried the key of the treasure tower at her girdle,
+and walked among the ruins her fierce sea-wolves
+had made, and thought of wine-brown eyes and the
+searching smile of a man who had as a youth lived there
+by the Sionan in sanctuary.</p>
+
+<p>Kings and warriors had given her wealth of love and
+wealth of tribute but the love of an anchorite was a new
+thought. It charmed her as the song of a bird of spring
+after the nuts are ripe and the ferns past their greening. In
+a cell of stone she saw one white robe untouched by ruin,
+and bade it be sent to the palace of the abbot, now her place
+of rule.</p>
+
+<p>She laughed with it beside her on the couch of rich
+robes and silken broideries, and closed her eyes to fancy
+wine-brown eyes beside her.</p>
+
+<p>Then the impossible chanced to her, and gave her strange<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span>
+belief in her own powers in which her devotees believed,
+and in the power of the strange trailing star, called “the
+star of the Danes” in Erinn.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_5" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/f.jpg" alt="F" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">For a runner from the south hills came to her with
+strange word, and she put secrecy on him, and told
+Barolf and told Gurtha that a strong ally of the
+nobles of the Irish was coming to swear fealty, and help in
+the conquest. One would bring two, and in time all Erinn
+would be ruled from the center by the children of Thor.</p>
+
+<p>Barolf secretly mocked, but the other men did not mock,
+for they had fought the Irish and would rather have them
+as comrades than as enemies.</p>
+
+<p>“Strain not your eyes looking,” Barolf laughed, and went
+up the river to the fort there of Rinnduin.</p>
+
+<p>For all that, they did climb on the walls, and did look
+toward the hills of Meath, and when afar they saw one
+horseman who rode steadily and without fear, their wonder
+was great, for he was tall and handsome and dark
+Irish, and no other Irish in that day was seeking alone any
+fort of the Danes.</p>
+
+<p>“Tell the stranger Ota sees no man of Erinn who comes
+without gauge,” said the queen, but she laughed and the
+robe she put on her was a robe of richness as if to greet
+a king of great armies.</p>
+
+<p>“O Queen, the man brings a gauge, and his word is
+that it was a key of all gates when you wore it.”</p>
+
+<p>“That is true,” said Ota, and looked at the ring he sent.
+“Give it to his hand in courtesy and lead him to me. It
+is still a key to all gates for Earl Ruadan.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span></p>
+
+<p>Ruadan walked between lines of men with lifted spears
+until he reached her portal. Two of the elder chiefs entered
+with him, and Gurtha was there watching.</p>
+
+<p>“I come without bard to chant your praises or my
+wishes,” said Ruadan. “I come without men-at-arms or
+wealth or cattle. I bear no shield for battle, though I
+will take one at your hands. My own clan put shadow
+on my name because I cast off the robe of a monk. The
+priests add their word to my blame, and I will take service
+with you, Queen Ota of the ships, or I will go over to
+Gaul and fight there if you have no spear or no shield as a
+gift.”</p>
+
+<p>Ota looked on her head men, and saw that the words
+pleased them.</p>
+
+<p>“We will talk of that gift,” she said, and her smile was
+level and steady while the head men were there, and Gurtha
+was there.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_5" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/b.jpg" alt="B" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">But when they were gone, it was not a gift of shield
+or spear she would give Ruadan for the enchantings
+of his wine-brown eyes. Ota had been Queen of
+Love always, and gave royally.</p>
+
+<p>“I brought you—I brought you here!” she whispered.
+“For a year I have wished it—and at last you have come
+to me! You shall be chief instead of Barolf who grows
+jealous. A knife from you to him in the dark and you
+shall head his fleet.”</p>
+
+<p>“Give me the knife,” said Ruadan.</p>
+
+<p>She laughed and kissed him.</p>
+
+<p>“So keen are you? O wine-brown eyes! O dark man of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span>
+the red mouth! Shields and spears are in that corner,
+and tomorrow we will make choice. Tomorrow you shall
+see the spoils of our raid and choose a jewel gift from me.”</p>
+
+<p>“But the man who stands in my way to you?”</p>
+
+<p>“He is gone north in a boat at dawn and no one stands
+in your way to me. When he comes again, and Amlaf,
+my brother, comes, we divide the spoil, but this night is
+ours and tomorrow night may be ours. See? I hold a
+monk’s robe here in memory of you, and dreamed of dark
+eyes and kisses, and through the wilderness you brought
+them!”</p>
+
+<p>Gurtha lied for the queen to the men, but the men
+laughed, and knew. They were told that Ota promised a
+wine feast of welcome to the Irish earl, and that gladdened
+them, for they would get their share, and the wine
+of the cloisters was good.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a_5" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/t.jpg" alt="T" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">There was starlight and it pleased Ota to walk with
+Ruadan in the night. And the cell where he had
+once slept was where she would go. It was whole
+and in no ways injured. She kissed him there, and asked
+of his dreams there, and of the Lady Luaine and the song
+made of him a year agone—all things heard of him had
+been remembered by her.</p>
+
+<p>But he laughed and wound her long cloak of silk about
+her lest the river-damp do her hurt, and would not tell
+her the things she asked.</p>
+
+<p>“What difference does her beauty make when I left all
+others to follow you?” he asked. “There is only one
+queen.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span></p>
+
+<p>The men on the walls saw them and made jests, for the
+trailing star left no darkness anywhere. None watched
+too closely; for their outposts were many and there was
+no enemy near for an uprising.</p>
+
+<p>“Tomorrow we look at the spoils in that tower there,”
+she said. “I would that Barolf be the one to tear the
+jeweled covers from the mystic book of Christ’s men
+before the books are burned. There is evil magic in them,
+and I want no black enchantment from them. We will
+have Barolf live long enough for that work of danger.
+But go he must. He has wish for the place of Amlaf, my
+brother, and it is making troubles.”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_6" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/r.jpg" alt="R" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Ruadan looked up at the tower where a white face
+moved at the narrow slit in the stone wall—the
+face did not reach the height of a man.</p>
+
+<p>“You have a guard there besides the key at your
+girdle?” he asked, and she pressed his arm quickly.</p>
+
+<p>“Speak not of that before Gurtha,” she whispered.
+“It is a young thing with a golden mane I am hiding
+for Amlaf. There is no other place to keep her from the
+men, and from Gurtha’s knife. Amlaf sulked because of a
+girl he lost in his last raid—I need his help to get Barolf
+out of my path, and the girl is a fair bribe. I dare not send
+her to him. When he comes he can hide her in a boat and
+take her to the north if she pleases him. If she please him
+not, she can go with the others.”</p>
+
+<p>“And that is—where?”</p>
+
+<p>“I never ask about women unless I need them. There
+was a convent across the raised road, but I see no women<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span>
+there now, and hear none.” Then she held his arm with
+both her hands, and looked up at him in the dusk and
+laughed shortly. “The other men may follow their will
+in a raiding, and take their women as they choose, but
+you must take no maid to wife!”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_6" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/t.jpg" alt="T" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">The sun was high in the morning when Ota the
+queen took her serving-man, who was her slave,
+and her new guest, of the Irish, to the tower of the
+spoils. The serving-man carried a dish of food and told
+Gurtha it was for a hound with a litter of wolf pups, but
+he did not pass the tower with the food.</p>
+
+<p>The outer door was unbarred, and the inner door unlocked
+with the queen’s key; a ladder was there, and the
+queen was helped up by Ruadan, his arm circling her for
+safety. The slave sent up the dish of food in a basket by
+a rope of grape vine.</p>
+
+<p>“There are ladders above and floors above, but the upper
+door is chained now because of the red bird caged here
+for Amlaf,” said the queen.</p>
+
+<p>By the narrow slit of the embrasure a girl stood as far
+from the opened door as she could get. She was flattened
+against the stones of the wall in terror, and clasped to her
+was a flat golden-brown book, and the gold of its cover
+was set with amber disks, and pearls of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Ruadan of Ardsolais knew that book, for his own hand
+had wrought it and it was the writings of Mark the Saint,
+and the chapter in it was that of the sermon of the sea, and
+the great faith when the storm of the sea obeyed the Voice.</p>
+
+<p>The Abbot Ronan had asked it as a gift for Clonard,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span>
+but Clonard had been sacked, and he saw again his lost
+handiwork.</p>
+
+<p>In a corner were many other books—great piles of
+vellum in their rich casings. And on and around them
+were chains of gold, and necklets of gems, woven armlets,
+and silver sandals, silver trappings of chariots and war
+horses were stacked with the rest, and women’s jewels
+in girdle or torque, or ring, beyond belief. The sun struck
+on the heap through an embrasure and set it all aglitter
+against the gray stone of the wall.</p>
+
+<p>“It speaks a brave hosting,” said Ruadan, and lifted the
+jeweled shrine in which a tiny bell of holiness tinkled. He
+never looked at the girl.</p>
+
+<p>“I will take all the bells for the decking of our steeds
+when I ride the forests with you,” said Ota the queen.</p>
+
+<p>“Nay, it will not be bells we will care to carry,” said Ruadan,
+and she laughed, well content, and emptied a leathern
+bag of altar jewels on the stone floor. A golden bell and a
+jeweled chalice were there, and a wondrous monstrance of
+gold all aglitter with ruby and amber and pale pearls. A
+censor of jeweled chains was there, and armlets and necklets
+thrust in among the vessels of holy use. Ota lifted
+from them a gorgeous necklet set with smoldering rubies.</p>
+
+<p>“This has been gift of some king of the far world,” she
+said, “and it goes well with the ring you had from me a
+year ago. I have brought you to choose a gift; choose the
+richest you can carry.”</p>
+
+<p>“My thought is that I could carry you if your long
+cloak would not tangle my feet on the ladder.”</p>
+
+<p>She laughed at that, and clasped the necklet on him and
+loosened the lacing of his garment that it might be hidden
+next his skin. Then she glanced at Doirenn, rigid and
+white against the wall.</p>
+
+<p>“Look at her face,” she said laughing. “If she has<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span>
+looks of such scorn at Amlaf he will not risk the knife of
+Gurtha for her!”</p>
+
+<p>“So good a sister should make a good wife,” said Ruadan;
+“few women would pick so much of beauty in a
+slave—unless for sale.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, I am good to my men,” agreed Ota. “They are
+strange children. They can be starved, and wounded, and
+beaten, but if they get their toys at the end of the raid
+their songs are only victory. Yet—” and she looked at
+Doirenn in thought and then turned to Ruadan, “think
+not because I would give such gift to a brother, or a husband,
+that I would allow one to a lover! So choose your
+gift from the spoils of kings, O Ruadan!”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a_6" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/h.jpg" alt="H" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">He laughed with her and fastened a great gold
+brooch in her sweeping cloak.</p>
+
+<p>“My choice is only a jewel for your wearing,” he
+said. “Are you ready to go down?”</p>
+
+<p>“I do not know,” said Ota the queen. “Why is that
+girl staring hate at us? Ruadan, I like it not. She holds
+that book of the altar magic and it may be she works a
+spell! Ruadan, could it be?” And she clung to him and
+stared at the hate in the eyes of Doirenn. “Why do you
+look frozen? You have life left you, and food and shelter.
+You were not counted among the women for whom lots
+were drawn. What rage is then yours?”</p>
+
+<p>“The grief is mine that in all that heap of jeweled sacrilege
+there is no thing of flint or of iron with edge for a
+maid of Erinn,” said Doirenn, and from the safe shelter of
+the arms of Ruadan, Ota gained courage again.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span></p>
+
+<p>“A knife might be there,” she ventured. “You have no
+task all these days but to search among this wealth of
+beauties until Amlaf comes and finds your beauty.”</p>
+
+<p>“There is no knife else only my body would be here
+for your mockings this day,” said Doirenn.</p>
+
+<p>“Your caged bird of beauty croaks like a battle crow,”
+said Ruadan and laughed. “There are friendlier places
+than this place. Come, O Queen!”</p>
+
+<p>“But that book she clasps? It is a thing for fear and
+why should she covet that when these jewels are in her
+reach? Art sure it could be no spell she works against us?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, it could not be. What does a stripling maid like
+that know of books? I risk your gift in wager that she
+knows not the readings. Give me the book.”</p>
+
+<p>Doirenn did not give it to him, but she shrank against
+the wall as he approached and let go of it. He turned the
+leaves and looked at her in scorn.</p>
+
+<p>“There—” he said, and thrust it again into her hand.
+He took her other hand roughly and placed her finger on
+certain lines of the open page. “There, O young nun of
+the books, read me that!”</p>
+
+<p>But she only looked at him in horror.</p>
+
+<p>“God’s worst dastard—you!” she said.</p>
+
+<p>“What does she mean?” asked Ota. “I need not save
+her for Amlaf. I can send her to the men if she does you
+ill. Was that a curse?”</p>
+
+<p>“No curse: it is only a name the monks called me when
+I learned I was not fit for endless pen work, and endless
+prayers. Come! The wild thing will not eat while she
+has us to stare at.”</p>
+
+<p>With tenderness he helped the queen down the wooden
+ladder and drew into place the stone slab of the floor.</p>
+
+<p>Doirenn gazed after him, wide-eyed, hopeless. He did
+not turn one look toward her.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span></p>
+
+<p>Her hand was still on the page where he had thrust it
+so roughly, and her eyes rested there, and then she sank
+down among the jeweled trophies and stared incredulous.</p>
+
+<p>For there in beauty equal to the jewels about her were
+the words—“<cite>Why are ye so fearful? How is if that ye have
+no faith?</cite>”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_7" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/t.jpg" alt="T" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">The wine feast of Queen Ota was a victory feast for
+all. Gurtha was angered that it was given before
+Amlaf returned; neither had Barolf come. Early
+she went to her sleep, and said in going that if word
+should reach the ears of Ragnor that it was a wedding
+feast, she wanted not to be dragged forward for question!</p>
+
+<p>But Ragnor was far to the south, the wine of the monastery
+was old and was good, and Ota left the filling of her
+cup to Ruadan of Ardsolais of the far mountains.</p>
+
+<p>She whispered that his eyes worked magic without the
+brimming cup of gold he offered her, but he kissed the cup,
+and she emptied it, and talked her dreams of empire—and
+other dreams.</p>
+
+<p>When the feast was ended he broke jewels from the
+necklet to give her women as bribe, and himself bore the
+queen to her silken couch, and rested beside her until all
+was silence, and the last reveller of the night sunk in sleep.</p>
+
+<p>When the deep hour of the night had come, he took the
+key from the girdle of the queen—the cloak of hers, and
+the veil she wore in the sun, a dagger and a shield and
+spear he took from the place of arms, and the shoes of the
+queen he took.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span></p>
+
+<p>He listened to her breathing, and drew the dagger from
+its sheath. He knew the right thing to do, for one dagger
+thrust was small payment for the nuns of Cluain-mac-noise—but
+he thought of Doirenn and halted.</p>
+
+<p>With the queen living there could be only a jealous
+rage and a brief search for him and for the maid. But
+with the queen dead by his hand, there would be Thorgille
+and Amlaf and Barolf on the trail, and all her devoted men
+with hate for him and vengeance on the maid. Erinn
+might not be big enough to hide her in. Even from his
+own kinsmen he might get only curses and hounds on his
+track when they learned he had stolen away a maid of the
+cloisters. Another man might be given good thoughts for
+such stealing, but not Ruadan who had paid eric to Cairell,
+and had worn love gift of Ota.</p>
+
+<p>To no dun of a friend could he take her, else that house
+would be stormed and the place left waste. There was
+nothing for it but the caves of the hills until the fleet of
+Ota was gone from the waters of the Sionan.</p>
+
+<p>He thought of old forgotten sanctuaries of the early
+monks, if he could win south to the Skelligs and lay hidden,
+or reach to Arran, or hide in the grottoes of the loughs
+in Iar Connaught, carved ages ago by De Danaan magic!</p>
+
+<p>These thoughts were with him as he gathered swiftly
+the needed things, and took last reluctant look at Ota the
+queen to whom he should deal death. Grief was on him
+that it must not be done by his hand if he would save the
+scornful holy thing in the tower.</p>
+
+<p>So secure were all the guards of the outer walls, and the
+far points of vantage, that those of palace and cloister
+slept heavily and without care after the wine feast. It was
+not as an armed camp they rested, but a safe household.</p>
+
+<p>He kept to the shadow of the walls from point to point
+and reached the tower safely. No guard was there, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span>
+he unbolted the door below it in silence, and bolted it
+back of him in the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>The queen’s key served at top of the ladder and he felt
+that the girl was again crouched against the far wall.</p>
+
+<p>“Haste,” he whispered, “here are shoes and cloak. Take
+a leathern bag in which the spoils were carried and thrust
+the garments in that. We have muck and mire to wade
+through ere a boat is ours.”</p>
+
+<p>“Give me a knife that I may die here,” she made
+answer. “You are a greater thing of fear than the northmen.”</p>
+
+<p>“Geroid is waiting a call of safety; I am his voice,” he
+whispered.</p>
+
+<p>“Geroid!” and her voice was a flutter of hope. “I will
+trust his trust of you, if ... you give me a knife!”</p>
+
+<p>“It is here to your hand.”</p>
+
+<p>The dagger of the queen was passed to her in the darkness,
+ere she would take cloak, or shoes, or move a step
+toward the door.</p>
+
+<p>“Haste!” he whispered as he heard her empty the bag
+with a little click of metal on stone, “haste, for the night is
+brief.”</p>
+
+<p>She crept to the ladder but halted as his hand touched
+hers.</p>
+
+<p>“Put no touch on me,” she muttered. “If die I do, it
+will not be in handclasp with the queen’s lover.”</p>
+
+<p>At foot of the ladder he knelt and felt over the flagstone
+paving in the dark, and she heard heavy breathing as he
+worked fiercely among the rubbish and tossed aside sacks
+of grain stored there for siege. Then he found the stone
+for which he was searching and threw all his strength into
+his task.</p>
+
+<p>Doirenn felt a rush of damp air where she stood. It had
+the smell of the river in it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span></p>
+
+<p>“The way is hard and narrow,” he whispered. “Also
+it is wet under foot. Give me the bag.”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” she said, “sacred things are in it: the holy book
+and jeweled chalice, not to be touched by God’s outlaw. I
+am strong, I can follow.”</p>
+
+<p>At first it was dry, then the dampness came, then the
+water, and she was wading near to the knees but wading
+toward the open. A tangle of vines and brush was to
+push through and she saw the glimmer of the Great Star
+on the still river.</p>
+
+<p>“Steady,” he said, and moved up a space where the
+small boats were moored. A guard slept in one and
+Ruadan stood, girdle deep, beside it.</p>
+
+<p>There was enough light to see the bare throat of the
+man, and strike true that no slightest cry go out on the
+night. He twitched once or twice and lay still forever.</p>
+
+<p>Ruadan unfastened the boat and guided it back to where
+Doirenn stood, fearful and alert.</p>
+
+<p>“Get in,” he whispered, and she did so, not noting the
+Dane until she stumbled and felt warm blood on her hand.</p>
+
+<p>“What is it?” she asked, but Ruadan climbed dripping
+into the boat and took up the oars, but did not answer.</p>
+
+<p>He dared not row, lest the dip of the oars be heard.
+They drifted in the darkness, making no more sound than
+an otter swimming in the night.</p>
+
+<p>Doirenn stared at the still thing by her feet, and thence
+to the still man of horror, who was perhaps her safety,
+and wrapping herself in the cloak, she drew close the
+sacred helps in which all her trust was.</p>
+
+<p>A late and fading moon came up over the forest as
+Ruadan used the oars for speed—they had passed the last
+fire of a river guard in safety.</p>
+
+<p>The weird light showed the staring open eyes of the
+dead man at her feet.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Dead and unshriven!” she gasped in horror, “and you
+with the soul stain of blood on you!”</p>
+
+<p>“It is the first of the men for whom Bronach was washing
+grave clothes in the dream I rode to tell you of a year
+ago,” said Ruadan. “I saw his face yesterday, and knew
+he was the man. When we come to the high reeds of a
+meadow brook we will hide him there until the crows
+find him. There will be others.”</p>
+
+<p>Until the edge of the day they bore the weight of the
+body ere a rushy place was reached where a boat could
+enter leaving no broken reeds near the sweep of the river.
+Far in, where a bog would hold the body, Ruadan stripped
+him of cloak and ax, and left him to the black earth.</p>
+
+<p>“You make not a prayer,” said Doirenn in horror,
+“though well you were taught the ways of prayer.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is yours to pray,” said Ruadan. “My knife did
+murder for you on him because you would not heed the
+warning I brought you from the mountains of the south
+a summer gone.”</p>
+
+<p>“It was enchantments you spoke, and not warning. The
+enchantments of men of evil are things to fear.”</p>
+
+<p>“Truth is truth—whether holy or unhallowed,” he said
+darkly.</p>
+
+<p>“Who is Bronach?” she asked after a long silence,
+while he sought other channel where the reeds would leave
+no trace as he swept again into the Sionan.</p>
+
+<p>“She is the washer of the ford. She washes in the land
+of souls the garments of men doomed to die. For my
+house to see her means death by us or for us. In a dream
+you stood beside her in my land.”</p>
+
+<p>“The priests forbid,” she began, but he stopped her with
+a gesture.</p>
+
+<p>“Talk me no priestcraft! Bronach is older than foreign
+priesthood in Erinn.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span></p>
+
+<p>“If I held not a holy book close in my hands for soul
+help, I am thinking the sky would fall on us with all its
+stars for that saying, or the water of the Sionan run backward
+from the sea!”</p>
+
+<p>“It will do that in spite of your book,” he made answer,
+but she gave him no belief. She did not think the truth
+was with Ruadan at all.</p>
+
+<p>She watched him in dread and in disdain while he bent
+to the oars in the dawn. The boat skimmed the air like a
+bird under his tremendous strokes.</p>
+
+<p>“This is the time of the sun they will be searching,”
+he said. “One night is all we have in the lead of them,
+but many oarsmen has Ota the queen. Their course will
+be swift after they start the search.”</p>
+
+<p>No guards of the river or lake were stationed in the
+middle land between Cluain-mac-noise and Killaloe, for
+forest and meadow and island were stripped of Irish herdsmen
+and Irish homes along the Sionan. He toiled lustily,
+with the current in his favor, while the day was young
+and the way clear, knowing that cover must be found
+ere midday, and all other water journeys must be in the
+night.</p>
+
+<p>When a fair place of shelter came in their path he turned
+the boat to the mouth of a meadow brook and crept carefully
+over the black waters drained from bogs beyond.</p>
+
+<p>It was none too soon, for his breath was scarce even
+again from the labor until a man was seen by them leaning
+on a spear, moving swiftly west above the meadow
+reeds; his head was turned ever from side to side,
+searching.</p>
+
+<p>The boat and the oarsmen could not be seen because of
+the height of the swamp growths and the distance. But
+their swiftness was a wonder to view: it would be a good
+horse to be beating it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span></p>
+
+<p>But they swept out of sight, and Ruadan knew the
+lough toward the sea was now a place of danger.</p>
+
+<p>“They have no trail, and that is a good help,” he said.
+“Now while the sun shines there is only the woods for us,
+and it may be berries or roots for food.”</p>
+
+<p>Far he went inland where the boat was lifted over shallows
+into a little still lough under shadow of the wood.</p>
+
+<p>“’Twill serve,” he said. “Nothing but the wild cattle
+may be coming, and it is a hiding place.”</p>
+
+<p>He left her to get out as she might and wade with wet
+feet in the sedgy marge. Her looks at him were ill and
+fearful, and she clutched to her the bag in which the sacred
+helps were borne.</p>
+
+<p>“I have no liking for this place,” she said, “and it will
+not be resting under birchtrees we will find Geroid.”</p>
+
+<p>Ruadan made no answer. The labor had been to the
+limit of strength. He drank of the cool water and cast
+himself on the turf. She frowned at the discourtesy.</p>
+
+<p>“Where is Geroid, O Queen’s Lover?” she asked. “It
+is to him I am going.”</p>
+
+<p>He looked long at her, darkly frowning. He had killed
+a man for her, and was risking life for her, yet she had no
+thought for a creature of earth, but thought only of that
+anchorite who had turned to prayer and a bed of stone,
+and would not look in her deep, seeking eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“By the Elements! It is to your Geroid you shall go,”
+he swore roughly. “My thought is that he is in his glory
+without you, but that is nothing. Though we circle Erinn
+to find the way to him, it is to Geroid you will go! Sorrow
+on the night you called for help and I was the fool to
+answer.”</p>
+
+<p>She let fall the leathern bag and sank down beside it—her
+eyes wide in wonder.</p>
+
+<p>“How are you knowing that—and you an evil man in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span>
+an evil world? I did send the call. On my knees I made
+the prayer that holy Saint Kieran might help the call go
+out to some soul beyond the walls—and you—<em>you</em>—”</p>
+
+<p>“I heard it in my sleep and knew your voice though I
+had only heard it when weighted heavy with hate. Also
+I followed it.”</p>
+
+<p>She brooded over that long, and drew the book to her.</p>
+
+<p>“You followed Ota the queen,” she said at last, “and
+you fled in the night with her jewels on you lest her kinsmen
+return and spear you to the ground.”</p>
+
+<p>“You shall go to your Geroid,” he muttered, and got up
+and walked away.</p>
+
+<p>So wearied was she that she fell into sleep there in that
+warm hour when the wind and the bees and birds all
+swept drowsily through the low green branches. So thick
+were they that a dusk was on the turf, though beyond their
+shadow the yellow light of sun was a glory.</p>
+
+<p>It was beyond he had gone, and in her sleep she thought
+he had gone over some edge of the world where she could
+not find him. She woke with a moan of fear.</p>
+
+<p>She lay there thrilled by a sort of terror that she had
+wanted him—it was a thing she could not understand,
+and puzzling things angered her. That thought of evil
+enchantments of his would not go away.</p>
+
+<p>Then, while she framed a prayer against magic and
+druid spells, a sweet smell came to her, so close she
+thought it was part of a dream.</p>
+
+<p>But it was a better thing, for fresh sweet blackberries
+were heaped beside her, and a little apart Ruadan sat with
+his back to her, eating.</p>
+
+<p>She had not known how hungry she was until she tasted
+the melting sweetness of them, and then she determined
+that, on the rest of the way, she would pick her own
+berries—there was anger on her that she had not done it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span></p>
+
+<p>As she moved away to look for more, he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>“You are not to go from this shadow,” he said. “Cattle
+are beyond, and a hut of a herder; we have far to go, and
+meat will be good to have. I am going in a circle till I
+come to them, that no track will seem to come from here,
+for this must be the hiding place of you.”</p>
+
+<p>“And if foreign men are there? If they take you—if I
+am lost alone in this place where you bring me?”</p>
+
+<p>“It is not in this place you will be lost. In the dream I
+saw you to the west, and that place is yet to find.”</p>
+
+<p>No more than that he said, and no look did he give to
+see if it was well or ill she liked it.</p>
+
+<p>She crept back to the birchtree shadow, and watched
+him go, and she held the book with its precious work and
+precious words close to her bosom, and was making
+prayers on it—the prayers of Phadraig the Saint against
+enchantments.</p>
+
+<p>With the eyes of her closed she went over the prayers
+and over them again, and the sun was in the very center
+of the sky. Two wood doves came close and spoke their
+loves sweetly in a rowan bush near, and listening to them
+was like listening to the silver string of the magic harp of
+the god of music, for the silver string has the wood music
+of sleep in it.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was low to the edge of the forest trees and
+was red as a signal fire of danger when she woke. The
+doves were flown away, and the world was very still
+about her.</p>
+
+<p>He had not come back, and she felt fear at the wide
+aloneness of the deep forest and the reedy marge of the
+wide lough; alone she could not make her way even to the
+flowing Sionan or Dearg below.</p>
+
+<p>She looked the way he had gone, and listened for faintest
+sound of his step until every droning bee set her heart<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span>
+to thump. When she could bear it no longer, she looked
+at her knife’s edge, tied the leathern bag of the sacred
+things to her girdle, and looking with care to all things by
+which the return way might be found, she ran with swift
+feet to the last point from which he had vanished in the
+green.</p>
+
+<p>No living thing was in sight, and she went on more
+slowly. There was a hill to climb, and from that height
+she had hope to see the cattle toward which he had gone.
+On the high point of the hill there was a circle of stones,
+and two with strange spiral carvings. These magic places
+of the old gods had curious legends in Meath, and she
+drew close to her the holy things of the altar as she stood
+in the shadow of the great stone to look westward over
+the plain.</p>
+
+<p>The herds were there, but they were only far moving
+specks, no more size to them than birds. But among them,
+or near them, she could see no man.</p>
+
+<p>But the hut of stone and timber at the edge of a wood
+she did see, and sat long in the shadow of the huge stone
+watching for a sign of any living thing—and no sign was
+there.</p>
+
+<p>Then she crept through fern and gorse at the edge of the
+land where the cattle fed, and dragged herself along the
+brink of a dark wooded glen, and the hut was at the wall
+of that glen, and the look from there was a wide look for
+the herding.</p>
+
+<p>A sound came to her, and her thought was that her
+heartbeat was loud in her ears from the fear of the still,
+strange place. And she crept more close and knew it was
+not her own heart, for it was a man breathing, and the
+breath was a rattle in the throat.</p>
+
+<p>Through a chink in the hut she could see the man, and
+him a stranger and a great dog dead near him. The man<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span>
+was stained with blood and was looking with no good
+looks at something her eyes could not see.</p>
+
+<p>He was reaching for a long knife with blood on it—far
+from him it had fallen—and there was a stagger to every
+movement he made, for great weakness was on him.</p>
+
+<p>Yet he watched one way whilst he crept to the knife and
+fell as if dying, yet roused himself to creep again a little
+ways.</p>
+
+<p>The blood of Doirenn went cold from that look of hate
+on him, and then blazed keen and hot to learn why the
+knife was coveted even in the face of death.</p>
+
+<p>With the dagger of Ota the queen unsheathed in her
+hand, she crept to the low door, and the low sun of the
+west pierced to the dark corner where Ruadan lay. She
+could see no movement of him, yet she knew he was not
+dead, for if it had been so, the foreign man would not reach
+thus for the knife, or creep, dying himself, on a wounded
+foe.</p>
+
+<p>She had no plan of attack, yet as he grasped the knife
+and lifted it over the body of Ruadan, she leaped through
+the door, and her dagger struck deep and true in the neck
+of the stranger.</p>
+
+<p>He gurgled, choked, and lay still.</p>
+
+<p>She crept back to the wall and sat there, wild-eyed and
+fearful. She had not meant to do the thing before her: to
+strike the knife from him had been her thought. But the
+right hand of her had done its own task despite any
+thought of hers.</p>
+
+<p>The lowering sun slanted over his dead face, filling her
+with horror at the moving shadows of it. Her teeth chattered
+with chill at the dead man and dog, and at the other
+man whose breath she saw lifting ever so little the lacings
+of his garment.</p>
+
+<p>It was that piteous little breath, no deeper than of a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span>
+child in arms, by which she was urged at the last to draw
+near. She felt frozen, and the leathern bag with the sacred
+helps lay without the portal, but without that help, and in
+forgetfulness of prayer, she crept forward.</p>
+
+<p>He lay in a pool of blood, black and stiff. His shoulder
+bore a deep gash, and the red tide yet came faintly at each
+breath. A long slant of a blade had creased his brow and
+his face shone gray white where the dark smear had not
+touched it. It all seemed to have chanced a long time
+before.</p>
+
+<p>That thought coming to her, she went over where the
+dog lay and touched it; stiff it was and cold.... While
+she had slept in drowsy rest under the birchtree Ruadan
+had fought out a battle of fierceness with the huge foreign
+man and the dog stretched there as big as a calf. The two
+men had all but killed each other. Each had thought his
+enemy gone out of life ere he gave way to weakness or
+swoon, and the foreign man had wakened first.</p>
+
+<p>Terror went from her suddenly when the mystery of it
+went. There was left only a wounded man for her care,
+and she knelt beside him and loosened the lacings of his
+garment as she had seen the white fingers of the queen
+unlace it in the tower.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_7" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/t.jpg" alt="T" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">The sun set, and the other suns rose ere he wakened
+to knowledge. Troubled phantoms of blood and
+death were with him in his weakness, and a strange
+presence he did not know.</p>
+
+<p>It was in a rosy dawn he wakened to know the walls,
+and how he had first found them, but the strange presence<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span>
+was like mist of the seafoam—ever about to take form
+in his mind, and ever fading again.</p>
+
+<p>And out of that fog of dreams and phantoms of carnage
+a vision of Paradise came to him.</p>
+
+<p>It was perhaps the slant of the sun through the mists of
+the morning by which the magical thing was wrought, but
+where the sun-kissed green had been seen through the
+portal, there was at once a glory of gold beyond any glory
+of saint told him in the teachings. He looked at her and
+thought of Brighde, the ever young, when bondmaid to her
+druid master, bearing cups and bowls of common things
+made holy by touch of her hands.</p>
+
+<p>For she stood there with the sun making a halo of her
+red-gold hair, and in her two hands was held a golden
+chalice of richest handicraft, set with the thirteen flashing
+stones of beauty.</p>
+
+<p>The chalice was brimming with foam of new milk, and
+when she saw his eyes, wide open, she stood silent, waiting,
+but the look in her eyes was the look of Brighde, ever
+the giver, the serving-maid to whom the angels sang.</p>
+
+<p>“You are a dream, and not truth,” he muttered. “You
+are Brighde the goddess; you are the fiery arrow of radiance
+in hearts of men; you are Love, and you are Knowledge.
+When the priests could not stamp you out, they
+made a saint of your name to hold the worship of you.
+You are the vision always beyond a soul—you are only a
+dream, and I could wish you truth.”</p>
+
+<p>“The warm milk is true as if in a wooden bowl instead
+of a golden chalice,” she said. “Two days it has been your
+food, and has served you fairly.”</p>
+
+<p>He drank it as a gift of God, and stared at her.</p>
+
+<p>“And it is a vision come true,” he said. “Two days?
+And I not alone here. There were others—a dog and a
+man I killed.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span></p>
+
+<p>“They were dragged and rolled over the cliff of the
+glen. There was no other way,” she said.</p>
+
+<p>“And this?” he asked, pointing to the mass of soothing
+poultice on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>“It is anemone, a flower of healing. I but gathered it and
+bruised the leaves. The work of that was nothing. The
+only task of fear was to hold you from wandering. Too
+restless were you for the boat and the road of the Sionan.”</p>
+
+<p>“And you did it? I dreamed of your hands touching
+me; I thought it a dream of Brighde who was goddess
+and then saint.”</p>
+
+<p>He went asleep again almost as he spoke, for the weakness
+was yet on him.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a_7" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/w.jpg" alt="W" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">When he wakened his thoughts were more steady,
+and he asked if the golden chalice had been a
+thing of dreaming.</p>
+
+<p>“I took it from sacrilege in the tower,” she confessed.
+“It was the cup of sacrament, and not to be left to pagans
+if my life could give it guard.”</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her long, with thoughts of that day in the
+tower, and asked where her dagger was.</p>
+
+<p>“It is no longer with me—I have taken instead the one
+of the herder.”</p>
+
+<p>“The other had sharp slimness and value of gold and
+jeweled hilt.”</p>
+
+<p>“This, with the horn of a deer for handle, is a cleaner
+thing.”</p>
+
+<p>He thought she meant cleaner than a knife touched by
+the hand of Ota, and his well hand went up to his neck<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span>
+where the necklet rested—the gold of it had saved him a
+death stroke of the herder.</p>
+
+<p>“This necklet has served its task,” he said. “It can take
+its place with the other spoils saved by you.”</p>
+
+<p>“It has no place among them,” answered Doirenn coldly.
+“I saved only holy things from sacrilege.”</p>
+
+<p>And he saw by that he had said the wrong thing, for she
+was no longer the Brighde of tender service—she was a
+gold-crowned judge who looked down from a far height.</p>
+
+<p>He held in his memory the wordy condemnation of the
+priests, and of Ronan the abbot, but it was easier to
+endure their revilings than her frozen look when she
+remembered the love gift and caressings of Ota the queen.</p>
+
+<p>“It is to your Geroid you shall go,” he said, and looked
+at her darkly, and went out from the hut of the herder,
+though the blue of the sky and green of the turf were as
+one before his eyes because of the weakness on him.</p>
+
+<p>It was better to be in the woods alone with his tranced
+vision of Brighde, than to face the cold scorn of the maid
+who had seen the white hands of Ota on his throat.</p>
+
+<p>But despite the look, or the word of scorn for him,
+Doirenn was not at ease if he was long out of her sight.
+Never had she outgrown the fear of what she had felt at
+sight of the great dead dog and the dying foreign man
+crawling for the knife.</p>
+
+<p>There was trouble on her for the thing she had done,
+and no holy man anywhere to take her confession and
+lighten her mind. Prayer she could make, and did—but
+for the sending of an unshriven soul to God there was no
+comfort, and her thoughts had no sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes there was terror on her because she could no
+longer judge Ruadan for the stark body at her feet in that
+first awesome night. From the rath of Fethna to the garden
+of the nuns at Cluain-mac-noise had been all the world<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span>
+known to her. Even in the raid of the Danes on her
+father’s house, when the black smoke of burnings had left
+her without roof of her own, or kindred of her own, she
+had been borne to safety before the battle.</p>
+
+<p>Of the foreign men who were pagans she thought no
+more than of wolves in a pack leaving death on their path,
+but for Ruadan, called evil, yet with knowledge of godly
+things, she could find no gentle excuse—until her own
+hand had the secret stain of blood on it!</p>
+
+<p>By that was she made kindred in evil to him, and the
+shining beauty of her was under shadow from the thought.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_8" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/a.jpg" alt="A" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">As strength came back and the wound healed, he had
+curious looks at her, ever with the book of amber
+and pearl of sea on the cover. But when he spoke
+of it she frowned her reproof.</p>
+
+<p>“It is holy, and it is a safe charm to lead me out of the
+wilderness.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yet is it made by the hand of a man,” he said.</p>
+
+<p>“How should you be knowing that?” she asked. “It is
+knowledge not for sinful men. My own thought is that
+Saint Kieran sent an angel to do the words of this, it may
+be that a man made the cover.”</p>
+
+<p>“It may be,” he said. “May the charm of it lead you
+safely, for another night we leave this place. I am able.
+Even Dermot and Grania never hid so long on the way to
+happiness as we here.”</p>
+
+<p>“There is a difference,” she said, and she blazed a rose
+red at thought of Grania’s love.</p>
+
+<p>“There is,” he agreed. “Dermot had to his aid friends<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span>
+and gods. The pagan gods are driven out by christian
+bells and there is only the wilderness for us with that
+white cat on the trail. I must find hiding for you and leave
+you there and gather men of the west to serve as guard.”</p>
+
+<p>“I will not be left again,” she said. “To be left behind
+in darkling wood, or dreary cave, gives me more fear than
+to be on the way.”</p>
+
+<p>She drove in a young cow and braided a rope of vines
+to hold her for the killing that food might be theirs on the
+way, for their journey along the shores of Lough Dearg
+must be in the nights, and all movement in light of the sun
+was danger.</p>
+
+<p>With his one well hand and her two they managed the
+killing, but she turned away her head because the knife
+brought her thought of the dead foreign man under the cliff.</p>
+
+<p>Ruadan went through the russet fern and the berry
+vines seeking the silky inner bark of a dead tree for the
+spark of flint and steel, and when he found it he wandered
+on to the circle of stones to sharpen spear and knife on the
+ancient altar. When he made his way back he saw a
+strange thing, for the glen below the cliff was plain before
+him, and he stood very still as if fearing the ancient gods
+had heard his speech of their fading away. There was a
+glitter of gold and a jewel among the ferns below him, and
+it was not a place for the seeking of such wealth.</p>
+
+<p>He crept forward, and saw the dog and the man who lay
+face downward as he had been rolled from the cliff. And
+it was in the neck of the man the jeweled dagger had been
+thrust deep. The sun shone on it through a rift in the
+boughs above, and set it all aglitter.</p>
+
+<p>It was the knife of Doirenn, and so deep had it struck
+that it took a strong hand to draw it out. Away from
+there he cleansed it in the earth, and washed it all in a
+shadowed rill, and brooded over it in a maze of wonder.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span></p>
+
+<p>A woman of frankness like Ota the queen he could know
+the thoughts of. She said the thing she wanted and took
+it. If battle had to be waged to gain it, that battle she
+fought like a man and took her victory prize, or put her
+own foot on the neck of an enemy.</p>
+
+<p>But this thing of radiant scorn and icy piety who thrust
+her knife deep and went to prayer was a different breed.
+He would not have thought her hand strong enough for
+that stroke. The edge was turned where it grazed a bone.</p>
+
+<p>So he carried her secret—and with it the mystery of her.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_8" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/a.jpg" alt="A" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">As they could, they went from the hut of hiding and
+went seaward in the nights through the great lough,
+and hid in forest or swamp meadows or inlands at
+dawn, until the churning, quick current was reached, and
+there the boat was hidden, and cooked meat stored with
+the altar jewels in the leathern bag, and they went afoot
+through dusk of the deep wood, or crept, hidden, through
+lush grasses of wide meadows.</p>
+
+<p>At times, afar off, they saw men with cattle on the hillsides,
+and a boat of courier speeding down the rapids.
+Once a warrior’s boat passed beneath a cliff where they
+lay hidden, and glittering shields were bright in the
+sun.</p>
+
+<p>“Look well,” said Ruadan, “for it is Amlaf, the prince,
+who is on your trail. A strong man is Amlaf, with king
+and queen for his kinsfolk. It may be he could make you
+queen of Erinn by a lucky turn, for Turgesius—which is
+Latin for Thorgille—has great tribute, is not young, and
+it is said by all that the threat in the night sky is the ‘star<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span>
+of the enemy’; as it grows strong—will grow the strength
+of the Dane. If gods fight against it, where is the refuge
+of Erinn?”</p>
+
+<p>She looked as bidden, and the man in the boat was
+slender and tawny, with long tresses of pale silk waving
+in the soft air. Jeweled he was in great beauty, and his
+armor was of white bronze. The blue-green of his eyes
+was like the glint of his spear-heads, and the cloth of his
+garment was broidered with wires of pale gold.</p>
+
+<p>“He is as beautiful as your lover, the queen,” said
+Doirenn in scorn, “but not so strong. He will hold no
+strong star in the sky.”</p>
+
+<p>Ruadan looked at her in gloom at the mocking, and after
+a little he laughed.</p>
+
+<p>“That naming of her leaves no scar on me,” he said.
+“But ‘queen’s lover’ suits me ill.”</p>
+
+<p>“Is it so?” asked Doirenn staring after the warboat
+with its deft oarsman. “Then again are you kin to Dermot
+who was not the lover but the many times loved.”</p>
+
+<p>He took the mocking blackly enough.</p>
+
+<p>“Sorrow is mine that, like Dermot, I have no bread
+unbroken to leave on the road for them that trail us,” he
+said. “And you to your Geroid!”</p>
+
+<p>But she knew not the meaning of the words of broken
+bread, and he saw that, and the flame of his anger
+went out.</p>
+
+<p>“It is ill enough to pass time in rages when our time on
+this earth may be ending,” he said. “That man below is
+a strong prince with a strong army at the shore. Horses
+and cattle are theirs and one spearsman in every Irish
+house of Thomond. No one king of Erinn commands
+tribute today like to the tribute of Turgesius and of Ota.
+Their swarms are here like bees on honey, and no roof is
+ours for safety. The caves of Iar Connaught are safe if we<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span>
+can reach them, with your monk to aid. You may have
+your fill of life in a cloistered cell ere the day I can guard
+you to safety.”</p>
+
+<p>“And if—if Geroid is not to be found? And if all roads
+are closed?”</p>
+
+<p>“Geroid will be found if he is left alive. These hills
+were once hunting ground for me, and the cells of Senan’s
+men were known as my own mountains.”</p>
+
+<p>“And, if he is not left alive?”</p>
+
+<p>“Of that we will not speak. If Amlaf, or if Ota, trap
+us in their wide net, you will die first, so make your
+prayers.”</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him long, and the shadow on his face
+caused her wonder, for she had heard all evil of him but
+never that he was of faint heart.</p>
+
+<p>“Is it so far to your own domains?” she asked, and
+never before had she asked of home or kindred or life
+of his.</p>
+
+<p>“It is not far as the ravens fly, but my clan have their
+rages against me. After that judgment of cattle, not one
+would take spear for a maid I would hide on Ardsolais.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is said you have good will of Niall the king. How
+can the friend of a king be without help?”</p>
+
+<p>“The Lady Luaine is of the clan of his mother, and the
+grace of a king can grow cold.”</p>
+
+<p>“Like enough,” said Doirenn, “she told them of your
+enchantments.”</p>
+
+<p>“Like enough,” agreed Ruadan, and there was laughter
+in his eyes. “A woman must ever have ready some excuse
+of magic. Is it enchantment you are thinking?”</p>
+
+<p>“What else to think when you are dark and not handsome?
+Wives of men put jewels on you and follow where
+you go. How is that but by enchantings?”</p>
+
+<p>“How indeed?” asked Ruadan. “And since you are<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span>
+knowing that, it is a strange brave heart that is in you to
+drink from the same cup with me.”</p>
+
+<p>“The cup is holy and is to go with Geroid into sanctuary,
+and the book with me is holy. That is my strength.”</p>
+
+<p>“Since it is so I would ask concerning this godly Geroid
+to whose sanctity you would trust them. Since my life is
+too evil for your christian grace, what is the saintly enchantment
+of him, that a well-favored maid would cover
+herself with a veil because he chose to go walking out of
+her life?”</p>
+
+<p>“Enchantments are evil, and he was never evil,” said
+Doirenn. “He made beauteous verses and told me his
+love in them sweetly. He gave me kind kiss at parting,
+and only to God would he give himself rather than to me.
+No payer of cattle was he, and—no love of a pagan
+queen!”</p>
+
+<p>“It may be so,” said Ruadan. “And when was this
+high loving of his and of yours?”</p>
+
+<p>“There is no hurt to him in making speech of that,”
+she answered, “and it may bear its lesson to you. He had
+seven and ten years to his age, and three less to mine.”</p>
+
+<p>Ruadan stared, and then strove to seem grave, yet were
+his eyes full of laughter and she saw it.</p>
+
+<p>“Yet he could love and he did!” she made protest
+angrily. “Tablets were sent to me often and his verses
+on them told me that.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ay, his verses!” said Ruadan. “From the dull days of
+schooling he would have some fair thing to hear his calfloves,
+and you were the most gracious! Child, at that age
+I was writing verse to Venus and Brighde, and sad at heart
+for the ghost of fair Dierdre who loved so well! All the
+world is turned to love at that age—it is the schooling
+of hearts.”</p>
+
+<p>“I alone was his Venus and his Brighde and his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span>
+Dierdre,” she said and drew back in proud anger at his
+jesting. “How could you, queen’s lover and God’s Dastard,
+read that lesson of loving, or know holiness of such
+writings?”</p>
+
+<p>Her anger was like a lash, and almost it whipped him
+into turning the pages of her holy book and show the writing
+of his own name there cunningly twined with the
+interlaced scrolls of the last page. But he knew it was not
+easy to believe that his other days had been filled by that
+beauty of line and color. It would be to her but another
+proof of enchantment if he should show it her, as he
+might.</p>
+
+<p>And he put aside the thought for another reason: it
+would take from her the only thing to which she trusted
+as a link with her saints.</p>
+
+<p>“Time is a good story-teller,” he said, and his smile
+was grim enough. “On a day to come you may know the
+weight of your words. Come, the hunter who seeks you
+is gone beyond sight, and we can cover much ground ere
+the dark comes down.”</p>
+
+<p>She obeyed him in silence—half shamed because of her
+anger and his quietness.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a_8" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/s.jpg" alt="S" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">She still bore the precious book, making prayer on
+it through all the terrible ways they trod, but he
+bore the leathern bag in which the food and cup
+and jewels were safe. It was strange to her, but
+after she had found him wounded and given him drink
+from the cup, she no longer thought so deeply of
+his evil repute, and since the herder went over the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span>
+cliff with her dagger she felt less bitter for the other sins
+on his soul. But when she found herself thinking kindly
+of him as a human she grew angry with herself and went
+to her prayers.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_9" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/a.jpg" alt="A" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">All of a day did Ruadan of Ardsolais and Doirenn na
+Marvan lay in hiding of the hills where the path
+to the high cell of Saint Senan could be seen through
+the branches. Far beyond was the smoke of the northmen’s
+fires, and footmen and men on horseback were seen
+to cross open spaces. One rider, on a steed of shining
+black, had much of glittering gear and waving flaxen hair—it
+was Amlaf.</p>
+
+<p>“He has had runners in these hills. See, they keep up
+their stride until report is made, when they fall anywhere
+for rest. It is well we hid long in the herder’s hut. Time
+was given them to make wide their search; it is over for
+this place, and that is well for us.”</p>
+
+<p>Yet, he watched long for slightest sign ere he crept
+through the tall fern and alder and young oak on the hillside.
+On the ancient path in the stone to the cell above
+he dared not venture until the turn of the hill was reached,
+and no human thing in sight.</p>
+
+<p>Like creeping wild things of the wilderness, they thus
+made their way beneath the leafy coat of green until the
+steep path was reached, and it in the gray stone cliff
+narrow and winding and curving the hill above the
+lough.</p>
+
+<p>Then Ruadan looked at her with the look of parting.</p>
+
+<p>“It is here I must hide you until I go up to that place,”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span>
+he said. “You see the steepness and the danger. This is
+the place to wait where the leaves are thick.”</p>
+
+<p>Doirenn made appeal to go, but he would not hear. Then
+she kissed the cup from which they had drunk, and
+fastened close the leathern bag into which she had placed
+all sacred things but the book.</p>
+
+<p>“Take these holy things as warrant to a holy man,”
+she said, “lest evil come to you for intrusion on his pious
+thoughts.”</p>
+
+<p>“And it is not evil you are wishing me then?” he asked,
+and looked on her steadily, but her eyes turned elsewhere,
+and rose color flushed in her pale face.</p>
+
+<p>“I would not that you die in your sins,” she made
+answer, and his smile had weary bitterness as she
+spoke.</p>
+
+<p>“A hundred deaths of dread has a man died for you
+those summer days,” he said. “Yet that man breathes
+human breath. The sacred things I will bear as you bid,
+lest I could not carry them, and you also, on the second
+journey—if I find your saint waiting you!”</p>
+
+<p>“And if your footing should not prove sure, and if death
+should wait you on the rocks below?”</p>
+
+<p>He stood still above her, looking down where she knelt
+with the book against her breast.</p>
+
+<p>“Here is my answer to you,” he said, and tossed her his
+dagger. “That is the better part of Ruadan. Give the
+blade deep to drink if the eyes of Amlaf, or of Ota the
+queen, look on you again.”</p>
+
+<p>“And you?” she whispered, “it leaves you without a
+blade for danger.”</p>
+
+<p>“Not so, O Doirenn,” he said; “I have a dearer thing.”
+And he showed her the jeweled hilt of her blade of death.</p>
+
+<p>She went white and covered her face, and he moved
+carefully along the narrow ledge with his burden and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span>
+shield and spear, up and up until he noted birds fly out
+from nests in the crannies far below. Then a sharp turn
+came in the rock, and the cell sanctified by holy men for
+two centuries was the end of the narrow way.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_9" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/a.jpg" alt="A" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">A man knelt there by the stone trough which served as
+bed, and no other thing was there but a cauldron on
+dead ashes, and cup and bowl of wood. Some moss
+was heaped in a corner, and birds’ eggs were in the bowl.</p>
+
+<p>“God’s blessing on the home,” said Ruadan in courtesy,
+but the kneeling man whirled in terror.</p>
+
+<p>“Why have you come again? And why do you now
+speak in clear Latin and not before?” he asked, and his
+voice was high and shrill like that of an angry woman—much
+more like a woman even than was the deep voice of
+Doirenn.</p>
+
+<p>“I am come because that is my task,” said Ruadan. “If
+you are Geroid of Cluain-mac-noise, I have gift and message
+for you, and I am Ruadan of Ardsolais.”</p>
+
+<p>The monk cried out in horror, and waved him away.</p>
+
+<p>“Man of blood and traffic in evil!” he said. “Begone
+from this place of prayer. Twice come the Danes here in
+search, with tales of your murders, and your stealing of
+maids. If they find you here it will be evil to me. Get
+you gone!”</p>
+
+<p>“A man of blood I have been, and may be,” said
+Ruadan, looking in the pale, narrow face and the eyes of
+terror. “But I am also a keeper of sacred things, and
+it is your task as a man to help me in the guarding of
+them.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span></p>
+
+<p>“You! You were the outcast—God’s Dastard—the
+youth of holy training who threw off the robe for temptings
+of the world,” said the monk, and he moved the width
+of the cell away and spread out his thin hands as a wall,
+lest Ruadan move a step nearer. “Go back to the world
+and bring not your evil here where holiness has lived—here,
+where in prayer I wait the crown of sanctity and
+the wings of angels in Paradise!”</p>
+
+<p>“I will go back when I have done my task. I bring
+here gold vessels of the altar that you may know my
+intent, and below a more precious thing waits for sanctuary—it
+is the maid they told you I stole away—it is
+Doirenn, daughter of Marvan. It is a body and soul to be
+saved by you, and by me.”</p>
+
+<p>But Geroid fell groveling beside the stone couch, waving
+his hands in wild protest.</p>
+
+<p>“Take your evils from this place,” he cried out. “Have
+I fought the demons of woman-temptings for naught?
+Seven times seven days in the spring of the year did I
+pray in water of ice to my armpits. Nine times nine
+prayers have I likewise made to that end, for youth is still
+on me! Is it from the King of Hell you are come to
+bring temptings of women who breed the evils of carnal
+loves?”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a_9" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/r.jpg" alt="R" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Ruadan stared at him as at a wild dog he would
+throttle, and then let fall the sack, looking at the
+wasted form and the wild eyes. He tried to see
+where her human youth of the verses was hidden behind
+the grievous mask, and could not.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span></p>
+
+<p>“I need teaching to tell me that love is of Hell,” he said.
+“In a swoon of half death in a forest I had a vision of
+love with a difference. It was a radiant love, bearing
+healing for human ills—yes-and it shrank not from
+soiled hands, or blood-stained hands, in the service—that
+was my vision. You, monk that you are, have had more
+than vision: As children, Doirenn and you have gone with
+clasped hands and no wall between you. She has heart-love
+for the remembering of that time and she has come
+the hard way for your help above all men. You look not
+so much to me, but the priests tell us you are made
+in God’s image. No god of a man can be a coward,
+and we may have enemies to overcome ere we get her
+to safety, but I am here to help, and that is my
+message.”</p>
+
+<p>“Go you hence with your sacrilege. Holiness does no
+battle,” said Geroid wildly. “Go you hence to your
+bloody wars for women and cattle and the things of the
+world. Leave me in peace with my God, and the saving
+of my soul.”</p>
+
+<p>Ruadan listened and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>“To save your own soul? By the Elements! I have
+belief in no man, and in no god of a man who hides in
+safe sanctuary when white innocence flees from the ravisher.
+To sanctuary here has come Doirenn who deems
+you holy. If you cast her out, she has only Ruadan
+as safety. And all Erinn can tell you Ruadan boasts no
+holiness.”</p>
+
+<p>“Get you gone! Your ways are bloody and fearful and
+your ways are evil.”</p>
+
+<p>“Not less evil than the weight of my hand on you if you
+hearken not,” said Ruadan darkly. “Two holy gifts have
+I borne to you through much danger, for the cell of a monk
+would seem best hiding place. One is this,” and he emptied<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span>
+on the floor of the cell the gold and gem-set things of the
+altar, “the other is a human soul in a fair body, which, O
+praying monk, is the holier thing for your shelter. This
+is the time for the choice of a man.”</p>
+
+<p>The monk lifted the jeweled chalice and gloated over
+the golden monstrance with each ray of the sun set in
+crimson and rose and yellow gem.</p>
+
+<p>“The man who wrought this work had help of the
+angels of God,” he whispered, and made the sacred sign
+as he lifted each treasure.</p>
+
+<p>“What of the handiwork of angels in the creation of
+the stray maid of warm life, and music of voice and eyes
+of pureness?” asked Ruadan. “Look at this hand of mine.
+It has been a craftman’s hand in the work you adore there;
+it has been a bloody hand in the work you hide from here,
+the work of the world! It is a strong hand and not yet a
+conquered hand. Yet it shakes, as my soul shakes at
+thought of that fair creation when God spoke Doirenn
+into this world of ours. Make your choice of the holier
+thing, O monk she deems holy! This is the time for
+your choice as a man—and by your choice and hers,
+Ruadan abides.”</p>
+
+<p>“Get you gone from holy ground with your sacrilege
+of creation and Hell’s vision of carnal loves!” screamed
+Geroid, and held the monstrance of red gold between his
+own body and Ruadan. “The things of holy altars I will
+hold at God’s will, but name no name of woman in the ears
+of God’s chosen—they drive out the music of angels’
+wings!”</p>
+
+<p>Then a cry came to them—the cry of a woman, and
+close, and Geroid fell on his knees in terror, and gathered
+close the glittering jewels, and Ruadan unslung the short
+spear from his back.</p>
+
+<p>“It is the time for the choice of a man,” he said, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span>
+sped as a cat along the narrow path to the turn where he
+had last looked down on her.</p>
+
+<p>But a man on a black stallion waited there instead, and
+the face was the face of Amlaf, brother of Ota the queen!</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_10" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/h.jpg" alt="H" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">He looked up and laughed, and the thing he laughed at
+was Doirenn, who stood on the narrow ledge waiting
+Ruadan, and in her hand was his dagger.</p>
+
+<p>“You were so keen for his choosing that your heart
+could not wait that I save your feet this hardship?” said
+Ruadan, darkly mocking.</p>
+
+<p>And the monk in the cave, and the prince on the black
+stallion, were as far from them both as was fear, when she
+looked in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“I followed, O Ruadan, lest he do you harm for your
+life as a man of sin. And I listened, O Ruadan, that your
+dagger might in truth drink deep if you made me his portion—and
+you going elsewhere,” and his dagger was held
+with the book, in love, against her breast.</p>
+
+<p>“To my heart!” he said, and circled her with his arm,
+and she was borne along the path by him while his eyes
+searched below for glitter of spears or followers of the
+prince.</p>
+
+<p>Amlaf fitted an arrow to his bow and waited the turn
+where Ruadan would be fair target without hurt to the
+coveted maid of beauty.</p>
+
+<p>But the hand of Ruadan, thrilled by the love of her, was
+strong and steady. His spear had been sharpened at the
+altar place of the old gods, and the cast of it took Amlaf
+in the throat as he looked up laughing. After that he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span>
+laughed no more on earth but went to his own Norse gods
+of the summer sailors.</p>
+
+<p>Ruadan stripped him of his warrior garb, and weighted
+the body with stone, and cast it in the waters of Lough
+Dearg, while Doirenn stood on the shore holding the quivering
+steed, alert at the presence of Death.</p>
+
+<p>Ruadan looked about him, and looked at the girl, whose
+face was a drooping flower, and whose hair was a golden
+veil.</p>
+
+<p>“Look up, O Doirenn,” said Ruadan, “for this is the
+end of the dream! This is the shore on which I saw you
+with Bronach—washer of raiment for the dead. Beyond
+this all is dark to me on the road.”</p>
+
+<p>“Not so,” she said. “We have walked together through
+the nights of the evil star, but now the light is ours.”</p>
+
+<p>He caught her to him, and kissed and mocked her.</p>
+
+<p>“This is all your prayers and your glittering book served
+you against enchantings,” he said.</p>
+
+<p>“They served me well,” she made answer staunchly.
+“In the sickness of the wound I prayed for your life.
+Here, where you left me, I prayed that Geroid might take
+into sanctuary the altar jewels but leave me free for always
+to walk with you.”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_10" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/a.jpg" alt="A" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Among the Danes, that wood by Lough Dearg gained
+weird tales of Irish enchantings, and the reason
+was that Amlaf the prince had ridden along the
+marge for his pleasure one summer day, and never came
+again into the sight of mortals.</p>
+
+<p>Belief it was in these enchantings and in the powers<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span>
+of the mystic books of Christ’s men that went far to
+lead the invaders, also by this time weary of their raiding,
+back to their own shores.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/f.jpg" alt="F" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Far north in Connaught a youth in dress of the northmen
+was seen with Ruadan riding a black steed with
+royal chains of silver in his furnishings. The
+cropped hair of the youth was the color of the sun, and
+Latin was his only speech. He was named Angus and
+called a prince of the foreigners, but heart-companion to
+Ruadan. Not while Ota and Turgesius held sway in Deasmond
+did Ruadan go south out of Connaught, or let the
+youth see the lands of the south.</p>
+
+<p>And when he went again into his own domain of
+Ardsolais a woman of mystery rode beside him, and for
+her radiance of beauty she was thought a fairy mistress
+such as men of olden time had met at some edge of the
+mortal world.</p>
+
+<p>He called her Brighde the Beautiful, and all the people
+were calling her that, and she was his wife, and the cattle
+of Ruadan stayed on his own hills after she came.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_12" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/b.jpg" alt="B" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Because of the vanishing of Amlaf the prince no
+Danes climbed again to the cell of the solitary monk,
+and after the weakening of the Danes the stories of
+enchantment there went abroad far and wide, and it was
+a place to shun both day and night, and no one was remembering<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span>
+the young monk who, in that year of the
+fearful star of Turgesius, had climbed that hard way for
+holiness.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_11" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/b.jpg" alt="B" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">But in after years, a strange harmless babbler appeared
+one day among a herd of cattle in Thomond,
+shouting to them of heavenly crowns and wings
+of angels.</p>
+
+<p>He had no clear speech to men, and was called the
+“Nameless” for the reason that no clan knew him, and he
+knew no mortal and no home.</p>
+
+<p>His dress was of skins, and his hair and beard were his
+only mantle to the middle. Neither in Gaelic nor in Latin
+could his life be learned, but no door was closed on him
+nor food denied him, for gods and saints were known
+to come under secret and lowly guise to the abodes of
+men.</p>
+
+<p>And on a fair day, after seven years, Doire, the childling
+of Ruadan, divided a cake with the Nameless on the green,
+and then led him, as a child with a new playmate, through
+all the garden and to the grianan where the wife of Ruadan
+sat with her maids and discoursed of the day when the
+master of Ardsolais would come again from the wars.</p>
+
+<p>All said, “God save you, and Mhoirre bless you,” to the
+visitor from the wilderness, and food was given and the
+child watched in wonder that a mortal could feed as the
+hounds fed.</p>
+
+<p>“The name of me is Doire, son of Ruadan, who is lord
+of the mountain,” said the boy. “You have eaten my cake
+and come in my gate; tell to me now whose son are you?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span></p>
+
+<p>But the Nameless stared vacant and seeking, and made
+mutterings, and all they could hear from him was “Ruadan?
+Ruadan—Ruadan?”</p>
+
+<p>Then the wife of Ruadan, who was called Brighde the
+Beautiful, called to her son Doire, and whispered in his
+ear a secret saying, and the lad ran back and spoke.</p>
+
+<p>“May it be that you were once the son of Kineath? And
+that your name was once Geroid?”</p>
+
+<p>At which saying the Nameless stood up in fear as if
+for flight, and cried out, “Kineath—and Geroid—and
+Ruadan! Ruadan and she who was weighed in the
+balance with the jeweled chalice? Call you your druids,
+or your priests of wisdom, that I uncover the place of
+that hiding! Go you in haste ere the mist again covers
+the knowing!”</p>
+
+<p>In haste they did go—all the maids aflutter, and the
+wife of Ruadan sat in the shadow ordering all things,
+speaking no word aloud.</p>
+
+<p>And Fergus, her cleric, came in haste from the oratory,
+and made prayer, and hearkened, and the Nameless spoke
+in good Latin, and said:</p>
+
+<p>“Take with you this childling who lifted the mist from
+me. Go you to the cave in the mountain over the Lough
+of Dearg; to the cell of Senan the Saint find you the way;
+and in the stone trough of the bed there find you the jeweled
+chalice, and the golden treasures. They were the
+bribe of Hell to bring temptings of the world. Let them
+be weighed; let them be put in the scales against my name
+and my soul in the Day of days!”</p>
+
+<p>“Against whose name will I write it for that day?”
+asked Fergus, “and against whose soul?”</p>
+
+<p>But at the question the Nameless turned away and shook
+his head. The mist had again fallen, and he wandered
+again to the fields babbling of crowns and wings.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span></p>
+
+<p>“He is but a strange innocent,” said Fergus, “and has
+no likeness to owners of golden service and jeweled treasures.
+It would be as search for the many-colored palaces
+of the magical Danaans under the hills about us.”</p>
+
+<p>But the wife of Ruadan had a different thought.</p>
+
+<p>“What the search may uncover rests with God and
+Mhoirre,” she said. “But a sign has been sent to the son
+of Ruadan, and to him the honor will be if precious things
+or holy things are in that cell of a hermit. Take horses
+and take men, and take Doire, our son, to that place of the
+cliff on the shore of Dearg, and take well-cured skins and
+ink for the record and witness. Every jewel write you
+down as count is made, and every other thing of treasure.
+If it be that they are holy things of Senan the Saint, their
+blessings may descend upon another altar.”</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was done, and great glory went to the son of
+Ruadan, who uncovered the jeweled chalice, and wondrous
+other golden altar service buried under moss, and shells of
+eggs, and bones of animals.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a_10" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/l.jpg" alt="L" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Legends grew up about that finding, for after they
+were blest by the cleric that no evil thing might
+leave smirch on their beauty, they were placed with
+prayer in the oratory, and on the altar beside them was
+found in the morning a jeweled book of holiness, thick set
+with amber and pearl. No book had been found in the
+stone cell, and Fergus, the priest, had never before seen
+or heard of it. Many viewed it, and all thought it had,
+without doubt, belonged to Senan the Saint, and after
+two hundred years of death he had come back to gather<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span>
+together the things once precious to him on earth as a
+proof to pious souls.</p>
+
+<p>This was the thought of Fergus, who had a pride in the
+holy honors sent to the roof where he was sheltered.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_13" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/a.jpg" alt="A" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">And when Ruadan came back victorious from battle
+with the Danes, it was Fergus who discoursed to
+him of a great church as their shrine. He made
+clear that the wife and son of Ruadan had strange gifts and
+powers of knowledge. If they were christian gifts it was
+well for their souls, but if the power was of pagan strength,
+then fastings and prayers should lift the last doubt. He reminded
+Ruadan that his own peace with the church was
+not yet accomplished, and that there were strange tales of
+how the mother of his son had ridden out of the wilderness
+on a black stallion and no clan and no country had been
+named for her claiming. The trappings of her steed were
+those of a king, and she wore coat of mail like a young
+warrior of the sea gods, riding out of the waves. No word
+to her confessor told of her life before that day, and there
+were times when the soul of Fergus was troubled over
+these mysteries, and was craving more altars to the saints
+at Ardsolais.</p>
+
+<p>“That is well enough,” said Ruadan. “She shall have a
+temple of her own fashion for the housing of her sacred
+things—women and priests have hunger for such. Guard
+you the souls by prayers in the temple, Fergus, and my
+spearman will guard the temple if our shields are lucky.
+That is the task of the man.”</p>
+
+<p>And with his wife, the Beautiful, in her bower, he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span>
+laughed, and stroked her white shoulder, and mocked as
+was his wont.</p>
+
+<p>“Thus I pay for temples to guard your soul from enchantments,”
+he said, “for Fergus the priest finds you in
+a grievous way.”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_12" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/s.jpg" alt="S" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">She mounted the black steed and rode beside Ruadan
+with Doire, their son, and sought a fair level
+on a green height where huge stone slabs stood
+upright with other slabs resting on them like high altars. It
+was the place of ancient fires and for that was called the
+Hill of Lights.</p>
+
+<p>“Here, by this circle, are the hearts of the people,” she
+said, “for at new moon they are coming, and at the rise of
+sun they are coming in certain summer days. Why build
+the new altar in another place?”</p>
+
+<p>She paced with her child the great space where the new
+temple would be built for sinners, and the eyes of Ruadan
+looked their love on her, and on the son she had borne him.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/a.jpg" alt="A" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">And in the edge of the wild field where the forest
+came down from the mountains, the cattle lifted
+their heads as a man, hairy and clad in skins, strode
+among them with proud authority shouting to them of
+crowns and wings.</p>
+
+<p>“Whose is the voice?” asked Ruadan.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span></p>
+
+<p>And his “heart-companion” of the wilderness touched
+his shoulder and spoke low and awed.</p>
+
+<p>“That is the voice of the man who saw no holiness in
+battle to protect the helpless—it is the voice of the man
+who saw in love only the mating of beasts—and his
+reward is his.”</p>
+
+<figure class="chapterseparator">
+  <img class="illowp25" src="images/i266.jpg" alt="Decorative chapter separator">
+</figure>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i101" style="max-width: 119.0625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i101.jpg" alt="LIADAN AND KURITHIR">
+</figure>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span></p>
+<figure class="figcenter illowp75" style="max-width: 30.9375em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i102.jpg" alt="Musical score, The Dream of Kurithi">
+</figure>
+<p class="musicTitle">The Dream of Kurithir</p>
+
+<p class="center music"><audio controls><source src="music/i102_music_correctedf.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
+Audio content is not currently supported on your device.</audio>
+<span class="xml">[<a href="music/i102_music_correctedf.mxl">MusicXML</a>]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="LIADAN_AND_KURITHIR">LIADAN AND KURITHIR</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>I am Liadan</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Who loved Kurithir.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>It is true as they say.</i></div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>The music of the forest</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Would sing to me when with Kurithir,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Together with the voice of the purple sea.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap3" src="images/bigi.jpg" alt="I">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap3">It was the time of Hugh Finnliath, Ard-Ri (High
+King) of Erinn, and glad youth of May lay on the
+land.</p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap4">The hawthorn was in bloom against the hills,
+and the cuckoo was calling as it flew in long billowy
+glides to its mate in the yew-tree nest.</p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap4">As the bird to its mate, went the gray eyes and
+the heart of Liadan na Donal, when she looked on Kurithir,
+the poet and friend of kings, in Far Connaught. Fair
+and gracious was he among the friends of her host, and
+fair and gracious was Flann Siona, prince of the Sionan,
+beside him as they greeted her, and greeted Aevil, her
+sister, who was beautiful as a night of stars.</p>
+
+<p>It was not the beauty of bronze-gold hair, or blue eyes
+of Kurithir, by which she was held, and it was not the
+beauty of raiment and the jeweled links of his garments,
+for the daughters of the Ui Maic of Far Kerry were not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span>
+without grandeur in the castle of Donal, their father. Out
+of all the guests and the greetings, she knew not if
+Kurithir, son of Doborchū, bent head or knee more graciously
+than others. She knew only that his eyes looked
+deep, and looked steady, into her own, and that without
+words they bore to her a message.</p>
+
+<p>The message was strange because her heart leaped in
+her bosom to meet it, and that was a new thing in her
+life.</p>
+
+<p>And that message was this: “We have found the way to
+each other at last, and both of us knowing it!”</p>
+
+<p>Other eyes saw that look, and the wild-rose flush on
+her white throat, and Aevil, her half-sister, spoke bitter
+words when they were safe within their chamber, and
+there was present only the dark nurse of Aevil, whose
+name was Moria, and whose lore was deep in herbs and
+curious knowledge of druidcraft.</p>
+
+<p>“Know you not that as elder sister my day of marriage
+must pass before your day of courting?” raged Aevil.
+“For that reason I am making this circuit of visits to see
+the lands and the furnishings of our friends. It was in my
+charity that I brought you by me, and an ill day it was
+to me!”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_14" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/l.jpg" alt="L" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Liadan sat by the window and looked down into
+the enclosed garden where a red rose tree and a
+white rose vine were twining against the stone wall,
+and she mode no reply, for her thoughts were all of Kurithir,
+and that look in his eyes, and she felt close to him as
+the white rose twining to the tree of the red bloom.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span></p>
+
+<p>But Moria talked much as she smoothed the black hair
+of Aevil, and vowed by the Elements that the beauty of
+Aevil exceeded by much all other beauty at the Dun of
+Dearg. And that the eyes of Flann, Ri Domna of Erinn,
+had not passed her by—nor had the other men.</p>
+
+<p>There was truth in this, for black and red and rich
+cream was the beauty of Aevil, and her pride was great
+because of her beauty to which all men did honor. Liadan
+had heard all her life that there was no beauty in
+Connaught to compare with Aevil who should, for
+beauty alone, be a queen, and Liadan was well content
+that the crown go to her sister so long as she had her harp
+and her garden, and now—two blue eyes for mirrors!</p>
+
+<p>But Aevil stormed and threw off the hand of Moria and
+would have no caressing of words.</p>
+
+<p>“Well you know there is one man spoke of here for my
+meeting, and that man is Kurithir the poet,” she said.
+“He is the man whose songs are sung by many, and my
+greeting was spoiled by a gray rat!”</p>
+
+<p>“Only my eyes are gray, sister,” said Liadan, “and
+if you like not my gray robe, it shall be put aside for our
+visit. What you choose shall be done; all is one to me.”</p>
+
+<p>For the song of joy was so strong in her heart that all
+the world was shining summer for her. Her slender gray-clad
+feet trod as on the clouds of heaven because of that
+look in his eyes. She donned a robe of green with a girdle
+of silver, and in the brown curls of her hair she fastened
+green jewels from oversea, and in the rush light of the
+great hall she slipped quiet as a moonbeam, but Flann and
+Kurithir, who were foster brothers and friends ever, left
+all others to bow before her.</p>
+
+<p>“We look for Maighdenmara in the old sea waves where
+the white foam is,” said Flann. “Men never hope to see
+her drive in a chariot from the forest.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span></p>
+
+<p>Kurithir said nothing, but his eyes were on hers, and
+she liked that best, and dreamed of him sweetly that night
+on her maiden pillow.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_13" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/i.jpg" alt="I" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">In the dawn Flann and Kurithir walked along the
+sea cliff and spoke as brothers in bond.</p>
+
+<p>“There are other maids and many for you, Flann.
+For me there is only this one and I loving her.”</p>
+
+<p>“You speak your heart and that is best, comrade. My
+eyes will look the other way, and her sister is a fair queen
+for any castle.”</p>
+
+<p>“I am thinking no castles,” said Kurithir, “I am thinking
+of a little house under the oaks where the thrushes
+sing, and where heart can hear heart away from sound
+of the steps of man. My harp I will take, and hers. The
+hands of her were like white lilies on the strings when she
+touched them last night. I could have knelt at her feet
+for joy that we have found each other.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is good to be you, Kurithir,” said Flann, who was a
+king’s son. “May you hear the thrushes sing.”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a_12" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/a.jpg" alt="A" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">And Kurithir went back at sunrise, and watched her
+window in the tower until her face looked down on
+him. Speak she dare not because of Aevil and
+Moria. Go to him she could not for the locked door and
+the key on the chain of Moria. But look at him with all<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span>
+her heart in her eyes she could and she did, and a white
+rose she let fall from her breast to his, and that was the
+first gift of Liadan and Kurithir.</p>
+
+<p>That day was fair with beauty, and all went riding
+gaily to a neighbor castle of friends, and gaily home at
+the setting of sun; but Aevil put Aillain, the son of her host,
+to ride with Liadan, under strict word that their visit would
+end if he heeded not her order—for Liadan must either
+be guarded, or sent home at the dawn; so Aevil rode with
+Kurithir and talked much with Flann, and was a sweet
+and gracious lady to charm all. But Liadan sat quiet,
+smiling ever like sun touching mist of the morning. Her
+heart was full of joy only to hear his voice, even though
+the words were to another—which is Love itself.</p>
+
+<p>And that night was a very poet’s night of a young moon
+and the scent of dew on the hawthorn, and under the
+tower Kurithir sang, and touched the harp, and this was
+his song:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Sweet-scented branch of silver</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Abloom above me,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Lean low to love me!</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Gray bird of harmonies</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Honey voice, morning star,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Wake to love’s dreaming!</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>His voice and the strings of the harp were whispers
+soft on the night, yet in her heart every whisper was held,
+and the fury of Aevil was as a storm seen afar in the valley.
+For Liadan was as snow on the mountain shining
+in the sun.</p>
+
+<p>When she left the locked door of her chamber, the dark
+woman, Moria, carried her shuttle and thread, or her
+tablet of white birch and the stylus, or the tiny harp of
+the six strings, but not apart the length of a spear did she
+walk, and she listening.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span></p>
+
+<p>But the love of Kurithir forced him to the speech of a
+man to his mate, and he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>“The song of the night was to you, Liadan, and all of
+me calls for you more strongly than song can be telling.
+Liadan, marriage is well for two singers who find the same
+song. It is by that choosing the bird of the forest seeks
+ever its own mate, for the song is the soul of the winged
+things. That is so of the birds and it is so of men, Liadan.
+Thus the nightingale holds his song pure in rapture, thus
+the children of us will sing our songs, and their own songs,
+in the future years, Liadan.”</p>
+
+<p>The soul of her moved to him that she trembled, but the
+dark woman, Moria, behind the arras, was ears for Aevil
+who walked the garden with Flann, and Liadan veiled her
+gray eyes lest he read them too well, and spoke in sweet
+courtesy.</p>
+
+<p>“Fair friend, it must be in the rath of my father I give
+troth to a man and not in another place,” she said. “That
+gate will be open to you on a day to come, and your singing
+will win you fair welcome when you are coming
+there.”</p>
+
+<p>“Your words are as snowfall at harvest time and the
+sheaves golden,” spoke Kurithir. “Your eyes make themselves
+shadows of gray and are veiling their sweetness.
+But I am servant of Liadan what day of days I may ride
+her way through the forests.”</p>
+
+<p>“The day may be long—the length of days rests in the
+heart itself,” said Liadan. “A far circle of visiting is
+pledged to the friends of our father. That circle must be
+closed ere we welcome poets or princes at the portal of
+our own castle.”</p>
+
+<p>“Honey mouth, the sweet coldness of you would freeze
+the red rose, and all its flame could not save life to
+it,” he said. “But within me is a deeper flame, and I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span>
+wait my day, and I wait some sign from you for speech
+again.”</p>
+
+<p>But the bodkin of the dark woman touched the arm of
+Liadan through the arras as a warning against other
+words, and she spoke no more but bent her head over the
+harp as if alone, and Kurithir looked at her, pondering,
+and then called for his stallion, and rode alone and apart
+from the rest that day.</p>
+
+<p>But Liadan rode not at all lest the hand of another man
+touch her hand, or the hem of her garment, or offer her
+cup which another than Kurithir had kissed.</p>
+
+<p>But the harp of his in the hall was the only one she
+touched that day, and she wished that forbidden druid
+power could be hers to charm the strings into speech for
+his ear alone. With bodkin she traced one word in ogham
+on the harp frame, but Moria watching! More she feared
+to do, and her tablets of writing had been broken in the
+rage of Aevil.</p>
+
+<p>The dark woman told to Aevil all that discourse of the
+day, and Aevil laughed her victory.</p>
+
+<p>“Tomorrow’s sun takes us away from this place and this
+blind-eyed poet,” she said. “I have a secret to tell, for
+Flann has desire of me, and a king’s rath will yet be my
+abiding place. But I choose to be away from the roof
+of my father ere these poet songs again make night sleepless.
+My marriage comes before her betrothal. See you
+to that!”</p>
+
+<p>The dark woman promised and praised the maid Aevil,
+and had joy of the thought of Flann who was king’s son
+and of power to be.</p>
+
+<p>At the supper time, Aevil held up her square cup of mead
+and asked a good wish on the road for the morrow. Her
+journey of joy was a circle, and their chariot must start
+with the sun on the round.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span></p>
+
+<p>There were words of pleading from many, but Kurithir
+said no word, only stared at Liadan for a sign—and she
+there frozen with the grief on her!</p>
+
+<p>It was the first word she was given of the journey, but
+he could not be knowing that, and his pride was a cloak
+as he stood before her.</p>
+
+<p>“Sun-rise or sun-setting makes no change in me but to
+leave me in darkness,” he said, “and the servant of Liadan
+is ever her servant.”</p>
+
+<p>But Aevil laughed at his shoulder, and bade him not
+practice poet’s art for the sake of practice, for Liadan
+knew the light worth of a rhyme—and herself turned
+all things, from cock crow until moonrise, to such usage!</p>
+
+<p>Then she sent Liadan to her chamber on an empty
+errand, and laughed again at Kurithir, and watched him,
+and his face white.</p>
+
+<p>She knew that he felt hate for her, and would sing grief
+and disaster on her but for the bond of one father and sisterhood
+with Liadan. The dark woman plucked her by
+the sleeve and whispered warning lest he do that thing
+and shame her before Flann and the host. Aevil was
+green-jealous and was going far!</p>
+
+<p>But the laughter of her scarce touched him, for the
+reason that he saw only the face of Liadan who had gone
+past him, dumb and without word of courtesy, and she
+hard struck at the fear of great forest and wilderness
+between them.</p>
+
+<p>It was that fear made her bold to dare what she dared
+not do before the people. No tablet of writing could she
+send. No secret friend could she trust in the castle of the
+Dun of Dearg where Aevil bore casket of gifts for service
+rendered.</p>
+
+<p>But more quickly than Moria could follow, she sped to
+the enclosed garden where the red May rose bloomed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span>
+against the south side of the wall, and close under her
+linen shift lay a blossom of it before the dark woman,
+with dark words, grasped her wrist, and drew her within
+the portal.</p>
+
+<p>“The fury of Donal your father will not be a summer
+storm to you if he hears of lovers of yours before the
+Lady Aevil has her right as a wife ahead of you,” she
+said. “The visits of honor are spoiled by the endless
+twanging of the fool’s harp, and of yours, and the end of
+it is coming!”</p>
+
+<p>Liadan knew there were dark words said of Moria in
+whispers by the people of the hills of Kerry. Her love
+for Aevil was a real love, but her hate was a thing to fear,
+and the soul of Liadan trembled, yet the thought of
+Kurithir brought back life to her, and she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>“With your hands you will not touch me again,” she
+said, “and this to your warning. As a child I mind me
+how, for curious reasons, you sang sleeps upon me at
+noontide. I saw strange things in the sleeps you sent me
+and some I remember. But I am not now a child and my
+life is a different thing to me. No will of yours shall be
+on me again, nor the will of any other mortal, save one
+only—and I loving that one. My duty to Donal, my
+father, and Aevil, my sister, will be paid in silence. But
+to the man who gives me heart-love there has been too
+much of silence, and the end of that is coming!”</p>
+
+<p>The dark woman looked at her sideways and said no
+word lest the maid grow wild and run shrieking, or do
+some other ill thing to shame them. For the words of
+Liadan told her it was a woman deep in love who spoke,
+and that at once both her body and mind were sacred to
+her as love’s offering on an altar.</p>
+
+<p>And Moria went from the chamber in fear of the wrath
+of Aevil if the lovers met, and in fear of other things! The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span>
+key on the chain was forgot at her girdle, and it was the
+first time.</p>
+
+<p>At the foot of the turret stairs she remembered the key
+and would have turned back, but Aevil was there and
+heard her story and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>“Wait for the locking of the door,” she said, and frowned
+and thought. “Since she is turned rebel on our hands, and
+a dagger is forbid, we will try other ways, and ways will
+be found. Her poet is sick with love and mooning alone,
+yet far enough from the turret. Keep you ward, and send
+to me Aillain, son of our host. He mutters poems of hers
+instead of grace.”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_15" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/i.jpg" alt="I" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">It was true Kurithir was alone, and a new thought
+with him for company. The next house of the visit
+of the sisters was that of a friend where a welcome
+for him was ever waiting. Yet at this time he would not
+ride there without a castle servant to ask his presence. But
+on white beech tablet he was writing that friend to send
+for him quickly, and his own servant was put on the road
+with it, while the others played chess, and took pawns, and
+looked love to women, and Aevil laughed, thinking that
+he wrote poems on dull tablets when he could find more
+human pleasures. Flann laughed when she laughed, and
+knew nothing of the heartache of his friend. After their
+words on the cliff there had been no more words between
+them of Liadan or of Aevil.</p>
+
+<p>Their laughter sat ill upon him, and he moved to a casement
+where he could see the window of the turret
+chamber, and perhaps a light there.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span></p>
+
+<p>No light was showing, but the soft note of the little harp
+was heard, and its sweetness was dear to him, for it was
+his own song of the night she had caught.</p>
+
+<p>“It is well Liadan is playing that,” said Aevil. “All
+the day she was making practice of it because you, Aillain,
+gave it praise.”</p>
+
+<p>“I?” said the youth Aillain, and stared, and his mother
+heard and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>“What does a manling do when music is made by
+fair lady to his liking?” she asked. “A gold-caged
+thrush would be fitting for a lady’s gift, or flowers for
+fragrance.”</p>
+
+<p>They made jests of him as at a lover they were training
+for love, and the eyes of the youth laughed also, yet he
+was courteous.</p>
+
+<p>“No less than my duty, and the gift, shall be offered,”
+he said. “The less garden bloom for the other ladies on
+the morrow.”</p>
+
+<p>Straightway he started for the garden in the dusk, glad
+to show grace to so fair a guest. The sky had primrose
+tints in it afar, and the golden curve of the moon was above
+dark ocean. Only one star shone high, and shadows fell
+thick where the hedges were, and where a great vine threw
+wide arms at the foot of the tower.</p>
+
+<p>A moment the boy paused to look up where the harp
+strings were softly touched, then there was silence, and a
+white hand reached far out, and a bit of fragrance touched
+his breast—it was a red rose, crushed where it had lain
+under the linen of her warm bosom.</p>
+
+<p>The youth was mazed and stood waiting with staring
+eyes. Was it a mocking the gay group would make
+because of his lack of years, and his height of a man?
+This was the reasonable thought, for he had a sweetly
+gay temper of his own, and was used to their baiting.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span></p>
+
+<p>But while he held the rose and listened for their laughter,
+something finer came to him: it was the hushed voice
+of Liadan singing. A very whisper of a song it was, and
+heard only by him, and by a man at the casement.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">The mystic rose are you to me</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">In secret bower growing,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The grayling bird of grief am I</div>
+    <div class="verse indent6">Not joyous taking wing!</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">One star for both above the sea—</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The trysting star! A grayling</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Lets fall a rose and breathes her sigh:</div>
+    <div class="verse indent6">Not joyous taking wing!</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The voice ceased and the harp strings gave a wail as a
+heavy hand of discord crashed it. The boy could make
+nothing of that, and walked slowly into the dusk of the
+garden, intent as before on the gift of blossoms.</p>
+
+<p>It was a sweet song as she sung it, and a pleading one.
+He wondered as to the meaning of the mystic rose. It
+was a new word to him and he had an ear for words of
+beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Then there came swiftly the rush of a slender form into
+the garden’s dusk. Like a low-flying bird before a hawk
+she ran, for the dark woman was at the portal.</p>
+
+<p>“O rose of flame,” said Liadan sobbing, “that I should
+have given snow for your fragrance!”</p>
+
+<p>The tall youth, Aillain, had plucked a hand full of bloom,
+but stared at her strangeness, and drew back from her.</p>
+
+<p>“The roses are for your gift, fair Liadan,” he began
+courteously, but at his voice she moaned in terror and
+caught his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>“O rose of brief bloom for me,” she said, and fell in
+whiteness at his feet. He bent to lift her, but the dark
+woman was first.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Silence is best for this,” she said to Aillain. “It is no
+new thing and I can bear her alone.”</p>
+
+<p>She was very strong, and Liadan lay in her arms like
+a broken flower, and thus she faced Kurithir at the
+portal; he was white as the maid, as he barred her way.</p>
+
+<p>“Tell me of this meaning,” he said, and Moria laughed
+as Aevil herself might have laughed.</p>
+
+<p>“You are a man and should know,” she said. “The
+boy is a new plaything and she broke the lock to keep
+tryst with him. You poets play over much at the love
+game, and oft choose your mates strangely.”</p>
+
+<p>“If you were a man my hand would send you to hell
+for that saying.”</p>
+
+<p>“Even that would not make her over, or change the
+heart of her,” said Moria. “Give way that I may put her
+back under lock ere her sister learns this newest shame.”</p>
+
+<p>He gave way, and paced like a chained thing the length
+of his leash under the wall where he could see the light of
+her window. He listened for her voice, but no sound came.</p>
+
+<p>Later he sought Aillain, but the youth had gone straight
+to Aevil in his amaze and fear, and she had cunningly
+bound him to silence, as if Liadan were some distraught
+creature ever to be guarded when the moon was new. To
+Flann, Kurithir could not speak.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_14" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/i.jpg" alt="I" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">In the morning Liadan was dressed by Moria for the
+journey, listless and cold, staring.</p>
+
+<p>Aevil mocked her despair, and hummed the words
+of her trysting song.</p>
+
+<p>“Think you a man of pride waits for tryst with a maid<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span>
+so bold?” she asked. “The rose alone might have won a
+hearing, but men are fain to do their own wooing.
+Your song argued practice in love, so he walked away,
+O grayling, you!”</p>
+
+<p>Liadan took up the harp and broke the strings.</p>
+
+<p>“It will make songs for no other man,” she said. “So
+much for love’s practice on me!”</p>
+
+<p>Cold and white she sat for the braiding of the gold disks
+in her brown hair, and cold and white for the girdling of
+the gray robe, and the lacings of the gray shoes. After
+the breaking of the harp Aevil mocked no more, for there
+were guests and a host to face in the farewells, and it
+might prove a hard hour.</p>
+
+<p>But Liadan strangely bade farewells as a child is taught
+to do. There was a faint little smile on her lips, and she
+looked into faces as if scarce seeing, while the dark woman
+watched her curiously.</p>
+
+<p>“Her boast was that no will but his should lead her,” she
+said to Aevil. “Look you! Whose will leads her now?”</p>
+
+<p>“What thing have you done?” asked Aevil, “for his is
+the one face she does not lift her eyes for. What druid’s
+draught have you brewed for her?”</p>
+
+<p>“No draught,” said Moria. “She gave you fear when
+she broke the harp, and that was the time to give her the
+quiet. Look not fearful, a weakness is on her from these
+days, but weakness goes again in youth.”</p>
+
+<p>Liadan was seldom gay, and none but Kurithir and
+Flann noted her stillness. Neither spoke of it. And so she
+went away from them. And the music was stilled in
+Kurithir. His harp was laced in its cover of otter’s skin,
+and the message she had writ on it was hidden—to their
+sorrow!</p>
+
+<p>When word came from the friendly house that he was
+ever welcome there, but that the Lady Aevil, and her<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span>
+sister, the poet Liadan, had not come their road, he bade
+farewell to his friend Flann and took a boat for the sea.</p>
+
+<p>“The thrushes do not sing, even for poets, on the sea,”
+said Flann, and that was the first time he mentioned the
+dream of love of Kurithir.</p>
+
+<p>“There are no longer thrushes singing for me in the
+shadows, and no dreamhouse of love in any forest,” said
+Kurithir.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a_13" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/s.jpg" alt="S" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Straight south he steered and then east, through
+storm and stress seeking new ports, seeing new faces,
+hearing new songs but singing no more. Women
+looked on him with warm invitings in many a harbor, and
+one of sweet words and gray eyes sent him out into open
+seas against wind and tide.</p>
+
+<p>“Other men are not remembering like this,” he said.
+“Back of the look in every woman I see the look of
+Liadan, O lost gray bird of mine—Liadan—Liadan!”</p>
+
+<p>To say her name brought her before him strangely. He
+leaned forward in the dusk and brushed his hand over his
+eyes as if to clear vision.</p>
+
+<p>For there in the prow he saw—something! It was the
+faint gray shadow of a girl with a broken harp. The
+harp he could see very clearly, for the broken strings were
+black against the green-white foam.</p>
+
+<p>“Liadan,” he whispered, and moved to her, but white
+spray dashed between them and no other thing was there.
+And that was the first time she came.</p>
+
+<p>“She is dead,” he said, and the world was more empty
+for the thought, yet strangely enough, when sleep came<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span>
+she began to come very close to him, and very warm and
+very much alive.</p>
+
+<p>In the dusk of starlight he saw her, shadowy, with his
+earthly eyes again and again, and at times he thought the
+fragrance of hawthorn and roses of May was on the sea.</p>
+
+<p>“Is it the way of a madman I am going?” he asked
+himself, “for there can no more be fragrance of roses here
+than there can be songs of thrushes.”</p>
+
+<p>And that night in sleep he heard the thrushes! It was
+together they heard them—her hand in his, and she
+listening.</p>
+
+<p>And the words he said to her there were words he had
+never said to any woman in life. Her eyes shone on him
+like warm stars, and it was as if they had both been waiting
+always for the words and the hearing of them. And in
+the dream he sang to her, and she within his arms warm
+there. In the morning he remembered that song—and
+he remembered whispers of hers between the lines of it.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">O Liadan!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">O mist of honey fragrance!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Within my dreams,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">You drift the night with me!</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">You are the star</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Old sea reflects forever,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">You are the grianan within my heart.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">The white-breast bird are you,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The whitest rose,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The ever-singing harp of silver string.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">You are my secret,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Breast unto my breast,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Until the lark shall call the sun,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">O Liadan!</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was the first time song had come to him since he sang
+under her window at Dun Dearg of the sea cliff, and all the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span>
+call of his heart for her was wakened in new strength. He
+turned the boat and steered west and then north, and every
+twilight she sat in the prow faintly gray, and in every
+sleep his head rested on her warm bosom, and warm arms
+were holding him, and her face was bending over him with
+her eyes looking into the depths of his own.</p>
+
+<p>“Even though it be madness on me I will follow the way
+it leads,” he said. “I will go as bid to the rath of Donal,
+her father. I will put out of mind all else I saw or heard,
+for mystical things and deep things are sending fair winds
+to me at every turn of tide, and never a day but the seas
+are glittering fair like silver.”</p>
+
+<p>And it was so. Never a storm touched him after the
+night he saw her first.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_16" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<p>In the nights he smelled hawthorn and May roses over
+the dark sea, and there was one night when he was off
+Arran, and she sang to him, and in the morning he remembered
+her song as well as his—and this is what she was
+singing that night:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">I dreamed of the yew tree,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Its sheltering shadow,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">I dreamed of your arms!</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">I woke to the thrushes,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Their song was to nestlings,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And your arms about me!</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Then he felt her stir as a bird might stir against a
+mother-bird’s breast, and her kiss was on him, and in that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span>
+kiss he smiled, fearing to open his eyes, fearing to lose the
+dream of her. But he whispered in a dream song:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">My eyes are in shadow</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">But sun in my bosom,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">My world—Liadan!</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">To dream true is—loving,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Gray eyes of enchantings,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Gray lark of sweet singing,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">—Your music to me!</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Into the deep harbor of the cliffs he sailed on a fair morning,
+and men with shields and spears watched him as he
+climbed the heights, and Flann was first with the greeting.</p>
+
+<p>“The summer raiders of Lochlan came down the coast
+to wreck and plunder,” he said. “No roof is left of Castle
+Dearg; we drove them off and sunk half their fleet, but
+much evil was done by them. Our host and his people
+are dead, and Donal of Dun Conchinn is dead, and many
+other good men have gone the Way.”</p>
+
+<p>“It was to the rath of Donal I was going.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is a late day to be going; death has been there, and
+veiled women are there.”</p>
+
+<p>The heart of Kurithir went cold with fear to ask a question,
+and he did not ask it, but walked silent beside his
+friend until they stood under the portal of the tower where
+all now was blackened ruin from fire and stress.</p>
+
+<p>He looked up to the window and then mounted the stone
+steps to the chamber where once she had slept, and Flann
+in silence followed, for their hearts had been close-knit.</p>
+
+<p>The furnishings were gone and it was a desolate place.</p>
+
+<p>“Come away,” said Flann. “There is no profit to a man
+in seeking empty cages when the singer has flown.”</p>
+
+<p>But under the carved stone seat by the window, where
+no fire could touch it, there was a little harp with the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span>
+strings broken. Kurithir knew that harp and every
+broken strand from the nights on the seas to the south.</p>
+
+<p>Flann took it up and looked at the frame where
+“Liadan” was set in silver wires deep in the dark wood;
+with the haft of his skean he scratched it until it shone
+bright.</p>
+
+<p>“It is true,” he said, “I thought it was a woman’s lie
+to mock me—but it is true.”</p>
+
+<p>“Who was the woman?” asked Kurithir.</p>
+
+<p>“It was Aevil,” said Flann, “and now with this before
+us, and Sun and Day, and Earth and Wind, to witness, I
+will speak you the truth. When you sailed south and gave
+no farewell to Liadan, who turned her eyes from you
+in parting, I rode to the rath of Donal and made offers
+for her as a wife. My promise to look another way was
+broke when you two parted and no pledge between
+broke.”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_15" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/t.jpg" alt="T" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">There was silence for a while and only the eyes of
+Kurithir spoke.</p>
+
+<p>“It was all no use,” said Flann. “She would not
+say the word for all Donal’s anger. I know not what his
+words were to her—God knows! He was regretful for the
+words when dying and said it to me. But before that day
+he offered me Aevil instead, and ordered Liadan to the
+veiled women, and Aevil was a star of beauty, and was
+willing, and I took her.”</p>
+
+<p>“And what was the lie of this?” asked Kurithir, holding
+close the harp with the sweet name of her on the
+frame.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</span></p>
+
+<p>“It was no lie. It was the truth. The harp was broke
+by Liadan that no love song should ever be made on it
+after her tryst song to you—and you walking away
+from it.”</p>
+
+<p>“There was no tryst song to me. The woman Moria
+carried Liadan from tryst with another—and mocked me
+that I was yet sick at heart for her love.”</p>
+
+<p>“There are dark things in this somewhere, and there
+are false things somewhere,” said Flann. “Aillain, the
+boy, is dead, and dark Moria is dead—it is late for the
+sifting of the wheat from the chaff.”</p>
+
+<p>“When were the deaths?”</p>
+
+<p>“He in the first raid, but she, sabbath a week since,
+together with Donal, before our bowmen reached his rath
+for succor.”</p>
+
+<p>Kurithir remembered that day, and when Flann would
+have gone on with speech of the fighting, and the retreat
+of the raiders to their ships, he held up his hand for
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>“That was the night she came to me on the sea, Flann,”
+he said, “and that is why I am here listening. Darkness
+is on my mind—a darkness and a fog, but this is true as
+the Sun: the way of these broken strings was never told
+to me, yet I knew that her harp was broken, for at the
+sabbath twilight a week since, Liadan sat at the prow of
+the boat with the broken harp in her hands, and the smell
+of the hawthorn was there following, ay, and the song of
+the thrush in the nights!”</p>
+
+<p>Flann peered at Kurithir in awe, and a swift chill
+touched him. When he spoke again it was with the soft
+gentleness as to a child.</p>
+
+<p>“And where was this happening, Kurithir?” he asked.</p>
+
+<p>“It was off the south coast, and I have been sailing
+straight to find her, night and day since that twilight,”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span>
+said Kurithir. “Never was there such a sailing, for the
+wind was ever with us, and I had but to close my eyes to
+feel her near and to smell hawthorn and May roses.”</p>
+
+<p>Flann looked down into the garden where ashes and a
+fallen wall covered the rose vines.</p>
+
+<p>“The roses of May linger not for anyone through the
+harvest time,” he said. “Come Kurithir, what I can I will
+do to bring you to her in time.”</p>
+
+<p>Kurithir followed after and carried the broken harp, and
+said over to himself words of her tryst song which he knew
+now was meant only for him.</p>
+
+<p>“It will be in time,” he said. “No human thing can part
+us now, for our coming together on the sea had no mortal
+touch to it, yet we were as one soul. Since she lives
+nothing can change that. She is the soul of me.”</p>
+
+<p>“She lives,” said Flann.</p>
+
+<p>More than that he had no heart to say, but while food,
+and horse, and servant were made ready for the journey
+through the wilderness, Flann spoke apart to Ronan, his
+cleric and confessor, who had been with the men through
+the battles, and shrived them as they went the last Way.</p>
+
+<p>“Is it madness of the mind is on him, or is it some spell
+of magic that makes for him a vision far out at sea of that
+which is true on land?” asked Flann. “Is it evil, or is it
+good?”</p>
+
+<p>“It has been both. The words of druids and the words
+of saints are witness. It comes between a man and a maid.
+It comes not of earthly marriage but rather of separation
+of the mortal body. It comes of great strength and of
+much weakness. Saints have known it to the glory of
+God’s mysteries, but it is not for the telling to every asker
+of curious things. You have a kinsman in sanctuary who
+has the right to tell you more than I have right to know.
+The craft of idolatry, and the spells of druids, and power<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span>
+of saints, have one likeness to the eyes of the unlearned.
+Yet is there a difference, and a great differing, too! The
+mother of Liadan was of the race of Dana, and she went
+the Way at the birthing. Her child came into life with
+the sign on her of secret knowings. It is a thing of grief
+that she was bred in the rath of that dark woman of
+Slieve Mis who could use arts of her own on a child of
+secret vision.”</p>
+
+<p>“You mean dark Moria, the nurse?”</p>
+
+<p>“I mean Moria, the concubine of Donal, who went into
+death beside him. It is an old story and strange. The Dun
+of Donal is far enough in the wilderness to hide many
+secret things.”</p>
+
+<p>“You know that I have taken his daughter Aevil to
+wife,” said Flann darkly.</p>
+
+<p>“I do. You were swift about it, else I might have
+spoke caution. But the two are dead and God send that
+her evil died with her, and that your children live by God’s
+grace. Judge you not Kurithir with harshness because of
+his own words. The darkness is on his mind concerning
+this matter. Few of us see as God means us all to see in
+His own good time.”</p>
+
+<p>“God be with us till the Day,” said Flann.</p>
+
+<p>“By the Elements, and the Father and Son,” said
+Ronan.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a_14" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/t.jpg" alt="T" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">The raiders were gone from Connaught and the work
+of the chiefs was done there, and Flann rode south
+and told Kurithir he rode to fetch back his new wife
+Aevil, from Dun Conchinn, where death had been, and
+many shadows. And Kurithir scarce noted that Flann rode<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</span>
+neither in state nor in joy. He rode silent and with dark
+thoughts, and with few servants or comfort.</p>
+
+<p>But he saw to it that none but himself held converse
+with his friend on the long south journey. And Kurithir
+went through the rivers and wilderness as he had sailed
+north over the sea, thrilled by the nearness of the sweet
+warm spirit of her.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_17" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/i.jpg" alt="I" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">It was at rising of sun they reached the Dun of Conchinn,
+and saw marks of the siege on it, and it was
+Aevil who met them in the hall, vested in royal
+weaves and with a golden circlet of richness above the
+black braids where pearls were woven. Already she was
+wearing all gauds and trappings of queenship, and waiting
+jealously the day of the succession of Flann.</p>
+
+<p>She stared in dislike at his company.</p>
+
+<p>“Have you fallen to meaner estate that you ride home
+with none of the chiefs you led away?” she asked. “A
+servant and a horseman is small retinue for Flann.”</p>
+
+<p>“Greet my friend and send for your cleric,” said Flann.
+“I have questions to ask of this household.”</p>
+
+<p>“I give greeting to any friend of yours, O Flann,” she
+said, “but your words and your looks coming back with
+him are not those of Flann, the prince, who went away
+with his many men of the shields.”</p>
+
+<p>“If it is your will I will walk apart until granted welcome,”
+said Kurithir to Flann. “It is you who know
+best the desire of my heart and the way to it.”</p>
+
+<p>“We will find that way,” said Flann, “but the first
+thing must come first! Send your maids to their duties.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span>
+I want only your cleric, and his tablets for writing. It is
+your own desires I make plans for. You will not be wanting
+the enviers of a princess around you this day of your days.”</p>
+
+<p>Kurithir was no less amazed than Aevil at the curious
+speech of Flann, or at his long curious stare at the cleric
+with his tablets and his scrivener.</p>
+
+<p>“Send your assistant out of the hall,” said Flann, and
+went on staring, first at the comfortable, round old man, and
+then at the queenly woman he had called a star of beauty.</p>
+
+<p>“Nealis of Desmond,” he said, “it is a long time you
+have been in the Dun of Donal, and it is much you have
+seen of the woman who died with Donal, and it may be
+much you had to know of her.”</p>
+
+<p>Nealis, the cleric, went the color of old wax, and looked
+at Aevil, and Aevil flamed red while her brows were a
+straight black line of rage.</p>
+
+<p>“What should he know?” she asked. “What should
+he know of my nurse and my friend? Why ask a man of
+the household and pass me by?”</p>
+
+<p>“I asked for an answer—and I am answered,” said
+Flann. “Fear not that you will be the one passed by! I
+will ask another question. Nealis, it is not the husband
+of Aevil who asks you this, it is the man who is Ri Domna
+of Erinn. Donal talked with you here when I offered
+marriage to his child, Liadan?”</p>
+
+<p>“That is true,” said the cleric, but his small eyes looked
+right and left like a trapped rat, fearing what the question
+might lead to.</p>
+
+<p>“And it was that time the word went out that Liadan
+was dying of a secret ailment?”</p>
+
+<p>Kurithir sprang to his feet, but Flann put out his hand
+in kindness.</p>
+
+<p>“She did not die,” he said. “It was a crooked plan but
+of her death there was no need, and the plan was changed.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span></p>
+
+<p>He looked at Aevil, and the flame was gone from her
+face; she was gulping as if to strangle back some fury of
+protest.</p>
+
+<p>“You were her confessor—also the confessor of Moria.
+You surely heard things curious between the two.”</p>
+
+<p>“What should he hear more curious than other priests
+hear?” demanded Aevil after one look at his pallid face.</p>
+
+<p>“It is not your confession, Aevil, for which I ask,” said
+Flann, “so rest you easy. But it may be easier for Nealis
+to tell the thing here where there are few ears than in
+open shame before the king and before his spiritual
+superiors. Nealis, was it drug of herbs Moria of the hills
+gave to Liadan, or was it the deeper craft of a mind chained
+until life and death was all one to her?”</p>
+
+<p>“You are asking that which is not asked even by princes,
+and I would it were not asked,” said Nealis. But his
+voice shook and Aevil glared at him frowning, striving
+to make him meet her eye, which he would not.</p>
+
+<p>“The witch is dead,” continued Flann. “I ask nothing
+concerning sins of the living, but this thing I mean to
+know. It is not best to depend on the grace of a Ri
+Domna’s wife. There will be no queen of mine but by
+my will—and justice may come before my will, and
+before I come to a king’s seat.”</p>
+
+<p>“Is that gray rat to come between you and me even with
+your marriage gifts on me?” shrilled Aevil. “The High
+King may say something if you take two sisters to wife
+at the same time.”</p>
+
+<p>“The sisterhood will come later,” said Flann in great
+quietness, and at that Aevil choked, and the cleric looked
+at Flann.</p>
+
+<p>“It is little use to speak, since knowledge has somehow
+come your way,” he said. “I know of no drugs, but the
+Lady Liadan lived as in a trance when I was let see her.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</span>
+I was told it was a love sickness and that life was hateful.
+To me she said nothing but that she was a shamed maid,
+and that the man had sailed on the seas, and away from
+her.”</p>
+
+<p>“She sees no man but you. Is she growing more weak
+as the days go?”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” said the cleric with the first straight look, “she
+has slept well, and smiles now—and her maids no longer
+fear for her.”</p>
+
+<p>“When did this begin?”</p>
+
+<p>“It is strange to tell it, but the day of the battle with
+the Northmen was the day she changed. A swoon came
+on her, when the woman Moria died, but when she waked
+from it the trance look was gone. No fear of the battle
+touched her, so the women say. She is pale as a primrose,
+but she smiles again, and the maids now gossip that she
+sings in her sleep.”</p>
+
+<p>“You tell more than you know, and you tell it straight,”
+said Flann. “She had lived under the black shadow of
+Moria of Slieve Mis until the life was smothered by that
+curse. When Moria died the shadow passed. Do you see,
+Kurithir?”</p>
+
+<p>“I see and I know,” said Kurithir. “She was seeking
+me that first day of freedom, and found me at the
+nightfall.”</p>
+
+<p>Aevil looked her scorn for the words she did not
+understand, and her look was black at Nealis of Desmond.</p>
+
+<p>“There is one other thing,” said Flann. “The mother of
+Liadan was known, and her race was known since Erinn
+had a name to it. But who was the first wife of Donal of
+Dun Conchinn?”</p>
+
+<p>Aevil arose, trembling with rage, and her eyes glaring
+down at him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Keep to your seat,” he said in the voice of a master.
+“I am to know these things and the reasons for them. A
+lady out of Spain was brought to these shores a bride in
+his youth, all are knowing that. But where is there some
+man or some woman to tell me when she died, and what
+of her children?”</p>
+
+<p>There was silence and the breathing of Aevil could be
+heard as she leaned forward, her eyes on the cleric, and
+her hand slipping into the folds of her robe.</p>
+
+<p>“I—I was not here at that time,” he said, stammering.</p>
+
+<p>“But you have seen records, you know?”</p>
+
+<p>“It—is true. I—”</p>
+
+<p>No more than that was said when Aevil leaped forward
+with a slender Spanish dagger crashing for his throat, but
+Flann was quick, and caught her arm. She struggled and
+fought, but he shook her as he would a rat and flung her
+to the floor, where she lay senseless.</p>
+
+<p>“The dagger is a dainty toy and useful,” he said. “It
+was perhaps for me she carried it.” Then he turned to the
+wounded and trembling man, “Go on, tell it as you
+meant to.”</p>
+
+<p>“She knows,” he said, looking down on Aevil in her rich
+robes and braided pearls. “The Spanish wife died, and
+died soon, without children. Moria was then what she
+always has been, full of one thought only, and that for her
+daughter here. Donal himself had fear of her, and made
+promises to her and kept them.</p>
+
+<p>“But when men looked on Liadan they did not forget
+her. She came before Aevil, despite the beauty of Aevil,
+and of that the troubles began, and many of them. It was
+jealousy first, and after that there is no knowing what it
+was, but it has brought terror, and it has brought grief
+to this roof.”</p>
+
+<p>“Write this as you have told it,” said Flann, “and call<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</span>
+the maids to look after the daughter of Moria. See that a
+guard is at her chamber door, and no more toys like this to
+play with.”</p>
+
+<p>Then he turned to his friend.</p>
+
+<p>“There will be no shadow between you ever again,” he
+said. “You have been shown all the reasons.”</p>
+
+<p>“There can be no more shadows,” said Kurithir, and
+thought he spoke truly. He followed Flann through the
+hall, and to the grianan on the south wall; from there a
+troop of horsemen were seen lounging in the shadow, and
+four more with furnishings for women riders.</p>
+
+<p>“It looks a holiday for gay gallants,” said Kurithir, but
+Flann had no smile; he strode to the door and threw it
+open.</p>
+
+<p>The grianan was no longer the lightsome ladies’ chamber
+for broideries or games or music. An altar was there,
+and candles lit, and four nuns knelt where a priest recited
+a prayer, and their voices responded.</p>
+
+<p>One voice out of the others pierced the heart of Kurithir,
+and he broke from his friend and called out in love,
+but the priest stepped between, and the eldest nun threw
+a gray veil over the primrose face he knew.</p>
+
+<p>“Liadan!” he cried.</p>
+
+<p>“Kurithir!”</p>
+
+<p>She drew the veil aside, and the two lovers looked long
+at each other. But even with love in her eyes she put out
+her hand.</p>
+
+<p>“It is for life, Kurithir,” she said.</p>
+
+<p>“I have come for you!”</p>
+
+<p>“Flann, my brother, tell him!” she said.</p>
+
+<p>“I knew of this,” said Flann, “but had hope to outride
+the ending of it. This is why Aevil met us in queenly
+circlet and royal robes at sunrise to flaunt before Liadan
+a final magnificence.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</span></p>
+
+<p>“We are here to guard a new sister on the way to sanctuary
+of Clonfert,” said the priest. “From this day she
+has no life in the world. Men are her brothers, women
+her sisters. There are no other human bonds for her.”</p>
+
+<p>“But there are bonds not human, yet between two mortals,”
+said Kurithir. “I have gone through hell to learn that
+truly, and have sailed far over deep seas to bring the word
+to her.”</p>
+
+<p>“It cannot be said here,” said the priest. “You are
+doing sacrilege in your speech. You disturb the spirit of
+her on her path to Paradise. You to your confessor for
+penance, and abide by his ruling!”</p>
+
+<p>“Penance will I welcome for her sake,” said Kurithir,
+“and some brotherhood will I find to give right of converse
+with this, my friend. For that I will wear the robe
+and go into silence forever after.”</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes were on his as she passed out the portal
+between the two nuns, and the look in her eyes was the look
+of the nights on the sea. Yet there was question in that
+look, and a wistful question.</p>
+
+<p>Flann bade them farewell in the stead of Aevil, and
+watched them cross the plain into the forest.</p>
+
+<p>“The evil magic of Moria lives on, even though her
+body is dead,” he said. “It was she put into the head of
+Donal this business of sanctuary—and Aevil helped as
+she might, until this is the end.”</p>
+
+<p>Kurithir was silent, thrilled by that look, and dazed
+with the temptings to follow after, to take her and reach
+the sea and some land of foreign men, even though all
+the bells of Erinn rang their curses on him.</p>
+
+<p>“Did you mean that as to wearing the robe of a brotherhood?”
+asked Flann.</p>
+
+<p>“I would do more for one day of converse out of life
+with her,” said Kurithir.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</span></p>
+
+<p>That night he abode with Flann, and when the late stars
+were going into the west, she came as on the sea and
+crept between his arms, and lay silent there.</p>
+
+<p>No songs were between them that night and no words.
+She rested like a tired bird after long wanderings, and in
+the morning he told Flann of how it was between them.</p>
+
+<p>“She will walk free in a walled garden,” he said. “Peace
+she has and no fear, and in the Dun of Conchinn she had
+many and strange fears, and of them she would speak to
+me, and not in dreams.”</p>
+
+<p>“I am believing your word,” said Flann. “No other
+man could, but I saw <em>the look</em>. In all of life I will see
+nothing again like that. My feet are on the earth, and my
+cares are of earthly things.”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_16" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/a.jpg" alt="A" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">A runner from the castle of the kings came to
+Flann at the breaking of fast, and he opened the
+seals of the tablet, and read, and took Nealis the
+cleric, and went to the chamber of Aevil.</p>
+
+<p>“Daughter of Moria,” he said, “the dower of a daughter
+of Donal shall be your portion. It goes with you for gifts
+to whichever holy home of cloistered women you may
+choose from out all Erinn.”</p>
+
+<p>She crested her head like a dark serpent, and her eyes
+were points of jet with jeweled disks on the band above
+them.</p>
+
+<p>“My Spanish blade is not in my holding else there
+would be another man than you in line for the crown of
+Hugh,” she said. “You would wall me from the world
+that the grayling rhymer come to you at last. Late it is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</span>
+for that—and she under veil! All bells of church in Erinn
+would ring to damn you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Liadan is not in this, nor can be,” he said. “You go
+to a cloister for a dagger stroke to a churchman, with
+thought to silence his speech in death. You could be
+killed like a wolf for that, and no one to make further question.
+But Liadan wears the veil to pray for sinners, and
+she would not have wish that you die in such sin as you
+have known. You go also into cloister lest you bring to
+birth a thing of poison such as your mother bred. You are
+of the women who know lusts, but not love, and such
+should not be breeding.”</p>
+
+<p>“What then of the love of that grayling?” she asked in
+mock. “What is the thing it breeds in men?”</p>
+
+<p>“Its breeding will last while speech of Erinn lasts—and
+after! Liadan’s is the mystical soul. Aengus of the
+white birds is the priest to hear her confessings. His is
+the key to unlock gates for Liadan where your feet and
+my feet may not walk.”</p>
+
+<p>Then while she brooded there Flann turned to Nealis
+the cleric.</p>
+
+<p>“To you the records of this,” he said, “and let me
+not hear even the name of cloister she is choosing. It
+is the daughter of Moria who enters that silence, and is
+not the wife of Flann. See you to that—and your life
+and her life to answer if there is mis-writing in this rule
+of mine!”</p>
+
+<p>Aevil, glooming, took her last throw of the dice of
+fate.</p>
+
+<p>“To the ears of Hugh the king this may go on a day to
+be,” she said, “and he may make other ruling against an
+heir of his.”</p>
+
+<p>“The king of Erinn has no heir,” said Flann, “and when
+the time comes, it is a clean woman he will be choosing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</span>
+for the mother of heirs. That is a riddle for your
+reading.”</p>
+
+<p>But she read it quickly and stood up, and cried aloud.</p>
+
+<p>“He is dead then—dead at last! And <em>you</em> are the
+king!”</p>
+
+<p>“Since the sun of yesterday went down, I am king,”
+said Flann. “I go now for the seat of the king, and the
+taking of the white rod.”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a_15" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/a.jpg" alt="A" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Aevil, daughter of the dark woman, took from her
+hair the gold circlet she was pleased of her pride to
+wear, and trampled it under foot in her rage at the
+thing she had coveted and had lost. She knew no record
+would be writ into the annals of Flann to show that when
+he was only a prince, and had gay journeys for his pleasure,
+he had ever taken to wife a daughter of Donal of
+Slieve Mis.</p>
+
+<p>But of Kurithir there were records, for there was grief
+on Erinn when he put aside the music of the world and
+took a monk’s robe for the cover of his youth.</p>
+
+<p>And the day of days came to him when he earned
+indulgence of his confessor, Cummine, son of Fiancha, to
+talk apart in the walled garden, and the converse to be of
+things spiritual with a noble woman, and a youth between
+them as was custom with mortals in sanctuary.</p>
+
+<p>And there Liadan came to him, and his hands touched
+hers after the long days.</p>
+
+<p>“O Heart of me,” she said, “twice have I made earthly
+tryst with Kurithir, and this time he is keeping it!”</p>
+
+<p>“And the May roses in bloom, and the thrush again<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</span>
+singing,” he said. “Speak again, speak, Liadan! It is
+long we have whispered in the nights apart, and now you
+are in my touch, and I would hear your living voice,
+Liadan.”</p>
+
+<p>“Kurithir, Kurithir, Kurithir!” she said. “There has
+been no music like your name written in my heart.”</p>
+
+<p>“Your harp is with me. I mended the strings, and the
+wind plays on them in the nights in my window, Liadan.”</p>
+
+<p>“I know,” she said, “and I wrote ‘love’ in <i>ogham</i> on
+the frame of your harp, and you only found it there when
+you came back from the sea.”</p>
+
+<p>“That is true,” he said, “and you knowing it! You are
+in the likeness of a flower, Liadan, yet are you strong as
+mortals are not strong, and you found strong ways to come
+to me over ocean.”</p>
+
+<p>“I was dying that time, Kurithir, and the death shadow
+was on me for the shame that you thought my tryst song
+of evil boldness. The dark woman had sent me in sleeps
+to vision for her the unseen things, and when her bonds
+on me were loosed, your bonds drew me, and I found
+the way to you. You were the stronger then, Kurithir.”</p>
+
+<p>“Liadan! Liadan! We have only this day.”</p>
+
+<p>“Kurithir, we have all the days forever, Kurithir!”</p>
+
+<p>The sun went behind the world, and the birds called to
+each their vesper song, and the moon of May grew warm
+through the dusk, and the youth walked in the shadows
+while Liadan lay in the arms of Kurithir. Their litanies
+of love were murmured there, and ever the wonder that
+their souls had found the way of meeting.</p>
+
+<p>“You were the mystic rose, O Kurithir. The fragrance
+led me through the deep to you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, sweetest bloom! There was no fragrance on the
+sea till you were bringing it.”</p>
+
+<p>“You heard the music, too, O Kurithir?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</span></p>
+
+<p>“With my lips on your rose-leaf body I was hearing it
+all the nights. You brought it there.”</p>
+
+<p>“It was like this—the clasp thrill of your hand.”</p>
+
+<p>“It was like this—the yearning of my mouth.”</p>
+
+<p>“Sweet dream—O Kurithir!”</p>
+
+<p>“It was like this—O Liadan!”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_18" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/t.jpg" alt="T" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">The moon went down, and the stars of dawn broke on
+the world, and a veiled woman who had once
+dreamed of Erinn’s crown stood watching two
+sleeping lovers in the convent garden. A youth crept from
+the shadows at sound of her step, and lifted the discarded
+veil of Liadan.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke, and the lovers wakened and smiled at the
+waking, and at the dear closeness of the other, but Liadan
+cowered in the arms of Kurithir at glimpse of the mocking
+eyes of the watching woman.</p>
+
+<p>“Is it even to a cloistered garden that Aengus, god of
+Youth Dreams, brings you the key for soul mysteries,
+O Liadan of Kurithir?” she asked.</p>
+
+<p>“The Liadan of Kurithir is a new name to me and a
+proud one, sister. Shadow there may be on it, but no
+shame.”</p>
+
+<p>“By the Elements, you dare it well, grayling, and well
+your lover! It may be the prior and the abbess can give
+vouchings for you.”</p>
+
+<p>Cummine came to them there at the bidding of
+Aevil, and shouted holy wrath at sight of the veil of
+Liadan.</p>
+
+<p>“It was not told me that a veiled woman was the friend<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</span>
+he would converse with in this sanctuary,” he said. “This
+is a shame beyond words to both our houses—and beyond
+penance.”</p>
+
+<p>“I could kill you here, Liadan, before their hands touch
+your sweet body, Liadan,” whispered her lover. But she
+shook her head and took her veil from the youth.</p>
+
+<p>“In that way we might lose each other in some dread
+darkness, Kurithir,” she said. “But now we will never
+lose each other. Give me sweet farewell, O Kurithir.”</p>
+
+<p>“Liadan—O Liadan!”</p>
+
+<p>“Kurithir!”</p>
+
+<p>They bound him there and took him away for slow torturings
+and penance in a stone cell of the “Solitary Ones”
+on whom silence is put forever.</p>
+
+<p>They stripped her in shame that she might walk in only
+her winding-sheet of the grave, and that walk was nightly,
+and her slender bare feet on the rough stones to the place
+of tombs. Before all the line of cloistered women she
+walked thus until the stones of the way were red from
+her bleeding feet.</p>
+
+<p>After that they took her to a stone cell at the edge of
+the forest where holy women might not soil their eyes on
+her. Only her confessor and a poor lay sister came to her
+window there. She was under penance of silence, and
+writing-tablets were hers for speech.</p>
+
+<p>She wrote prayers on the tablets, and she wrote confessions.
+There were times when she wrote poems.</p>
+
+<p>The years left no trace of age on her—she was ever the
+primrose face of May. Marvels grew up around her
+because of that—and because of other mysteries.</p>
+
+<p>At a time when the Danish raiders were stealing up the
+Sionan to the heart of the land, Kurithir wrote the number
+of their vessels and the number of their shields ere they
+had fared as far as Killaloe from the sea. When questioned,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</span>
+and told to speak, he asked that Flann, king of
+Erinn, be sent a warning and gather shields, for Liadan,
+of the cell in the forest, had seen them coming, and asked
+him in the night to send word to Flann the king.</p>
+
+<p>When the men of Flann took the battle path and proved
+the truth of it by a battle with the foreigners, and brought
+back slaves and many spears, Flann himself rode to Clonfert
+and talked with the abbot there, and silence was lifted
+from Liadan and from Kurithir.</p>
+
+<p>The son of a dead prince of Tormond was being disciplined
+at that time for the reason that he wished to revoke
+the gift of his life to the cloisters. The gift had been made
+by his kindred when he was a child, and was not binding
+on his soul. He had been with the spearmen for the
+defense against the Danes, and there was a wound in his
+shoulder, and he talked as prince to prince with King
+Flann.</p>
+
+<p>“Since my days of a child I have lived this life, and the
+schools of it delight me,” he said. “I have joy in the
+work of the annals and their making. I may come back in
+gladness to cloisters when the snow is on my hair, but they
+call me ‘God’s Dastard’ for the reason that I would walk
+free into the world in my youth to win what youth may
+win.”</p>
+
+<p>“It was not always so with him,” said his confessor
+darkly. “There was a time indeed when he was quite
+content.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, when I was a child,” said the soldier-monk, but
+his face went white and he looked elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>“Come, tell me of it,” said Flann, and walked away with
+him.</p>
+
+<p>“You are a man and not a monk, Flann, and I can
+speak. I was a child here—it is not so long ago. I saw
+the love-night of Liadan and Kurithir.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</span></p>
+
+<p>Flann looked at him and the tears were thick in his
+eyes for the penance done for that one night of a May
+moon.</p>
+
+<p>“Then you saw that which was holy, for there was no
+evil ever in the soul of Liadan,” he said. “You will come
+to my castle and make books as you will, or range free
+where you will. I heard of the hard penance given to that
+lad to force his speech of that night.”</p>
+
+<p>“The scourgings were given, and were heavy,” said the
+youth, “but the speech they did not get.”</p>
+
+<p>Flann took the youth away with him and later placed
+him back at the head of the province where his jealous
+kindred were dividing his goods and his lands.</p>
+
+<p>So, by this and by that, Flann left trace of the heart-faith
+he gave to Liadan, and to his friend who had the love
+of her.</p>
+
+<p>He lived as a king lives, and took to wife Maelmara, the
+queen of Hugh Finnlaith, who had no knowings of druid
+power or of jealous loves, and children grew around them
+to strengthen their bond.</p>
+
+<p>But when the Night of nights was come to Liadan and
+Kurithir, and their souls met at last tryst, and did not
+come again to either body, it was Flann the king who did
+them honor. It was by his will that the building of their
+tomb was at the cell of Liadan in the edge of the forest
+where the thrushes sang.</p>
+
+<p>It was also Flann the king who had their poems of love
+writ on fine vellum, and set in a golden, gem-crested casket,
+that the memory of Liadan might live.</p>
+
+<p>But in the wreckage made by wars and plunderings of
+the men of Lochland the treasure books and annals of
+beauty were wrested from many a castle and monastery,
+and stripped of their cases of silver, and pale gold, and
+copper into which jewels were craftily set. Among such<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</span>
+plunder of priceless worth fell the royal gifts of Flann
+the king, whose memorial slab at Cluain-mac-noise is a
+wonder of beauty after the passing of a thousand years.</p>
+
+<p>And of the veiled poet-maid whose soul he saw rightly,
+there has come down through the centuries only fragments
+of her love lines, and among them her wistful unashamed
+confession:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>I am Liadan</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Who loved Kurithir,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>It is true as they say.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<figure class="chapterseparator">
+  <img class="illowp25" src="images/i034.jpg" alt="Decorative chapter separator">
+</figure>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i141" style="max-width: 118.6875em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i141.jpg" alt="DERVAIL NAN CIAR">
+</figure>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</span></p>
+<figure class="figcenter illowp59" id="i142" style="max-width: 119.4375em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i142.jpg" alt="Musical score: March of Battles, Eleventh Century.">
+</figure>
+<p class="musicTitle">March of Battles</p>
+<p class="i">Eleventh Century</p>
+<p class="center music"><audio controls><source src="music/i142_music_correctedf.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
+Audio content is not currently supported on your device.</audio>
+<span class="xml">[<a href="music/i142_music_correctedf.mxl">MusicXML</a>]</span></p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" style="margin-bottom:0em;" id="DERVAIL_NAN_CIAR">DERVAIL NAN CIAR</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-bottom:2em;">(Dervail of the Shadow)</p>
+
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/biga.jpg" alt="A" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Ardan, the fosterling of Donough O’Carroll,
+King of Orielle, watched with
+longing the carving of the stone as leaf,
+and bud, and traceries grew under the
+precious tools of Brother Cormac for the
+new temple to God and Mary.</p>
+
+<p>“To me the doing of that work would
+be dearer than to wear robe and circlet of the king,” he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>“The cowl of a monk to you if cold stone contents your
+youth,” said Cormac. “Hard and cold it is. The crown of
+a king means warm robes, and warm cherishing on snowy
+nights, and—and all the other comforts a king can command.
+Go you to your verse-making and folly. Your
+head is o’er soft if you would trade a king’s crown for a
+mason’s tool—and neither crown nor trowel yours for the
+trading!”</p>
+
+<p>“But to dream beauty and then form it out of the stone—that
+is to be as one of the <i>Daoine sidhe</i>” (Gods of the
+earth).</p>
+
+<p>“You will burn in hell if you believe in the pagan ancient
+gods; not even must their names be said. To make
+speech of them calls them near.”</p>
+
+<p>Then Cormac crossed himself, and muttered a bit of the
+lorica of Phadraig the Saint, and looked at the lad whose<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</span>
+face had a pale dark beauty, and whose gray eyes looked
+black under heavy lashes.</p>
+
+<p>“Take clay and make your dreams,” said Cormac at
+last. “If well mixed the mud will take all shapes. What
+are we all but the dust of the earth?”</p>
+
+<p>“It is not in mud I see dreams,” said Ardan, “but you
+give me a thought, O Cormac!”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_17" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/t.jpg" alt="T" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">The white snow of the past night lay, rose-tinted,
+under the path of the early sun, and, singing low
+to himself, Ardan began to gather the whiteness on
+a great slab of gray stone near the south wall.</p>
+
+<p>“It will not be mud of which I build my dreams, good
+Cormac.”</p>
+
+<p>The monk watched him idly for a while, and then tossed
+to him a trowel from among the tools of the builders.</p>
+
+<p>“It will take no harm from the snow,” he said, “and
+will save your hands. But make your play quick, for the
+sun travels north to bring the end of the cold moons.”</p>
+
+<p>“You mean he comes to wake Cethair, spirit king of the
+forest, out of his winter’s sleep,” said Ardan. “Cethair
+but breathes over the fields, and all the snows melt, and all
+of leaf and bloom comes out for his carpet of green
+fragrance.”</p>
+
+<p>“There is no king but King of Heaven and Turlough,
+Ard-Ri of Erinn—our own kings of Leinster and Orielle,
+and such,” said Cormac, but Ardan was deep in his new
+play and had no words of argument. Once Cormac looked
+and saw he had set upright a slender straight sapling of
+yew in the packed snow of the slab, and once he noted that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</span>
+the hands of Ardan stripped from the sapling all but two
+branches reaching out east and west as the arms of a cross,
+and after that Cormac carved at stone traceries, well satisfied
+that the fosterling of King Donough was, after all, but
+making a holy thing.</p>
+
+<p>That was a comforting thought to the good Cormac,
+who had love for the lad who was known only as Ardan
+of Ardbreccan, and whose stay near them had not been so
+long. He had been the ward of the holy and learned
+O’Cahsahde of Ardbreccan, where his childhood had been
+lived between gray walls, and under the great oaks’ shade.
+At death of that holy man, who was called “Dall Clairineach”
+and known of all scholars, his ward Ardan, with
+wealth and comfort, was left to King Donough with instruction
+that he was the son of a mother whose dying
+hope had been that sheltered holiness be his share in life;
+and no more was known of him than that.</p>
+
+<p>But his breeding spoke of gentle blood, and Maureen the
+queen made choice of him for comradeship with her own
+children, and her own maidens in the garden games, and
+the gracious sweetness of him won its own way in king’s
+palace or monastery walls.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a_16" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/i.jpg" alt="I" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">In the shadow of the wall he made his snow form—that
+the rays of gold of the sun not melt the white of
+it; and Donough O’Carroll of Orielle, and Diarmod
+of Leinster, his overlord, passed that way and spoke of the
+handsome boy and his destiny, for the work he did made
+him look like a monk, and his father had been known only
+to the holy Dall Clairineach of Ardbreccan, where many<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</span>
+sons of princes wore the robe of scholarship and holy
+sanctity.</p>
+
+<p>The two kings went their way, and Cormac was called
+by Duighal the prior to another place, and the boy was
+forgot by all, and the snow image was not seen by any
+until the morning after, golden lances of the sun touching
+it when coming first over the edge of the green sea.</p>
+
+<p>And then, at sight of it, Cormac the monk cried out in
+awe, and his cry called others from the chapel.</p>
+
+<p>Duighal the prior was there, and the two kings were
+there and Ardan stood in the shadow of the wall in a queer
+trembling of joy—and mayhaps some hunger, for he had
+worked till the setting of the moon, as in a trance, fasting.</p>
+
+<p>“Is it a miracle of Brighde, the Foster Mother of God,
+as the blessed mantle was given her?” muttered the prior,
+and others thought it Mary, Queen of the Elements. But
+Diarmod the king stood beside Donough and stroked his
+dark beard, and his eyes shot green fire.</p>
+
+<p>“A miracle it may be, holy father,” he said, “but the
+miracle is in the gift given the mortal hand placing it there.
+Where is the Ardbreccan fosterling who heaped up the
+snow on this slab but yesterday?”</p>
+
+<p>Cormac the carver of stone pushed forward Ardan,
+whose teeth chattered as he knelt under the eyes of all
+the brethren and the two kings.</p>
+
+<p>“This is the lad, your royalty; always he is making the
+coaxing word for my edged tools that are not for a child.
+It is true I tossed him a trowel yesterday, but this thing
+of whiteness with jeweled robe of dewdrops could not have
+been formed by mortal hand and mason’s blade.”</p>
+
+<p>“Speak, if you did it,” said Diarmod of Leinster.</p>
+
+<p>“Of snow I did it with a tool cut from wood. In the
+light of the moon I worked on the mantle with clear water
+from the well. The freezing water there made the jeweled<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</span>
+fringes to the robe—it was no miracle, O King, and I will
+do penance that I made the thing on consecrated ground.
+The fever took me to work, and I asked no permit.”</p>
+
+<p>“You need ask none forever in Leinster,” said Diarmod.
+“Rise up to walk where you will in our domain, and work
+when you will.”</p>
+
+<p>There was a buzzing as of bees among the monks who
+looked at the lad and at the white limbs of the snow creature,
+tip-toe with wide-spread arms like a bird lifting for
+flight. The mantle of it spread from wrist to wrist across
+head and shoulders and hung truly like jeweled wings in the
+early risen sun, but the white breasts and limbs and
+body were bare against the mantle save for the girdle
+of maidenhood.</p>
+
+<p>The prior Duighal was the one with a frowning face at
+the words of Diarmod, and he looked from the king to the
+white wonder, and then to the faces of the monks, bent
+and shifty-eyed as they glanced sideways at each other,
+and then at the white snow of the round breasts.</p>
+
+<p>“Penance for all whose eyes are smitten by the sight!”
+he thundered. “This is no holy thing—no white picture
+of saint: it is the work of the Evil Father forming temptation!
+What wench has bared herself for you that you
+know the way of that?”</p>
+
+<p>His staff was lifted as in threat above Ardan, who gazed,
+round-eyed, at the faces of the monks, and the holy fury of
+their shepherd. Donough O’Carroll stepped between the
+lifted crook and the builder of the mystery.</p>
+
+<p>“Look again, holy father,” he said. “The boy has not
+been tempted; that understanding is elsewhere.”</p>
+
+<p>“My word with Donough,” said Diarmod. “The lad
+says he worked in a fever a day and a night—”</p>
+
+<p>“And fasting, too, your royalty,” said Cormac.</p>
+
+<p>“And fasting, too,” said Diarmod. “Look at him: it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</span>
+might be words of foreign tribes we speak for all he understands.
+Look at him! It was only a game of chance that
+he formed a virgin maid instead of a white bull—or a
+white fawn of the forest.”</p>
+
+<p>“But the bulls roam the hills uncloaked,” said Donough
+O’Carroll with a laugh; “so also does the fawn and its
+dam. Speak, lad—we know it was no wench came to you
+here in the cold of the night—and to a wench no girdle
+would be given. How got you that mystery as you got it?
+This is sanctuary—you can speak.”</p>
+
+<p>Ardan stared at the listeners like a trapped thing, and
+then knelt before Donough.</p>
+
+<p>“I am under bonds as a son to you—and I meant no
+evil. I have the mind dark on your meanings. I crave
+your pardon, and the pardon of your queen for her fosterling.
+It was at the bathing pool in the summer time.
+Her maidens were in the water, and like that she stood
+tip-toe on the high stone at the pool’s margin. Like a bird
+with wide wings she stood ere the mantle slid from her
+shoulder. Proud she stood, and I from the thick green
+of the other shore saw her thus—more of beauty in her
+than snow and ice can tell! I went deep into the forest
+that day—lest they see me and deem me a spy on their
+pleasure-place. That is all, O Donough! If I have done a
+wrong deed, I ask to atone to the priests and to the maid.”</p>
+
+<p>“Her name has not yet been spoke,” said Donough,
+and Diarmod made a quick step forward and laid his hand
+on the head of Ardan.</p>
+
+<p>“To your feet,” he said. “Is there name to a living
+maid for the double of that? Is there a name?”</p>
+
+<p>Ardan turned his gaze from the eager king to Donough,
+and then to the frowning prior.</p>
+
+<p>“If it might be spoke in another place?” he plead, but
+the prior lifted the staff.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Here in this place where the evil thing was wrought,”
+he thundered, “here begins your penance with open confession
+before all!”</p>
+
+<p>Ardan turned to Donough O’Carroll.</p>
+
+<p>“If first I could speak of the word to you alone?” he said.</p>
+
+<p>But Donough laughed at the pleading, and lived to know
+sorrow of the heart for that laughing.</p>
+
+<p>“As you have shown her breasts and her body to us,
+give us the name.”</p>
+
+<p>“But—let me entreat—”</p>
+
+<p>“The name, lad, the name! What is she called?”</p>
+
+<p>“She is called—Dervail.”</p>
+
+<p>The voice of him went low as the breath-whisper. Yet
+it was too loud for Donough, whose face was thunder-black
+and threatening.</p>
+
+<p>The prior heard and turned on the monks, with words of
+censure for hearkening, and his orders brought them to
+heel like a pack of hunting hounds on the wrong trail.</p>
+
+<p>Diarmod heard, and his eyes, with the strange green
+fire, narrowed as he looked at King Donough.</p>
+
+<p>“What sweet hidden thing have you put away for holidays,
+good friend?” he asked. “The lad only spoke in
+whisper, yet the sound of it echoes among you like a
+thunder-clap in the hills.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is not hidden by choice of mine, Diarmod,” and the
+voice of Donough had the gloom on it. “We will to break
+fast and then—”</p>
+
+<p>“The lad at our table for the food!” decided Diarmod.
+“Look not so down, lad, because you held beauty in your
+mind more close than most of us. The monks today dare
+not bury you alive as they once did to sinners. Their forbears
+would have left you pinned to the earth for a smaller
+thing than a naked virgin in their cloister—even the prior
+will have dreams tonight!”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</span></p>
+
+<p>Then he walked around the white figure to see the solid
+backing of the cloak to the slender body, and smiled at the
+craft of it. The mystery of it was going, yet he glanced
+from under his brows at the lad, and had wonder.</p>
+
+<p>“Lucky for me that I abode the night with you,
+Donough O’Carroll, else would I have missed this in life,”
+he said, “and no man can hope to see it twice. This will
+be a melting day, and the wind has turned: it comes the
+sea-way since the dawn.”</p>
+
+<p>“The sea-way,” said Ardan, “the eastern sea-way—the
+path of sorrows.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why do you give that word?” asked Donough O’Carroll,
+staring at him.</p>
+
+<p>“I have no knowing why I spoke it,” said Ardan. “I
+thought I heard it somewhere. And look you! It is true:
+I fasted and half froze to build that while the joy of building
+was with me—and like a white jewel it was when the
+sun touched it this morn. But the sun ray is gone, and
+the wind of the east brings the melting with it, and the
+jewels of the mantle are dripping tears already—tears!
+I should have wrought with metal tools in stronger stuff.”</p>
+
+<p>Cormac had come back with a stout, long stave under
+orders of the prior, and stood waiting in courtesy the going
+of the two kings.</p>
+
+<p>“Go you to your food, lad,” he said kindly; “the tools
+you shall have at need. But go you, for your fasting gives
+you the sight of things you know nought of at all! The
+Hidden People of the Ancient Days are putting speech on
+you; go to food, and drink, and human thoughts.”</p>
+
+<p>“I would rather do that,” said Ardan. “I had the Dream
+of things with me when I built this, and my heart would
+sorrow to watch the white of it melt gray in its own tears.
+She is still the white bird tip-toe for flight!”</p>
+
+<p>Donough O’Carroll looked at Ardan as if he was seeing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</span>
+him for the first time in life, and Diarmod the king tore
+himself from the gazing, and strode beside Donough with
+the swing of the man who had found things easy in life.</p>
+
+<p>“Diarmod MacMurrough, have you given heed to the
+words you have heard beside that white wonder image?”
+asked Donough.</p>
+
+<p>“I have that. Some of the words are as full of wonder
+as the image itself,” said Diarmod.</p>
+
+<p>“Take them to your remembrance then, for no idle words
+were said there. That boy had the right knowing, and was
+right in his silence, but I made him speak. It is my grief.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is no grief of mine,” said Diarmod, and laughed as
+one who holds his own thoughts.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_19" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/a.jpg" alt="A" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">At the angle where the path narrowed to the portal,
+Donough, in courtesy to his overlord, stepped a pace
+aside and behind. A sound came to him of wood
+striking on wood, and he looked back, and he was glad the
+lad was making reply to some asking of the king, and did
+not see the thing he saw.</p>
+
+<p>Cormac was doing well his task: the white wings were
+shattered, and the slender white body broken. There was
+nothing left of the Dream but the dark cross of the young
+yew tree dripping drearily against the gray stone of the
+wall. The wind from the east carried the melting mist
+with it, and there was no longer any sight of the sun
+anywhere.</p>
+
+<p>Donough O’Carroll went into his house that day with a
+heavy gloom on his face—a strange gloom for one shown
+honor by his overlord.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</span></p>
+
+<p>The woman who loved him looked her amaze that he
+put aside the bread she offered, and called first for the
+wine at morningtide.</p>
+
+<p>“Let be, Maureen,” he said, and spoke to her lowly.
+“Take your heed of our friends if I limp lacking in courtesy
+this day. I feel ‘fey’ with some happenings of the
+morn, and would that you send best messenger and swiftest
+horse for Kieran Dall of the caves. The king must be
+told some truths and some sayings. And it must be a holy
+man, and a wise one for the telling.”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_18" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/t.jpg" alt="T" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">The coming of Kieran Dall was at the nightfall, and
+the O’Carroll had a day of fever and fuming with
+his overlord who had moods of haste for the thing
+he wanted.</p>
+
+<p>“Why should the name of a strange maid so witch your
+thoughts from Mor na Tuathal and the daughters of
+princes?” asked Donough, and Diarmod laughed his happy
+laugh by which hearts had been won.</p>
+
+<p>“Why should the lad who knows not love have made
+her his Dream? Answer me that, and you will have your
+own answer! What put silence on the monks when her
+name was spoke? There are mysteries in it, and riddles
+are sometimes witchery.”</p>
+
+<p>“Mine is not the telling of the riddle, but it will be told
+for you,” said Donough.</p>
+
+<p>When the supper was over, and only the two kings and
+the blind monk called Kieran Dall were in the great room
+which was for private and secret things, their talk began.</p>
+
+<p>“It is for a curious thing I have sent for you, O Kieran,”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</span>
+said Donough of Orielle. “With me is my friend, a hunter
+from the south. He is a MacMurrough, and I want him
+by my side when I hear the story of the maid called
+Dervail nan Ciar.”</p>
+
+<p>“That maid is of your fostering, since the death of
+Ethnea your sister, to God her soul! She is called the
+ward, or the daughter, of Murtagh of Meath—is Dervail
+of the Shadow. Beauty was hers by birth, and wealth is
+hers by a dower of fear. Of that you should know somewhat,
+O’Donough, as you should know why the wife of
+Murtagh has fear of her and would give all wealth of the
+valley of the Boyne rather than have her under the roof
+of Meath. What new thing can a hermit of the caves have
+for your worldly knowing, O Donough, prince of Orielle?”
+said Kieran Dall.</p>
+
+<p>“It is not of the new I would hear—it is of the ancient
+old. It is of the prophecy; it is of the reason why that
+blood is feared and must not repeat itself in Erinn. It is
+the year and the time when she was to go from my castle
+to the walls of holy sanctuary, and the dower of fear to go
+with her.”</p>
+
+<p>Diarmod, stretched on a pile of wolf skins in the glint
+of the firelight, looked up and gave Donough a smile at
+that. But the sightless eyes of Kieran could not see the
+look, or the mockery of it.</p>
+
+<p>“True, it is the time,” said Kieran, “and the reason of
+it goes back to the dim old days when men who walked
+the world took mates ofttimes from the Hidden Tribes.
+Aye, that was the way of it more oft than in the days in
+which we live. The dark mist of the earth-mind was not
+so thick between us in them times, and there were other
+matings not to be spoken. Women of the sea and wolves
+from the forest have helped man bring forbidden lives—lives
+without souls—on the earth. The saints know it,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</span>
+and God knows it, and the tribes of that people have often
+strange evils in their blood.”</p>
+
+<p>There was silence while the blind eyes stared into the
+red ash as if seeing visions.</p>
+
+<p>“How far back can you be going into the dim days of
+that time?” asked Donough.</p>
+
+<p>“The mind can go far back on paths where speech must
+not follow,” said Kieran. “To give words to things gives
+power to them as well. To give names calls up the shadow—white
+or gray—of the soul that answered to it on earth.
+That is a true saying. And there are them not to be called
+back—the names going out in shadows! Under a like
+shade the child Dyveke Og, called Dervail, was born into
+Erinn. Her birthing belonged in another land, and not
+here—not here at all.</p>
+
+<p>“Among the druids of the dim days there were sacred
+things, sacred rules, and names, and priests who were
+kings. I am not naming the name of one, or the name of
+his tribe, but there was one who was Highest, who was
+given ‘the sight,’ yet the rules were broke by him, and
+broke for a woman who brought temptings. The name of
+that woman is not to be spoke, but she was a queen in her
+own tribe—and it was a tribe of the blood of the wolves of
+Alba. To Erinn she fled as for sanctuary—and brought
+her temptings. The madness of love she brought on that
+priest who was king, and he was netted by her as a fish is
+netted in a deep-sea net—and was borne by her kinsmen
+across the sea to their land. Her kinsmen were the barbarians
+of the east, and he was held by them as hostage
+while Erinn paid eric in skins of the deer and otter, and
+gold from the rivers of the west. That is how it was until
+a helot of Alba made way through their traps and their
+walls and brought the word to Erinn; and a sad word it
+was, for there was no truth in that people! The priest-king,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</span>
+netted through love, had neither feet, nor hands, nor
+eyes left to him. Their women tortured him, yet kept him
+alive as mockery of a king, for a king of Erinn must be
+without blemish. Speech was left him, and nothing else
+of a human was left him. He made a rune, and word by
+word the helot learned the words of it and brought it to
+Erinn. A long rune it was, too. And first of it was that
+no further eric was to go out of Erinn for him to the red
+brutes of the eastern shores. He alone, by his death there,
+would pay the price of his fall—but it was worth the summer
+and winter of torturings if he alone could pay for the
+lesson to Erinn, and to the men of Erinn. He laid on his
+own clan a heavy rule that by Sun and Moon, Earth and
+Air, Fire and Water, and the lives of their children, no
+bond of faith be made with the men of Alba, and no marriage
+with a woman of Alba, for the blood was not the
+blood of clean people, and the eyes of that people had no
+vision of clean faith in bonds of fealty.</p>
+
+<p>“In that rune he had the vision of the greatness of Erinn
+if tribe by tribe they made bonds only with each other for
+the glory of Inis Fohdla, which, even in far ancient days,
+was named that—the Isle of Destiny.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why is Erinn, in the ancient runes, called by that
+calling?” asked Donough.</p>
+
+<p>Kieran Dall shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>“I do not know. God knows! Men who named the
+stars called it by that name, and had ‘the sight.’ A land
+was given to the Hidden People, who were great people;
+they have not known death, yet have never left the land of
+Inis Fohdla. In the years ahead they will again have a
+birthing, and the hidden things of the wise are in their
+keeping until that day. For three centuries Erinn has
+been the school for the sons of Brythen and France, and
+other foreign people. The Dane invaders were driven<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</span>
+home by Brian of the Tributes, and Inis Fohdla pays
+tithing to no viking of the foreign in our day; it may happen
+that we are near to reading the riddle of Inis Fohdla
+and that naming; it may be so if the faith is kept in peace,
+and the rune of that king of the tortures be not lost again
+as it was lost by Cuan the Dark in the days I hold in
+memory.”</p>
+
+<p>“Who was Cuan the Dark?” asked Donough.</p>
+
+<p>“He was of the blood of that priest-king of the rune;
+he was also of my blood, but his own name is not spoke.
+He was of the sacred line into which no blood of the enemy
+must flow lest it bring the curse of a thousand years’
+helotage on Inis Fohdla.”</p>
+
+<p>There was silence as the slow words of the blind hermit
+sunk to the minds of the two kings.</p>
+
+<p>“A thousand years!” muttered Diarmod. “How could
+Erinn be held as tribute-payer for a thousand years to a
+king of the foreign? Thorgils and Ota the queen did hold
+the Sionan and many harbors, and the tax paid to the
+Danes was a heavy tax. But years more than one hundred
+are gone since there was taxing like that. How could it
+be coming again?”</p>
+
+<p>“I have not the sight for that,” said Kieran. “It was
+the prophecy, and the penalty spoken in the ancient rune
+if that line of the kings should take mates from the red-wolf
+women of Alba.”</p>
+
+<p>“But—it was of one line alone—one family—or one
+clan,” said Diarmod.</p>
+
+<p>“Aye—it was one alone, but that one was the sacred
+line of the priest-kings. Their rule was the rule for the
+men of the crown and the temple, and the people of lower
+rank would follow. It was before the time of christian
+men in Erinn. It would take more than the time of one
+winter night to tell you all the difference in minds and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</span>
+lives between that day and this day. But through all the
+changes the line of Cuan the Dark kept to the law of that
+rune—eight times one hundred years was the time it was
+held to and the line was clean, and the record of that line
+was proud.</p>
+
+<p>“And then?”</p>
+
+<p>“Then the young had the teaching that no thing could
+be truth but the truths spoke by the saints of the New
+God, though truth was in the world before Mary came to
+the birth.</p>
+
+<p>“Truth is truth for always, and even the pagans had
+many true things in their hearts. But the young are light
+of mind, and do not see these things. So it was with Cuan
+the Dark.</p>
+
+<p>“To Spain he sailed for a matter of import, and I was
+beside him. To the land of France we went, and I walked
+the lines of mighty Carnac, and thought of kindred wonders
+at Knocknarea in our own land. There were women
+everywhere, and they were the days of his youth, and he
+gave them love, and good-will, and farewell! So it was
+with us, and home he sailed, glad and free of heart; and it
+was here in Erinn he met that trial he was to meet. He
+broke the geis laid on his line, and on his birth, when he
+looked on Dyveke the Dove, child of Gorm, son of Knud
+of the rath of Knud.</p>
+
+<p>“The mother of Dyveke had been a woman out of Alba,
+blue of eyes and flaming of hair, and in her own land she
+had been to the front with her kinsmen in battle. But
+Gorm the Dane had his way with her and stole her to sail
+the seas with him, as was well-fitting, for each was of a
+tribe drinking from skulls at their joy-feasts, and fierce
+alike in their lovings.</p>
+
+<p>“Sons they had, but they never kept life long; that fierce
+mother held her strength for her own passions. There<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</span>
+was a saying for that among the Danes. Then Dyveke
+came to birth, and the mother went out of life. It may be
+there were fairer things on earth than Dyveke; but I never
+saw them.</p>
+
+<p>“Dyveke means ‘dove’ in the wording of her father,
+Gorm, and no breast of dove was whiter, and no flight of
+dove had more of grace—and no love-call of a dove had
+more of music than her voice.</p>
+
+<p>“From her grianan she smiled down with look of longing
+on Cuan the Dark, who sat on his black racer below, and
+the madness came on him there for that look and for that
+woman—and the madness stayed.</p>
+
+<p>“None of his elders was there—I alone who knew the
+geis was there—the <i>geis</i> every son of our line was bondman
+to.</p>
+
+<p>“But he was deaf to my words when she spoke!</p>
+
+<p>“A noble of the Danes named Thorold had heard, in the
+far north, of the beauty of her, and came with gifts and
+with offers. She took his gifts and gave him love looks as
+she gave to Cuan the Dark. The boats of Thorold the
+Dane were anchored in the bay, and the word went out
+that it would be with Thorold she would sail as wife.</p>
+
+<p>“That was the day Cuan the Dark changed to a wild
+thing showing his teeth—the girl Dyveke had looked
+love on him, and he had that madness.</p>
+
+<p>“I made him listen to the record of the ancient horror
+when a woman of Alban birth had brought death in life
+to a prince of his line.</p>
+
+<p>“I held him as I reasoned with him, speaking over the
+names of the men who for the hundreds of years had taken
+the vow and the bond for his own life, and the lives of his
+children. He fought me and growled back that the vows
+were pagan vows—not christian—and not binding on a
+christened man.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</span></p>
+
+<p>“I spoke the rune of the priest-prince who had warned
+his clan to make no bond forever with the fierce Albans of
+the jealous eyes:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">
+
+<hr class="tb"></div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Thus shall it ever be:</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Honor and sanctity</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Shed on the sons of Eire.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Sleep with the sword between</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Sons and a foreign queen!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">To daughters the blue dirk’s sheen</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Sooner than blood unclean!</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">For Fohdla the Fair</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Hold blood and the land,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Else victors of Erinn</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Swarm red on her strand!</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">For eric is breaking;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">For soft heart in taking</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">A mate out of Alba</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">A thousand years’ snare!</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">A thousand years’ yoke</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">On the bent neck of Erinn;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">A thousand years’ tribute of blood, Inis Fair!</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“That was the <i>geis</i> made binding by the priest-king in
+exile ere they cut out the tongue from him, and left him to
+rot when his clans heard of the maiming and sent no more
+gold of the ransom to the woman who had netted him.
+She was a queen; she had heard of his beauty and his
+sacred knowings, and had the jealous eye for that which
+was too fine for the vision of her people. Aye—she netted
+him and tricked his clan to pay eric against the day of his
+return. And in the end he fed with her wolfhounds, and
+was torn to death in their fightings. That is how it was;
+but he had the clear vision of the future years before his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</span>
+going! That rune I told, and the vision I told, to Cuan the
+Dark that it make strong his geis to hold against the charm
+of Dyveke the Dove.”</p>
+
+<p>“Did it hold?” asked Diarmod.</p>
+
+<p>“It did not hold. He broke from me and shouted that
+there were christian bonds between Erinn and the ancient
+enemies to the east. He would follow the christian bond,
+and make a forgetting of pagan geis laid upon princes of
+his line. That is how it was. I was the one who sent for
+the elders of our house, but it was too late. She was in his
+dun at Cualann ere their coming. There it was the men
+of his line put against him the ban of the unnaming, and
+the forgetting. That is where her lover, Thorold the Dane,
+stood him siege for her and made break in his walls. The
+curse of the <i>geis</i> came in quickness to Cuan, for it was the
+hand of Dyveke, of the whiteness of doves, by which a
+knife found his heart, and his head was tossed by her from
+the tower to the feet of her lover, Thorold!</p>
+
+<p>“With Thorold she sailed out to sea, but the girl child
+she had borne to Cuan after that beheading was hid in
+the cell of a monk who was let near for some shrivings.
+Thorold was raging like a maddened bull for the death of
+the child not his. Two were born that night. One was
+dead; it was given into his hands, and the fierce soul of
+him was content with that, not knowing. But Dyveke,
+the white, knew somewhat. She had heard the unnaming
+and the ban of his clan against Cuan for her sake. She
+had heard the <i>geis</i> of the rune, and she had bitter hate for
+the banning of her, or of her blood, and it was a bitter
+curse she put against Erinn at her going away, and a bitter
+prayer she made that the seed of Cuan might raise
+up hosts of wolves to tear each at the throat of the other till
+the geis of the rune held true, and Erinn was broken, and
+her neck under the foot of the foreign men of enmity.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</span></p>
+
+<p>The two kings looked at each other across the light of
+the fire and Diarmod turned to the portal as if a cold wind
+had struck him. He moved more close to the hearthstone
+and drew over him a robe of otter skin.</p>
+
+<p>“And that was the ending?” he said.</p>
+
+<p>“God and Mary knows! Mayhaps it was the beginning!
+It was the year Adrian, Pope in Rome, signed the
+grant of Erinn to King Henry what time he could win
+warriors for its conquering. The conquerors have not yet
+sailed from Alba, but the eyes of Alba are jealous eyes,
+and the grant was given the year the child of Cuan, Dyveke
+Og, came, born living, into the land of Erinn.”</p>
+
+<p>“Young Dyveke?” repeated O’Carroll. “That name
+for her was never told me.”</p>
+
+<p>“Your sister, the Lady Ethnea, had hatred of it, and
+Dervail was the name she made choice of instead. The
+mother of Cuan had kindred in the Ua Machflain, and to
+King Murtagh went the Lady Ethnea with concern for
+the dower and station of the unwelcome woman-child. A
+dower was given for her life in sanctuary, and that dower
+was doubled by Ethnea who had love for the father of the
+child. The ward of King Murtagh she has been called,
+and it may be she is thought of his breed. But Duighal
+knows she is Dervail nan Ciar, who had no right to live;
+and King Murtagh has no longing to see the evil face of
+her—she is of the shadows, and to be forgotten in walls of
+sanctuary—and the walls built high.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is the first full hearing of the child I have asked for,
+though I had fear of the truth,” said Donough. “From
+the monastery she was taken to the castle of Ethnea, my
+sister. At the dying of that sister, she was brought to
+Maureen, who thinks her a bud of the tree of Machflain
+of Meath, to end in the convent of sheltered women.”</p>
+
+<p>“Aye—that was hope of the prior when he gave penance<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</span>
+to the monk who carried that white wolf’s whelp to
+his cell for safety! Aye—the years pass, and she has
+reached the age. No sons and no daughters should come
+to Erinn of that breed of Dyveke. I saw what I saw of the
+broken <i>geis</i>, and my hair went white in that seeing, and for
+that the fear is on me for that breed.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then it was not in the young years the sight dark
+came on you, Kieran of the cell?” said Diarmod the king.</p>
+
+<p>“It was not in the young years. It was by the hand of
+the one love of my kinsman, Cuan the Dark. Her lover,
+Thorold, found me out where I was putting a cover of
+earth over his headless body. The brute men of Thorold
+held me, and her white hand drew the hot iron across my
+eyes. She was hard, jealous, and she forgot nothing. She
+was Alba! She had the name of Dyveke the Dove, and
+her looks were sweet looks, and her voice had the music
+of birds, but her heart was the heart of her foremothers
+who ran with the wolf pack.”</p>
+
+<p>Diarmod laughed low. “Your words are not the words
+of a priest of Mary,” he said. “An army of men with your
+heart would be a good army for battles.”</p>
+
+<p>“Battles for Erinn were dreams in my life,” said
+Kieran. “Dyveke knew the dreams, and let me have my
+blinded life for the mourning of them! I wear the robe
+and do penance for my sins and for the sins of Cuan who
+died unshriven. But there is no sin in the strangle of a
+wolf, and no seas would be too wide for her following if I
+had but the sight. May she burn in hell all the years there
+is shadow on Erinn!”</p>
+
+<p>“Be it so if she brings that shadow,” said Donough, “for
+that is no sin to say.”</p>
+
+<p>“Truth for you! And the same to all who would walk
+in her thoughts! In the name of the Elements, and Mary,
+and the Father and Son!”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</span></p>
+
+<p>“In the holy names,” said Diarmod the king, and rose
+and stood by the fire with the otter skin robe about him in
+a quick tremble of cold.</p>
+
+<p>Donough O’Carroll looked at him, and poured wine from
+the flagon into a jeweled cup.</p>
+
+<p>“To your warmth,” he said. “We have talked the fire
+low on the hearth. Empty the guest cup with me for
+comfort of the body.”</p>
+
+<p>Then he poured a cup for Kieran, thanked him and
+asked what gift he could give him for the story of the blood
+of Dervail nan Ciar, whose true name was Danish dove.</p>
+
+<p>“Give your gift to Erinn for me, and make your own
+choice of that gift,” said Kieran, “but let it be a good ship
+to take the wolf’s whelp as far out of the land as the shores
+of Egypt, and that is a far sail for a good ship; or failing
+that, build a wall of stone, doubled, around the convent
+where she is barred from the sight of men. If she has what
+her mother, Dyveke, had, say prayers to Phadraig and to
+Brighde that the curse of the eric be not laid on Erinn.”</p>
+
+<p>“That besides the doubled wall?” said Diarmod, who
+was warmed by the wine, and spoke lightly.</p>
+
+<p>“Aye—besides the double wall! The paying of that
+eric is beyond thought. It is the yoke of a slave and a
+thousand years of blood on the bent head of Erinn!”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a_17" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/k.jpg" alt="K" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Kieran was led to rest by a servant of the castle, and
+was not told that Diarmod the king had been a
+listener to the tale of the rune.</p>
+
+<p>Diarmod paced the room and quaffed another cup of the
+red wine of Gaul.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Is it not enough that the priestly rules are ever near
+to ban anything of beauty coming a man’s way?” he
+grumbled. “But a hermit must bring runes of a thousand
+years to strengthen that ban! The tale would witch a
+man to follow her if but to see if she had the wonder in her
+of Dyveke the Dove—and tame that wonder as a falcon
+is tamed for the wrist of the master.”</p>
+
+<p>“But that is a bird you will not take from its cage,
+Diarmod?” said Donough. “Take to memory the <i>geis</i> of
+your own line against the hunting of birds—it is more
+than a thousand years, yet the bards are telling the legend
+even in our day—and it was a white bird in the legend,
+Diarmod, a white bird coming to earth with love-words
+and warnings to your ancestress, who was queen—and
+this white bird of the cloister you will not be seeking cage
+for, Diarmod?”</p>
+
+<p>There was silence but for the crackle of the new wood
+heaped on the fire, and Diarmod looked long into the red
+heart of the flame before he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>“No, Donough—one veiled maid of the cloisters
+brought shadow enough and blame enough to me—that
+is long since, yet never forgot.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is Dhira you mean?”</p>
+
+<p>“It is Dhira. Rest to her soul! She was robbed from
+me again by Dall Clairineach and hid in shadow to her
+death. No, I will not take another maid from convent
+walls—and no guest of yours from your castle; but if she
+is fair of body as that white mystery in the cloister, it is
+as well I have not crossed her path a-nutting in the forest.”</p>
+
+<p>“You put light in my heart at that saying, Diarmod, for
+I saw the thought of you. But there are women always
+for you; women a-plenty.”</p>
+
+<p>“Of a sort,” said Diarmod, who had to wife Maelmor na
+Tuathal, sister of Laurance the saintly, and a queen-woman<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</span>
+in her own way, and a pious, of a sort, “but white birds
+with reaching wings do not wait on every road for a man.”</p>
+
+<p>Donough O’Carroll went to his rest with content that
+night, and unburdened the cares of the day to Maureen,
+his wife.</p>
+
+<p>“Get the maid, Dervail, on the road to sanctuary of
+Cluain-mac-noise in the dawn of tomorrow,” he said. “Our
+shelter has not kept her name from the ear of the king.
+Strange happenings have been, and curious portents. She
+is not one to win friend for any king of Erinn.”</p>
+
+<p>“In truth she is the fairest thing in all your province,
+Donough, my heart,” said Maureen, “but, like a bird, she
+is—untamed.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do not make that saying of her to me,” said Donough,
+“or sleep could not come to my bed this night. Too much
+I have heard this day of bird-women, both doves and falcons,
+and I would that the maid was ugly as a mud-hen
+among the bogs. Woman, let me have sleep, and pray
+that Saint Brighde speeds her in safety on the road from
+us tomorrow. If she is in truth of the blood of Murtagh of
+Machflain, King of Meath, the time has come for his claim
+of her. The mystery of her is abroad on the winds, and
+the very name of her sounds temptation to Diarmod!”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_20" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/i.jpg" alt="I" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">It was in the mist of the gray dawn when Ardan
+crept like a thief down the turret stairs, and to the
+castle wall on which the grianan of the queen gave
+entrance. The door of it opened from within, and to meet
+him came the maid called by Maureen the fairest in all
+the kingdom of Orielle.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</span></p>
+
+<p>Like forest pools were her eyes—gray with a glint of
+blue; her mouth was the rose for beauty, and her hair held
+the warm flame of red gold; heavy it fell either side of her
+face and reached below her girdle. A cloak of royal blue
+touched the stone floor, and a veil of silvery gray broidered
+with blue was held by the wire-spun circlet of gold about
+her head. The falling of that silvery veil gave her a strange
+mystical look to Ardan, and the dignity of the cloak hid
+every maidenly curve of her young body.</p>
+
+<p>“Argatonel,” spoke Ardan as he stood staring at the
+beauty of her, “‘Silver Cloud’ in truth you are, Dervail;
+and you look as if you had slept in a fairy’s rath and woke
+changed and not young any more.”</p>
+
+<p>“Sleep I did not at all—for the doom of going away
+was put on me ere the turn of the night. That was the
+time I sent the maid Kauth to seek you. The castle of the
+holy women at Cluain-mac-noise is to be my prison. Some
+sudden thing has stung the prior, Duighal, and his monks
+are to be my guard to sanctuary. It will be my grave they
+take me to!”</p>
+
+<p>“I am to blame—to blame!” said Ardan. “I, too, must
+go a road this day, but it is to the Culdees of Saint Hilary.
+For my fault I am to study in a new place and among
+strange scholars.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why are you to blame? You that were my comrade?”</p>
+
+<p>“It is forbidden that I tell you all, or think of it—but
+I made an image of snow like a white bird that yet was a
+maiden. I thought of you and made it all of whiteness,
+but like you, too, in beauty. It was in the cloister.
+Duighal the prior says it is an evil thing to image any but
+sainted women, and a penance is put on me that I go.”</p>
+
+<p>“But you—you have no unhappy heart at that going,”
+said Dervail, and sighed as she looked at him. “You will
+walk free to make other beautiful things in other places.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</span></p>
+
+<p>“I will remember you in the far places, and the beauty
+I make will be thoughts of you.”</p>
+
+<p>Dervail smiled on him with closed lips and eyes peering
+sideways through the silver veil. The veil made a new
+mystery of her face.</p>
+
+<p>“Argatonel,” he said again, and was thinking of a rhyme
+for it to make a poem as a farewell gift, “Argatonel!”</p>
+
+<p>“You do not love me, Ardan,” she said; “you only love
+beauty.”</p>
+
+<p>“But you are that beauty.”</p>
+
+<p>“You do not love me; you do not know I am alive! You
+look at me as on a saint, high on the church wall. I would
+rather dance free with the Ever Young People in the
+Hidden Hills!”</p>
+
+<p>He did not know what to answer. Cormac had said hell
+waited for people of pagan thoughts, and Cormac had a
+soul of good intent.</p>
+
+<p>“You are my best comrade, and as my sister,” he said;
+“my grief is much that you go unwilling—I would that
+you went not out from here until a marriage feast gave
+you to some righteous king. You look like a queen with
+that cloak and the veil of the silver cloud.”</p>
+
+<p>She laughed a little bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>“I said you did not love me, and I said true; you are
+almost of my age, yet you would pick a king out of the
+world for me! I steal ere the dawn to seek farewell of a
+poet, and his only seeking is a rhyme for my name—not
+to be found!”</p>
+
+<p>“But I have found it!” he cried in triumph. “I will
+write it for you ere the troop leaves the portal. I will sing
+it in the lonely west where I go for scholarship. Dervail,
+what other thing could I do to show my thoughts and my
+heart to you?”</p>
+
+<p>“I do not know. It is a boy you are, and my thoughts<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</span>
+are of a man’s thoughts. Look: I am cloaked and shod for
+travel; there are swift steeds below, and there are boats
+at the sea’s marge. Beyond where the low sky takes the
+silver of morning, there is another land. Had I the strength
+of a man beside me, it is there I would go.”</p>
+
+<p>“With the troops of two kings of power to claim you
+for the church? Who would dare give shelter to you in
+such flight?”</p>
+
+<p>“Two kings?” she asked, puzzled and frowning.</p>
+
+<p>“Diarmod of Leinster is guest of King Donough.”</p>
+
+<p>She laughed again.</p>
+
+<p>“So: that is why I have been kept to the grianan of the
+queen for three days! It has been so always when guests
+of might are housed here. What crooked stick of the
+forest am I that no prince or king must look my way?”</p>
+
+<p>“The fairest things of earth are God’s offerings, Dervail,”
+he said. “I think of you as abbess of some white
+sisterhood of Mary. On some day of days I will surely
+see you so, and kneel for your blessing. You will be ever
+the white bird and the silver cloud to me.”</p>
+
+<p>“That makes the cold stone no softer a pillow,” she said.
+“You live in dreams—sometimes you have made me see
+the dreams, but this no dream today. They take me for
+other prison and call it serving God!”</p>
+
+<p>A clink of metal on stone sounded above them where the
+flying buttress carried a windowed room as a canopy above
+where they stood.</p>
+
+<p>Dervail sped quickly back out of sight, but Ardan
+stepped further out to look above. What he saw there
+was Diarmod of Leinster with his finger on his lip. Horsemen
+clattered through the castle gate, and Ardan looked
+down at them from the edge of the wall.</p>
+
+<p>“The castle is awake, and there is no other moment for
+speech,” he said. “My heart goes with you on the road,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</span>
+comrade maid of mine. May that road lead you to peace!”</p>
+
+<p>She stood looking at him moodily while he lifted the
+hem of her cloak to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>“Almost I see you here a queen in the queen’s grianan,”
+he said. “You look it in that robe you wear. Have you
+no farewell to me, Dervail?”</p>
+
+<p>“For that I came, Ardan, and may it be so to you! I
+would you could teach me the content of dreams—my
+dreams lack content. Farewell, comrade! In the gray
+days I will think often of the white bird by which we are
+exiled. Fare you well, Ardan! Go you the way of your
+white dreams!”</p>
+
+<p>There was a weariness in the sweet voice. So few days
+before she had run races and tossed the ball in the games,
+but the Dervail in the silver veil at the dawn was a different
+maid.</p>
+
+<p>The veil—the silver cloud—Argatonel!—in a moment
+more he had out the inkhorn and quill and was tracing on
+the smooth stone the first words of the rhyme singing in
+his ears—he had promised her a verse of farewell.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">The sun has set at morningtide,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Argatonel!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The wall between is high and wide,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Argatonel!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Above it stars of heaven may rise</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">In witchery,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">But none so bright—</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The rhythm of it sang itself, and he was glowing with
+eagerness when he became suddenly conscious of someone
+near, and turned to find Diarmod smiling at him in great
+good humor.</p>
+
+<p>“I had joy of my eavesdropping, though I could get no
+glimpse of her face,” he said. “Anyone seeing your tryst
+might have had his doubts, but I’ll go your warrant to any<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</span>
+father alive who has sweet-voiced daughters in want of a
+playmate.”</p>
+
+<p>Ardan bent knee to him, and thus turned from the words,
+roughly noted in ink, still wet. Little escaped the eye of
+Leinster, and a step took him beside it.</p>
+
+<p>“What’s to do here? ‘The sun has set at morningtide.’
+That is against nature. How could that be?”</p>
+
+<p>“My King, I cannot make you see it when you did not
+see her face—and she goes at morningtide.”</p>
+
+<p>“So, that is it! My grief, to hearken to a tryst with a
+lad when it was the strength of a man she gave call for!
+And this—Argatonel?”</p>
+
+<p>“It is the silver cloud of the veil she wore—the veil by
+which she was hidden from you above.”</p>
+
+<p>“Very good—it looked, indeed, a veil of silver over hair
+of gold. Go on—finish your lines. Here is a scrap of
+vellum of no import; write it across that. Your craft is
+curious, and has interest to me. You shall write lovepoems
+for my daughters. Go on! ‘But none so bright—’”</p>
+
+<p>And Ardan, encouraged by the king’s mood, plodded
+placidly on.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">But none so bright as are your eyes</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Of mystery.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Argatonel, white wings to you!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Argatonel, deep heart to you!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">O Silver Cloud, that wraps the world,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">God’s Sun to you!</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>He finished writing and read it aloud, and the eyes of
+the king were on him curiously.</p>
+
+<p>“That, and a maiden tryst at dawn, and you fasting!”
+he said. “What works then might you not do with good
+meat under your ribs? I’ve a mind to take you with me,
+if only to feed you, and watch your growth. Come! We’ll
+talk of it and eat. Clean white vellum shall be yours for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</span>
+your love-lines, though the maid read you true, my young
+cock-robin! You had no heart-love to give your Argatonel;
+your only seeking was some fair thing to sing about.”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_19" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/t.jpg" alt="T" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Thus it was the friendship began between Diarmod
+the king, and Ardan, the fosterling of King Donough
+of Orielle, and thus it was that they went out
+together at sound of the gathering guard in the castle
+yard that morning, and from the shadow of the portal
+Diarmod looked on the unveiled face of Dervail.</p>
+
+<p>The rising sun touched her hair to a glory, where it
+fell in braids to the saddle cushion. The deep pools of
+her eyes held shadows, and the black lashes were wet
+against her rosebloom cheek, yet the head of the silver
+veil was not humbled, and her chin was lifted in pride as
+she looked about her on the household back of the spearmen,
+and her maid, and the page holding her restless
+steed as it pawed the earth, and grew restless under the
+tinkling sweetness of its bridle bells.</p>
+
+<p>“Truly you said it, Ardan; she is the sun at morningtide,”
+said Diarmod the king; but when Ardan attempted
+speech in reply he was silenced lest a note of the music of
+her voice be lost.</p>
+
+<p>“Think of me as Regina in that new life,” she said to
+Queen Maureen at the farewell. “I wear the blue mantle
+that Mary the Mother may see I serve her in a royal way.
+The gray of life has no liking for me, and to the last I
+will wear colors of the deep sea, and the sky.”</p>
+
+<p>“What a queen can do will be done that no gray robe
+is yours until the day you make choice of it,” said Maureen<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</span>
+in kindness. “A writing to that end goes with you to the
+holy women.”</p>
+
+<p>“All have spoke a farewell but yourself, King Donough
+of Orielle,” said the girl Dervail, with proud coldness in
+her voice. “I give thanks to you for years of sanctuary.
+Am I to have no host’s gift of the stirrup cup at my
+going?”</p>
+
+<p>“A white road, and a white welcome to you,” said
+Donough, whose tongue was stiff with fear that she go not
+quickly enough. The wind of the morning had caught
+the silver cloud of her veil, and swept it back over the
+golden circlet; she looked a girl queen beyond all queenly
+beauty, and too fair for the men of Leinster to view.</p>
+
+<p>Donough waved forward the bearer of the cup and the
+wine, and lifted his hand to pour the draught, but Diarmod,
+who stood in the portal with Ardan, came forward, and
+the hand of Diarmod was before that of Donough.</p>
+
+<p>“That the right may be my right,” he said and filled
+the cup.</p>
+
+<p>The servitor dropped to one knee, and the King and
+Queen of Orielle bowed low, and Dervail saw them, for
+the first time, stand aside for another man in their own
+castle keep.</p>
+
+<p>The wonder of it filled her, and her lips opened for question,
+but Diarmod stood at her stirrup. He gave to her
+the verse of Ardan and lifted the cup, and when their eyes
+met she forgot that a king and his household bent low
+while only one man stood.</p>
+
+<p>“Will you not kiss the cup?” he asked. “It is my grief
+that it is the farewell, and not the welcoming.”</p>
+
+<p>With both hands she reached for the cup, with both
+hands he held it up, but their eyes never parted. Their
+look was a long, strange look, and the smile was gone
+from her face.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</span></p>
+
+<p>“I speak thanks to you, O my lord,” she said, “and the
+cup of parting will be remembered by me.”</p>
+
+<p>The prior rode through the portal with six stalwart
+monks at his heels.</p>
+
+<p>“I go north for pilgrimage to the shrine of Phadraig,”
+he said, “and we will add guard to the new nun for Cluain-mac-noise.</p>
+
+<p>He did not look at her at all, and his speech was to
+Donough O’Carroll.</p>
+
+<p>Diarmod turned darkly on the cold-faced prior.</p>
+
+<p>“Six of my own men will ride with you as far as the
+Shannon,” he said. “They are the best of my horsemen,
+holy father, and will bear to the abbott a message. A gift
+will go to the abbess as a dower for the Lady Regina, for
+such is her new name in religion. This on the word of
+Leinster.”</p>
+
+<p>The prior stared at him, and bent head in brief courtesy.
+Never before had Leinster dowered maids, except they, in
+one way or another, were among his possessions.</p>
+
+<p>But Diarmod, with full knowledge of the sharp ears and
+keen dark thoughts about him, followed his mood because
+of the red mouth of Dervail, and her trancelike gaze. He
+slipped a ring of gold from his hand and put it on hers.</p>
+
+<p>“This my gauge of the promise,” he said. “Let it go
+with the dower. In sanctuary pray for Diarmod of
+Leinster.”</p>
+
+<p>“Diarmod!” and her voice was a whisper of wonder,
+but her face held liking, and swift joy, and hope. It was
+plain to see that cold sanctuary was none of her choosing.
+“Diarmod, O some time Ard-Ri of Erinn!”</p>
+
+<p>Fire of pride flamed in his eyes at her words. She had
+voiced his secret hope that the cloak of Leinster like the
+mantle of Brighde’s legend might gain magic growth to
+cover all the land.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</span></p>
+
+<p>“The prayer of you for that day, O Regina,” he said,
+and lifted the cup to drain the leavings of her draught.
+“By the Elements, I wish for you all you seek in life!”
+The emptied cup of silver he put in the hand of Kauth
+and stepped a pace aside as Duighal the prior spurred his
+steed forward, and spoke to Dervail without glance of the
+eye. He had known Dyveke, her mother, in her day of
+beauty, and had seen the christening of the wolfs whelp—also
+he knew the moods and loves of Diarmod of
+Leinster. Kindling for the pit of hell were both of them!</p>
+
+<p>“Veil your face from the eyes of man, girl, and ride
+forward with your maid,” he said.</p>
+
+<p>Dervail lifted her hand to the veil, but lifted proudly
+her head as well, and cast one slow look over the awed
+group. Between the church and the king none dared speak,
+and Maureen grasped the arm of Donough in fear.</p>
+
+<p>The eyes of Dervail rested last on Leinster and her eyes
+spoke for her as she drew the veil and shrouded the beauty
+of her face.</p>
+
+<p>Two by two the riders passed the outer portal, and yet
+Diarmod stood, stroking his beard, and staring after the
+blue cloak and the shrouding veil.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a_18" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/i048b.jpg" alt="W" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">“What is your will for the day’s hunt?” asked
+Donough at last, and Leinster swung on him as
+if to find vent to his humor.</p>
+
+<p>“What joy in the hunting of deer when Paradise opens
+portals a man may not enter?” he demanded. “You
+played well to get my promise before my eyes had looked
+on her! You played well, Donough!”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</span></p>
+
+<p>“But the promise was a good one, and you will live to
+give thanks for the making of it.”</p>
+
+<p>“It will not be this day you will hear such thanks,”
+spoke Diarmod shortly. “The beauty of her is beyond
+belief, and it is not her beauty alone! There is something—something—”</p>
+
+<p>“True, there is,” said Donough, “there is the beauty
+of Dyveke, her mother, but she is stronger than Dyveke,
+for she has the charm of the man named The Dark,
+because he was made Nameless, and those that were loving
+him could never see charm in another man. My sister,
+Ethnea, was one. Her life wore itself out making prayers
+because he died unshriven, and there is Kieran Dall,
+devoted even to vengeance if need be!”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, you make it strong, and I have given my word,”
+said Diarmod, “but it is well it was you and the church
+I promised. Had it been one man claiming her—Murtagh
+of Meath or <em>any</em> man—I would be gathering a troop now
+to bear her back, and the monks with their prophecies
+might carry their runes to hell.”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_21" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/t.jpg" alt="T" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Two years Ardan lived between the castle of Diarmod
+and the Culdees of Saint Hilary’s cloisters, and then,
+with Diarmod’s sanction and help, he joined a group
+of pilgrims for Tours, and thence on to see the glories of
+Rome.</p>
+
+<p>Five years of books and songs and travel he had, but
+ever close was the craft of carving, and Diarmod’s attempt
+to make him a bard, and a bard only, had not been a
+success.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Let me work out my poems in stone if I can find them
+that way,” he said. “Some need a pen, some need a
+brush and color for the telling, and surely the stone has
+its own hymns—and it endures.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is not a bad thought,” agreed Diarmod. “If the
+ancient books had been carved of stone tablets the Dane
+raiders would not have carried away so many of the
+treasures. And in our own day O’Ruarc of Breffni
+is laying tribute on many an abbey of the north. The
+Culdees had best save their parchment and use the
+chisel.”</p>
+
+<p>“I saw him when I was a child at the ford, O’Ruarc,”
+said Ardan, “and had bad dreams. He had only one eye,
+and an evil look. The monks told tales of him, but they
+say his castle at Lough Gilla has the riches of an emperor.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well may be! His men hold the fords of the north
+for heavy toll, and his robbings give him jewels enough to
+cover the many women he steals.”</p>
+
+<p>“As I mind him, he would get them no other way—none
+would go to Lough Gilla for love of him.”</p>
+
+<p>“Aye! But he has his ruler, strong as he is,” said a
+monk of the north. “I heard of her in Armagh from a
+wandering bard who boasted that he traveled north in
+poverty, but by her grace he wanted for naught on his way
+back. Some message was his to bear for her, and he was
+fair delighted by the rare beauty of her. Songs he was
+making of her milk skin, and her gold of hair, until men
+fell in love to listen.”</p>
+
+<p>“Where found Breffni such pleasing treasure?” asked
+Diarmod.</p>
+
+<p>“I know not—God knows! There are tales told. One
+is that a boat of the Danes was wrecked on the north
+coast, and she was of that wreckage. Another is that he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</span>
+got her when he sacked the abbey of Clonard, and the new
+house of the nuns there. That may be. Her name is
+Regina, and that is no name of a Danish maid—it is
+christian name for a queen.”</p>
+
+<p>“Regina!”</p>
+
+<p>Diarmod whispered the name under his breath and
+stared at the guest of the north, but Ardan cried out in
+horror of the heart, and turned to Diarmod.</p>
+
+<p>“My comrade maid, the white-winged one of sanctuary!
+Is there word from King Donough as to that?”</p>
+
+<p>“There is no word,” and the face of Diarmod had
+brooding blackness on it. “To me he would not be sending
+that word. He would go first to Murtagh of Meath,
+and abide by his word, and the word of Duighal the
+prior. There is no love in their hearts for Breffni. It may
+be they care not for her taking, if she is taken far enough
+north—and the mountains and the bogs between!”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_20" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/a.jpg" alt="A" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">After that, Diarmod said no more, but left guests
+and tale tellers and singers to have their own cheer
+of the night—and went to his own chamber.
+There he sent for Ardan.</p>
+
+<p>“You have art enough to pass for a wandering singer,
+a cunning worker in gold, or a carver of stone,” he said.
+“O’Ruarc adds to his craftsmen as he can, to change treasures
+of the abbeys into gauds for his women. Go you
+north into Breffni, and learn the truth of it. Here is gold
+for your faring. Guard your own life for me, but venture
+all else to bring me word.”</p>
+
+<p>“And if Donough is on their track?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</span></p>
+
+<p>“No word to Donough of this matter! If she is safe
+again in his castle, or safe in the convent, come you back
+to me in silence. If the tale be true, find her and bring me
+word of her need.”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a_19" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/s.jpg" alt="S" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">So it happened that Ardan had crossed the Shannon
+at Ath-Luin when the wandering bard from the
+north found the way to the castle of Diarmod, and
+craving audience, knelt and offered a ring.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_22" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/i178d.jpg" alt="T" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">“This from her who calls herself Regina,” he said.
+“The dower given to the convent for her has gone
+to Lough Gilla Castle with many other things. The
+ring of the south should not be among the plunder of the
+enemy, and for that reason it is sent back.”</p>
+
+<p>“Is that the only word?”</p>
+
+<p>“All that was given me.”</p>
+
+<p>“Is she—in prison?”</p>
+
+<p>“She is the wife of Tiernan O’Ruarc, King of Breffni;
+she rules all within the castle by his love of her.”</p>
+
+<p>“He has then taken a nun to wife against all rule of
+Rome? Has there been naught of protest from King
+Murtagh of Meath?”</p>
+
+<p>“Nay, O Diarmod, no vows had been laid upon her.
+She was free to be sought in marriage to any man, and
+O’Ruarc was the man.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</span></p>
+
+<p>That rankling thought was not good company for the
+man who had let her ride out from O’Carroll’s castle
+into the new prison, and the man who got her was his
+enemy!</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_21" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/t.jpg" alt="T" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Two days Diarmod fumed over the thought, and then
+rode with his spearmen and bowmen to council with
+King Donough.</p>
+
+<p>“Is it in silence the men of Meath and men of Orielle
+let the plunderer from Lough Gilla strip the holy churches
+and carry away the cloistered women?” he asked. And
+Donough walked with him apart that Queen Maureen
+might not hear.</p>
+
+<p>“As to Clonard Abbey, it is true, and we should stand
+against this, and send a spokesman to O’Ruarc; but as to
+women there was only one, and that one is his wife. There
+is no profit in going against that. She is Queen of Breffni
+and content enough. Since it is so, what call for speech
+of it among the people? It is well her own name is lost
+from her in those changes. To ride to her rescue would
+but bring her back for other princes to fight for. She is
+too fair for peace to be her dower in any land. Let that
+hawk of the north keep her safe at his own nest.”</p>
+
+<p>“She has brought him lucky fortune, since he sweeps all
+of church wealths into his chests and goes scatheless, and
+it was a different prophecy of her told by Kieran Dall.”</p>
+
+<p>“We are born, but not dead yet,” said Donough, “and it
+is ill profit to think of her now—and her a strong king’s
+wife.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yet I am thinking of her, O’Carroll, and the promise<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</span>
+holds me no more. From your castle I would not take
+her, nor from the church, but she is with neither. She and
+the other stolen things are now free to who can take them.”</p>
+
+<p>“No man will fight for her when her name is known,
+and Turlough O’Conor will not be the man to let Breffni
+be robbed of a covenanted woman. Murtagh of Meath
+knows it, and cares not how soon she brings ruin to
+O’Ruarc—if bring it she does—<em>he</em> is not of the line
+forbidden to her blood.”</p>
+
+<p>Diarmod glowered darkly and showed contempt.</p>
+
+<p>“The short sight was on me when I let her ride away,
+and foolish was the tale of Kieran Dall. Strong houses
+have ere this taken mates from the Lochlannach. Why
+should a ban, forgotten for a thousand years, be uncovered
+for her house or for mine? My own thought is that her
+dower was the dower of a king’s daughter, and a gain for
+any holy group of the veil. Without doubt she was a
+chance child of Murtagh of Meath, and the tale of Kieran
+Dall was made to fit. I have had no other word concerning
+Cuan the Dark; it is some old world tale of druid power.”</p>
+
+<p>“If ban, or banishment and un-naming is pronounced
+in secret against a man, it is more than death against him,
+Diarmod. There is no record left that he was ever living.
+The father of Dyveke had youth with him—he was the
+firstling of a devout house, and was meant for holy life—there
+may be many who think he is living out his years
+in work and prayer among foreign pagans. As a man he
+has left no name and no record. Now that O’Ruarc has
+the maid, and caused question of the source of the dowry,
+there is but one thing to do in the house of Machflain. She
+is called ward of the King of Meath, and daughter as
+well. It is a rich cloak to cover her white shoulders
+and cover a buried and bitter scandal for the house
+of the man called ‘The Dark.’ It will never be safe to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</span>
+lift that cloak, Diarmod; too many pious hands have helped
+weave it, and work over each rough seam with careful
+broiderings. Hidden forever now is father or mother of
+hers. She is no longer Dervail of the Shadow; she is
+daughter of Murtagh Machflain, King of Meath, and is
+wife to Tiernan, Prince of Breffni. The whole of Erinn
+is between your shore and hers, and no cause for your
+thoughts to cross over.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yet are they crossing over,” said Diarmod, and looked
+at a ring of gold. “There is no joy for her there in Breffni,
+and her own thoughts are crossing the wide land.”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a_20" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/d.jpg" alt="D" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Donough O’Carroll was not easy in his mind
+after that speech. He had remembrance of the
+words of Malachi, son of Murtagh of Meath. He
+also was afire because of her beauty, and the little love
+he had for Tiernan O’Ruarc. He also could see no reason
+why the maid, and her dowry as well, should go to a
+prince so well hated. For the truth of her was not told by
+Murtagh of Meath to any of his household. Duighal and
+certain monks knew it, and among them they hoped to
+hide the fact that the child of Dyveke lived though she
+should have died. Some fear of Dyveke’s curse was on
+Murtagh, and for that reason the maid was dowered for
+sanctity as had been his own daughter, with little thought
+that his enemy of the north would sweep hawklike on
+Clonard and bear away the troublous maid with all her
+mysterious wealth.</p>
+
+<p>“Hark to me, Diarmod,” said O’Carroll in all kindness.
+“Murtagh Machflain is well pleased that she is taken to
+the far end of Erinn by a man—any man—strong enough<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</span>
+to hold her there! You are not the only man she makes
+restless by a look, or a word, or it may be a pledge! If it
+is adventure you hunger for, forget her beauty and seek
+victories in the west where the men of O’Brian are ever
+snapping like wolves across borders of Connaught or Leinster;
+I am with you to join shields with Turlough O’Conor
+against them at any dawn you name to set forth. Make
+yourself strong with allies ere you venture a hosting into
+Breffni. With care you can be chief king of Leith Mogh.”</p>
+
+<p>“You have the King of Meath and all the bishops on
+your side,” agreed Diarmod of Leinster, “yet if I was a
+wifeless man, I would make her a queen of more than
+Breffni. Tiernan of Breffni will yet pay with his life for
+having her before me!”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_23" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/d.jpg" alt="D" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Diarmod had never forgotten her words of admiring
+when she greeted him as “Ard-Ri of Erinn.” It
+was but a tiny seed let fall from her rose-leaf lips,
+yet had it grown in his mind, nourished by the records and
+legends of his own royal line until he saw no head of Erinn
+more fit for crowning! This was a dear secret thought of
+his, spoken of to none, yet when he heard Turlough
+O’Conor called “King with opposition” there came flashing
+back to him the music of her words, and with them a
+long look ahead to the days when Turlough was gone! To
+be chief king of Leith Mogh—all southern Erinn—would
+seem to Donough a natural ambition. But to dream of the
+crown of High King over all would put fear in the mind
+of every friend who was loyal to Leinster. No thought of
+it had come to any heart but his own—and hers!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</span></p>
+
+<p>That was the hold she had over his dreams; she had
+voiced the secret thing much desired. And in his dreams
+she became a part of that which was desired—the beautiful
+part!</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_22" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/y.jpg" alt="Y" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Yet Diarmod of Leinster did consider the words of
+King Donough, and did join shields with Turlough
+against the men of O’Brian to the west, and did
+make himself allies for the days when need would be his,
+for that was his way. The strong family of Mor, his wife,
+he had in bonds to him, and strong churchmen he had;
+if ever he ventured to follow his dream he meant to have
+help of Rome through princely clerics.</p>
+
+<p>He took credit to himself for joining shields to Turlough
+the king at that time. His mind was to go north, but
+the counsel of Donough brought him thought and remembrance
+that Murtagh of Meath was no strong ally even if he
+should make choice of the road of spears into Breffni for
+the maid of beauty. Though reinstated in his holdings,
+no one was forgetting that, for the blow to Gelasius the
+bishop, Murtagh had suffered for a space the loss of all
+kingly rights, and the devout and the spiritual fathers
+held it against him. It was no good time for making bonds
+with him, even if he and Malachi, his son, had been eager—for
+Malachi held no great strength of his own. The
+time must be on another day.</p>
+
+<p>But in all his thoughts of her there was the curious certainty
+that their own time would come. She was the music
+singing far in the forest of a fairy rath; she was the veiled
+maid beyond the lattice; she was ever Argatonel, the silver<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</span>
+cloud out beyond the nearer gray! His men of the spears
+and battle-axes would have had curious thoughts if they
+had known that the music to which the great Diarmod of
+dread kept pace on his warhorse was the song of the boy,
+Ardan, in boyish praise of her beauty.</p>
+
+<p>He had forgotten that song, or thought he had, but in
+some far corner of his mind it lay sleeping, and the thought
+of her whiteness in the arms of that red terror of the north
+wakened it, and gave it music until he heard the feet of
+his men and the feet of his warhorse marching to it!</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a_21" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/a.jpg" alt="A" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">And the young maker of the song?</p>
+
+<p>His travels abroad made the wandering northward
+an easy path. He slept at monasteries, and
+was known only as ward of “Dall Clairineach,” who had
+been the scholarly abbot of Ardbreccan. But that name,
+given the learned O’Cahsadhe, was a key to every door.
+At Armagh, Ardan was even trusted with messages to
+other retreats of religious men further along his way, and
+at one monastery was offered a Saxon slave as gille, and a
+letter to Tiernan O’Ruarc, prince of Breffni, giving thanks
+from a fortunate prior to whom he had sent vestments
+and altar candles!</p>
+
+<p>This lucky chance brought aid to Ardan and much comfort.
+He had only to say, “A letter from a grateful priest
+to a gracious prince.” And over mountain or moor the
+message was given a pleasure path. Near his own domains
+the O’Ruarc did not plunder or lay waste, and the way to
+Lough Gilla was an open way when within the Breffni
+borders.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</span></p>
+
+<p>But the Prince of Breffni was not at home to receive the
+priest’s letter of thanks. He was gone north to the shrine
+of Phadraig in Lough Dearg, as was his custom after great
+hostings. Even his enemies never could say the O’Ruarc
+shirked pious pilgrimage, or rich gifts of hospitality. The
+flat top of a great hill above Lough Gilla was seen afar as
+a landmark and named the “Table of Breffni.” It fitted
+in well with the giant cromlechs of the ancients to which
+the Saxon slave made curious circles of respect, and told
+to Ardan the faith for which the ancient gods had left
+such monuments. It was different from the faith of the
+saints by which Ardan had been given instruction, and he
+chided the slave and made a prayer, and went on between
+hills touched golden by the carpet of gorse, and touched
+blue as peat smoke when seen afar along the fair waters
+of lake and river.</p>
+
+<p>The letter from the cleric opened the portals of Breffni
+for Ardan, and his own youth and sunshine of face made
+him welcome alike to steward and warrior. The cleric
+of the castle was less friendlike, and had searching and
+priestly questions, and another man in scholar’s robe gave
+long looks to him, but no question. He was called Duffagan,
+and had been of the captured at Clonard—a silent
+student to whom Tiernan gave care of the plundered
+books, because of his learning in such craft.</p>
+
+<p>No word did Ardan send to Dervail, but with a bard of
+Breffni he made pact of friendliness, and told him of
+Erinn’s music in monasteries, and the courts of princes
+in Gaul and beyond it to the east. An Irish air he had
+brought back from Rome set to words of Italy, and he sang
+it to the delight of all in the great hall. After the supper
+and the songs of olden days, the little harp was given to
+his hands, and he took his turn in making music, as was
+the custom and joy among those of the musicians and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</span>
+poets. Young lovers would thus sing their thoughts to
+the one maid most longed for, and maids and women of the
+household of Breffni had their pleasure of the evening in
+that pastime. The castle took to itself neither silence nor
+added prayer for that Tiernan, the lord of it, had fared
+north for penitence at the shrine of Phadraig.</p>
+
+<p>It was a gay and very beautiful hall where the music was
+made, for no stone of the wall but was covered with hangings
+of rich weavings from the lands foreign, and under
+foot were many skins of animals, and one of a great white
+bear was beneath the feet of Dervail where she sat on the
+throne seat.</p>
+
+<p>At the far end of the hall she sat with her maidens, and
+the chiefs and ladies of Breffni’s household. Wearily
+enough she sat there above the others, and brooding she
+sat in a robe of white, heavy with gold threads and girdled
+with green ropes of gold-set emeralds from the Kerry
+hills. Her veil was of white, and fell from a crown of gold
+and glimmering green jewels. Her chin rested on her
+hand, and she had a sidelong look for a chief who sat
+near her, reciting some late glory of her lord’s victories.</p>
+
+<p>Ardan noted it all afar off where he hid himself with
+the younger singers. The song that came to his mind
+was of a white bird weighted with golden chains. But in
+the old Irish tales of chained doves or swans there were
+ever two birds chained together with golden links—and
+she was alone. In his heart he was glad it was so. He
+could not think of her in another way. She was still to
+him the lone white bird, though a jeweled queen.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not of that he dared sing when the tiny harp
+was put in his hand, for he was to the others only a chance
+bearer of a letter, and traveling in no great honor. And
+she was wife to Prince of Breffni and sat on a throne.</p>
+
+<p>And the thing he sang was the farewell song he had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</span>
+made for her in a far dawn when she had worn a silver-gray
+veil instead of a queen’s crown. And he had named
+her silver cloud—Argatonel.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">The sun has set at morning tide,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Argatonel!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The wall between is deep and wide,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Argatonel!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Above it stars of heaven may rise</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">In witchery,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">But none so wondrous as your eyes</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Of mystery.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Argatonel—white wings to you!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Argatonel—white road to you!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">O Silver Cloud that wraps the world,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">My song to you!</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>He marked the very heart-beat in which she knew the
+song and the singer, though she did not turn head or
+glance to where he was, and her attention was given entirely
+to converse with the chief of Mac Roigh and his lady
+wife who was an Irish princess out of Alba, where Irish
+tribes had gone in a far-off time.</p>
+
+<p>But when the song was ended, Dervail turned as if for
+mere courtesy, and spoke.</p>
+
+<p>“It is a fair, mellow voice, and a new song for us,” she
+said. “Bid the singer come for speech.”</p>
+
+<p>The steward of the castle brought forward Ardan, and
+told his name and errand, and showed the letter and spoke.</p>
+
+<p>“I bade him wait the return of our Lord of Breffni, and
+while he waits we seek to give him fair courtesies, and the
+usage of a chief’s son.”</p>
+
+<p>“You serve your lord well,” said the queen. “He shall
+be of our household. Whence come you, strange singer?”</p>
+
+<p>“Late from Rome and other far lands,” said Ardan, his
+eyes on the golden hem of her robe, and not lifted to her<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</span>
+face, for the eyes of the others were looking, and had
+nought else to do but look.</p>
+
+<p>“Do pilgrims to Rome come back with songs of gallantry
+to bright eyes?” she asked, and smiled, and the
+younger maids pressed close to listen.</p>
+
+<p>“A pilgrim sometimes carries the songs, and the memory
+of eyes, on all the wide circle from the white strand
+of Erinn to the harbor of return,” said Ardan, and she
+laughed at that, and bade him to a seat near, and told him
+he should sing for her again, and he might teach one of
+the maidens the song of “Argatonel,” for the air was a
+sweet air, and a plaintive.</p>
+
+<p>Then, having shown him this much of courtesy, her mind
+in appearance strayed from him to matters of more import,
+but the youths and maids circled him, and had their pleasure
+in questions of far lands, and Roderick, son of Turlough,
+the King of Erinn, was there, and spoke of Rome
+and the scriptures of the Irish sent eastward to carry both
+religion and book craft to the Germanic peoples, and their
+neighbors, the Gauls.</p>
+
+<p>“For that purpose was Erinn the savior of learning for
+all Europe,” said the Mac Roigh. “In the wars of the
+Huns and the Northmen the great eastern land was swept
+bare of scholars, and Greek was lost to the Gallic tribes
+until our books and our men carried it back again.”</p>
+
+<p>“Strange to hear—that is,” mused Roderick. “As
+strange as to think that the Gaelic and the Latin we speak
+and read could be lost to our children in another day.”</p>
+
+<p>“It may be that the waters on every side of Erinn will
+be the wall to keep that loss far from us forever,” said
+Mac Roigh, “but in the great foreign land there is neither
+wall nor waters of separation. The tribes overrun and
+melt into each other, or they fight and harvest the enemy
+as grain in a field. It is all and always change there;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</span>
+thus were their settlements of religious men reaching out
+for the Irish scriptures made here in sanctuary. Gelasius
+the bishop was telling us of that at Clonfert.”</p>
+
+<p>“I had thought,” ventured Roderick, “that between the
+Danes and raiders of Norway and their Saxon mates,
+Erinn had work in plenty to save even life, without the
+strife to save learning enough to civilize her invaders.
+It’s a good gift they got from us when our saints taught
+them religion. And it was an evil payment they made to
+us with their ships full of raiders.”</p>
+
+<p>“Our well-beloved Dall Clairineach told me Erinn was
+set apart like a jewel in a lost casket,” said Ardan. “The
+old south sea-way to us was lost to the traders of Europe
+through the time of the great wars; our land was out of
+the path of battle and was forgot. When they found us
+again, it was in a different way—an island beyond an
+island in the sea! While they had fought and made
+destruction of all things, our men of many crafts and
+many books had worked to garner and build. All the
+learning was here to start anew the broken, foreign tribes.”</p>
+
+<p>“More than some godly souls made welcome!” said
+Roderick. “I ever had wonder on me to know what penance
+was given Forgal the saint when the Pope at Rome
+reproved his heresy in writing that the world was round
+instead of flat as we all are knowing it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Forgal had lived on the coast here at home,” said
+Cineath the cleric, “and took note that the masts of a
+vessel at sea are seen before the body of the vessel is seen.
+Yes, he was given strong reproof for saying it, but his
+writing was not changed because of that—he left it as
+the words were written. In all else it is known he was a
+true scholar, and a holy man—the blessing of God on his
+soul, and on us!”</p>
+
+<p>The talk went on thus, and the queen and her ladies<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</span>
+listened. Ardan could feel her eyes on him, though never
+once did he meet her gaze with directness. He did not
+obtrude his speech, except as one of the men of rank asked
+of his journey afar, but he knew that he did not seem out
+of place near her throne, and had a pride in that.</p>
+
+<p>“You speak of the wise and holy abbot of Ardbreccan,”
+said Mac Roigh as the time for rest came, and the prayer
+of the cleric was ended. “Was he well known by you?”</p>
+
+<p>“He was as my father while he lived, and left me to his
+close friend when he died,” said Ardan. “His fancy was
+to make me as a scribe and genealogist—but why should
+I, a son of no family, turn genealogist?”</p>
+
+<p>“No family?” said Mac Roigh, and looked at him. “If
+you were not of blood and race, think you so renowned a
+man would have found in you the stuff for his science?
+And you wear the colors of a noble.”</p>
+
+<p>“Youth thinks not so much of these matters, and I was
+but a youth when I turned from that work,” said Ardan.
+“Instead of a devout priest with quill and ink pot I am a
+priest’s message bearer to royal houses.”</p>
+
+<p>“We will see you again tomorrow,” said the queen graciously.
+“If you ride, you could attend on the ladies who
+fancy sport with the falcons on the moor.”</p>
+
+<p>“I ride,” said Ardan.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_24" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/t.jpg" alt="T" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Three days they were speaking like that before
+princes and chiefs, and three nights he was led by
+Kauth, her woman, to Kauth’s own curtained room
+of sleeping, and there Dervail came to him. Kauth was
+their guard, and their nights were of whispers. He heard<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</span>
+there her dreams of strange greatness, and knew that
+Breffni’s crown was as a golden rung in a ladder she meant
+to climb.</p>
+
+<p>“And you, Ardan, will climb with me, for it is true what
+the chief of Mac Roigh has said: no youth below the noble
+rank of <i>aire-desa</i> wears the colors, and is taught music and
+chess, shooting and the riding of horses—swift riding
+beautiful! You are fitting in all ways, and have the trust
+of Diarmod, and that is a thing lucky. When the day
+comes I will have you near the throne and my eyes are
+made glad that you have visage and speech of a prince.
+It will be well for you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Your talk is in circles,” he said. “You are queen—yet
+you talk of the day when you win the throne! I come
+through all the wilderness for the reason that you were
+a soul in prison—and it is a different thing I find. You
+have freedom for the first time, and are using it on men.”</p>
+
+<p>“I do the things of my girl dreams,” she said. “I never
+was told how women had power and here I am learning.
+When I go to Diarmod—”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” he said, “it is not good to dream that. There is
+Prince of Breffni and Mor na Tuathal between you two!
+Her people are of greatness in power, and even a strong
+king might not stand out against them. She is his wife,
+and her brothers are his watchers.”</p>
+
+<p>Dervail lifted a feather, and tossed it upward.</p>
+
+<p>“She, and her brother abbots, and sainted priests will
+weigh not so much as that against my wish, when I wish
+it,” she said. “I am out of the convent walls forever and
+am learning the power of women—and the strength of it
+is sweet.”</p>
+
+<p>“And what answer to Diarmod who would save you
+again for sanctuary if your prayer was for that? for without
+your word he may not take this road.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</span></p>
+
+<p>“The time will come when I send him signal. It will
+be—it will be a white pearl of royal size. There are creels
+of jewels here! I will be sending one to him more beautiful
+than the one given by Gillebart of Limerick to Anselm
+the archbishop oversea—and that one was called a royal
+gift to the prince of the English church. Yes, it will be a
+pearl I will send when I send the call for him. It is a
+fine thing for me that I am able to bind my friends with a
+queen’s gifts.”</p>
+
+<p>“It—is not a queen to whom he was sending me, Dervail.
+It was a veiled maid of the cloisters, and she calling
+for champion.”</p>
+
+<p>She laughed low, and looked at him in pride.</p>
+
+<p>“Every man in this keep would be champion of mine if I
+called—and if I gave him my smiles,” she said, “but not
+one is strong to control all the others. I have given much
+thought to that matter and secret knowings have been
+spoken to me by a man of the Old Wisdom! Diarmod is,
+of all Erinn, the one of strength; and he will be stronger
+in days to come, for his gathering of spears will be a great
+gathering. The spears he gathers will make a new ruling
+for all Erinn. And I was knowing that thing before the
+day I laid sight on Tiernan the ravager.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are talking of dark, hidden things, Dervail, and
+they are forbidden.”</p>
+
+<p>“They are true things, and the stars tell them! A secret
+man, who has the name of Duffagan, told me that thing in
+Clonard. He was a scholar but no monk, and Kauth gives
+him fellowship. When O’Ruarc would in willingness
+bring any retainer of mine, I brought him as husband to
+Kauth, and that was saving his life. He has a fever on
+him for old books, and his was the task to carry north the
+annals most rare. He has the trust of O’Ruarc who thinks
+him a book fool; but he knows the stars and the tides,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</span>
+does Duffagan Mac Knea, and he knows the tides of men’s
+lives as he does the tides of the sea! When he tells me it
+is time to send call to Diarmod of the Spears, it will be
+gladness for me to be sending it. And until that day
+comes I am waiting and learning and dreaming my
+dreams.”</p>
+
+<p>“Mac Knea,” said Ardan, “that means ‘Son of the
+Night’—it is a curious name to put on a man.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yet it is fitting,” said Dervail, “else he would not be
+having it. Words have power, and the wrong word he
+would not have on him. He has a wisdom not to talk of
+to every bird crossing over, and none of these people are
+knowing it. They laugh at him, and call him the little
+dark spider sitting ever alone in a corner with watching
+eyes; but a spider spins webs beyond craft of mortal.”</p>
+
+<p>“It may be evil craft you praise in him! How then if
+you find it so?”</p>
+
+<p>“It is true craft,” she insisted. “Already it has proven
+itself on me. Of Tiernan’s hosting I was warned by him.
+I was ready on that day, and it was no weeping novice he
+found in me, but a king’s ward, with the rights of a noble.
+He was my key to the world, and I used him. I came not
+out of the walls a captive: it was the wife of the Prince
+of Breffni who rode beside him.”</p>
+
+<p>“A mystery are you to me, Dervail,” said Ardan, “and
+not the caged bird I crossed the kingdoms to find.”</p>
+
+<p>“The caged bird!” she said. “Ardan, have you memory
+of the snow bird you made of me in the cloisters?”</p>
+
+<p>“I have the memory—and the guilt,” he said. “When
+I listen to you I think I was ‘fey’ that night I worked
+on it. I had cold and hunger and my soul afire. Had I
+made likeness of the Holy Ones with such perfectness, the
+monks would have made a saint of me; instead of which
+they banished us both far as was in their power. And—they<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</span>
+did not break down its white wings of ice quick
+enough to save it from the eyes of Diarmod!”</p>
+
+<p>She gave a little cry at that, but it was a sound of joyous
+triumph.</p>
+
+<p>“Again has Mac Knea proven true,” she said. “He
+told me it was by some work of another that Diarmod’s
+heart turned to thought of me. That I did not believe,
+and so I have said; but it was true! You, Ardan, made
+one image of me poised for flight—you must make for
+me another—when I have reached the end of the flight and
+picked my throne.”</p>
+
+<p>He thought she made a jest of him, but her beauty was
+so great that he was content to look in silence, as he
+thought that no queen ever told of in song or annal had
+such beauty as hers. Not fair Dierdre of the sorrows, or
+the wondrous Brighde who was goddess of beauty and
+art, or that Grania whose beauty and courage were as one
+when her beauty won a crown, and her courage dared toss
+it aside as a ball in her great game—and her game was
+Love.</p>
+
+<p>He sat thinking these things, and knowing that all the
+beauty of all of them could not equal the beauty of Dervail.
+It was seemly enough that her fame might indeed grow
+great as she hoped, and her name be widely known among
+the rulers of Erinn.</p>
+
+<p>So deep was his dreaming of it that he kept no count of
+his silence, or her curious looks.</p>
+
+<p>“Of what are your thoughts when you stare past me as
+if there was naught between yourself and the skins on
+the wall?” she asked, and he roused and looked at her.</p>
+
+<p>“I am thinking there was never your equal for beauty
+in all the wide world, Dervail,” he said simply, “neither
+them that are living, nor them who are gone the Way.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are the same Ardan,” and her smile was strange.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</span></p>
+
+<p>“You think I fail to make note of beauty because I do
+not play the sighing champion for your favor,” he said,
+“but you read me wrong. As ward of Murtagh of Meath,
+and foster child of Donough of Orielle it is a pretty puzzle
+to me why each king was not striving to make best marriage
+for you with ally of his own. They shut you in high
+walls for life without choice of yours—and would have
+forgot you were living if—”</p>
+
+<p>“If the Son of the Night had not made the key to come
+to my cell!”</p>
+
+<p>“What would you say?”</p>
+
+<p>“Three new moons was his work to help it to come that
+way,” she whispered. “He made secret prayers for that
+thing—to the four ways he was sending that call for the
+man—and Tiernan was the man to hear it, and to come
+there, and Tiernan was the key!”</p>
+
+<p>“More like it was that Tiernan sent your master of
+druid lore to spy out the wealth of Clonard! You were
+part of that wealth, Dervail.”</p>
+
+<p>“I have wonder if that be true,” she mused, and her
+eyes were looking sideways in thought, but the red-rose
+lips curved over the white little teeth of her, and the blue
+eyes had laughing pride.</p>
+
+<p>“Even if it be so, the rule of Tiernan is over with that
+man, and mine is the rule,” she said. “He pins his life to
+my service. Tiernan is now but a man on our chessboard.
+And you are wrong in one thing: Tiernan knows nothing
+of Duffagan’s hidden wisdom; no, Tiernan has dread of
+such learning, for he was born at Whitsuntide, and it was
+foretold that by a man and a woman of druid craft would
+his downfall be if he followed their steps. That is why,
+after every hosting, or every great killing he makes faithful
+pilgrimage to the shrine of Phadraig. Great and rich
+gifts he will be leaving there to prove he is christian<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</span>
+surely. No—Ardan, Tiernan of Breffni has fear, and has
+horror of all ‘Old Wisdom,’ and the life of Mac Knea
+would go out like a rushlight in the wind if Tiernan
+knew.”</p>
+
+<p>“And you! Is there no fear on you?”</p>
+
+<p>“At first there was fear—and great fear—but not now.
+The strength of the stars is with us, and that lifts and
+bears me above the fear. The ‘Old Wisdom’ has made
+me Queen of Breffni and that, Ardan, is my first move in
+the game, and it is a great game.”</p>
+
+<p>“If someone should be telling Tiernan O’Ruarc?”</p>
+
+<p>“I would kill that one, Ardan, and you alone have my
+secret.”</p>
+
+<p>“Suppose I tell it to Diarmod?”</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him, and thought a bit and laughed in
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>“That would be favor to me,” she decided. “He has no
+love for me—yet; though he has much thought of me.
+That telling would give him more thought, for I will
+spend one secret night on Tara with the man whose name
+will go down the centuries with mine! Take that saying
+to Diarmod for me, Ardan; it will tell him that no pale-blooded
+nun has come north to rule in Breffni. Let him
+give dreams to a night in Tara!”</p>
+
+<p>“Tara has been desolate these many generations.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yet his fathers did rule there, Ardan, and it may be my
+own did! It is the place for Ard-Ri of Erinn, and it may
+be a great rule will yet be built on its ruins.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is a dream, Dervail.”</p>
+
+<p>“Duffagan is saying all great things of life have been
+grown from dreams, and that the moon and the stars
+govern our dreams.”</p>
+
+<p>“I would see this priest of the forbidden ere I journey
+south, and tomorrow is the latest I may linger. It is no<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</span>
+wish of mine to see Tiernan of Breffni, whose plunder is
+sacred things of altars.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yet are you loyal to Diarmod.”</p>
+
+<p>“What then? Diarmod gives endless wealth to holy
+houses. His own gold has built monasteries and churches
+for the glory of saints.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ardan,” said Dervail, gently smiling, “all this is truth,
+yet there are other truths of him; when a lord of the south
+refused his daughter to Diarmod in the days of Diarmod’s
+youth, he gathered spears and took her with the veil and
+the vows of a nun on her! In amorous fellowship she was
+held in his castle and wedded there to a lord of his choosing.
+That is the custom of a king who has power, Ardan!
+He takes what he wants! I hear much of the power of
+Diarmod of Leinster. He has their hate, but their tales are
+tales of praise to me, for they tell of his strength.”</p>
+
+<p>“Their hate may build untruths against him. When was
+this ravaging?”</p>
+
+<p>“In Kildare, and her name was Dhira. Her house was
+the house of Cahsadhe, and one hundred and seventy lives
+were sent back to God in her capture. She lived a hidden
+woman after that time, but the story could not be hidden.
+That was before your birth, or mine, Ardan.”</p>
+
+<p>“Dall Clairineach surely had knowing of that if it was
+a true thing, Dervail, yet yours is the first word of it I
+am hearing.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is not for nothing Diarmod founds monasteries and
+religious houses! You have been bred in them, Ardan,
+and it is a place for holding secret things.”</p>
+
+<p>Kauth slipped through the arras to tell them the cocks
+were crowing and the old day was gone. She looked
+strangely at Ardan, and to Dervail, when alone, she said
+the youth had much of beauty, too much for such distance
+of converse as was his custom.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</span></p>
+
+<p>“True enough,” said Dervail, unbraiding the pearls in
+her hair. “But there are other men for other uses, and
+this one has such honestness he would be useless to me
+except in his own spirit. Because I tell him much, he
+thinks I tell him all; and in his prayers my name will not be
+forgotten.”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_23" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/k.jpg" alt="K" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Kauth, who had been lay sister of Clonard, was given
+higher place than the place of a serving-woman in
+the castle of O’Ruarc, and her dress held three
+colors. She rode abroad with Dervail when the days were
+fine, and ever stood between when man or woman made
+approach to the hall of the queen.</p>
+
+<p>Thus she rode obedient with the glad riders of the
+springtime in the forest, and with adroitness found way to
+lose herself with the queen and Ardan, and all three rode
+in the edge of the great wood, and looked out on the moor
+where women with their young were gathering gorse
+bloom and marsh marigold to keep luck in the house when
+hung over the door on May Eve. Others were plucking
+primrose for the doorstep, and youths were seen bearing
+holly and rowan and a young tree of the yew for the circle
+dance of the many stars around the Still Star of the north.</p>
+
+<p>“It would seem a strange nightfall to be out in the wilderness,”
+said Ardan. “All christians are together elsewhere
+on the eve of Beltain.”</p>
+
+<p>“Duffagan Mac Knea gives me word that the prayers
+are the same, and only the difference is that saints’ worship
+is given instead of druid. The dance does not change,
+and the harp music does not change, and the faith does<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</span>
+not change. I have spoken at every chance with these
+people concerning all things, and not yet has Duffagan
+told me anything not of easy proof.”</p>
+
+<p>“But the castle cleric, Cineath, has he no reproof?”</p>
+
+<p>“He knows Duffagan only as student and scribe, who
+has gone into the foreign world to the shores of the Nile,
+and tells no cleric of the deeper things learned there.”</p>
+
+<p>They had reached a hill of three circles, and Kauth, who
+rode apart, came close and slipt from her horse.</p>
+
+<p>“No animal must press foot up above,” she said. “So
+said Duffagan to me. Since the end of yesterday has he
+been here, and fasting. It is new moon, and Beltain.”</p>
+
+<p>Dervail sat on her white horse and looked up at the
+steep sides of the hill, and looked beside her at a huge
+square stone, pierced, and once rudely carven, but now
+covered with lichen gray and green and russet. It was
+high as her own head and she on the back of the horse.
+Other stones of the same bigness were seen as if standing
+guard around the circle of a great earth temple.</p>
+
+<p>“There were great men in the world when that thing
+was done,” she said. “It was not two or three people who
+were coming here then to take note of the sky and the
+clouds over the new moon.”</p>
+
+<p>Ardan said no word. He saw Kauth take from under
+her cloak a white pigeon wound about with white and saffron
+bands. She placed it in the hands of Dervail and
+pointed upward.</p>
+
+<p>“Not empty-handed must you go there,” she said.
+“Pluck a rowan or a holly branch for the hand of your
+friend. I have my happiness in lack of knowledge, and
+will be your guard of the horse below.”</p>
+
+<p>A dim path went up through the wood clothing the
+steep, and at the first terrace they saw other tall stones like
+sentinels circling the hill. Ardan felt as if he had passed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</span>
+some strange dread portal into an ancient life; far above
+he saw that which he had heard of in Gaul but never
+dreamed to see in Erinn.</p>
+
+<p>It was a temple in the open with the sky for roof. Great
+squared pillars arose in a circle, and to the east a sanctuary
+was made by a huge slab overhead and two uprights
+on either side. An altar was there on a raised floor of
+stone, and Duffagan the silent, in white robe and saffron
+bands, stood there watching the sinking sun, and striking
+flint on flint craftily where the silken strands of the wild
+flax made tinder.</p>
+
+<p>A tiny spiral of smoke curled and drifted along the stone
+slab above him, and the two at the edge of the circle stood
+still and spoke no word.</p>
+
+<p>A curious hoop of hazel wands was beside the altar, and
+two balls suspended at either side—one of yellow, one
+white; twigs of rowan were there, and twigs of yew.</p>
+
+<p>The priest lifted the hoop and whirled it sunwise through
+the smoke, and Ardan knew it was symbol of sun and moon
+circling thus through the smoke of the earth altar.</p>
+
+<p>As the last fire of the sun went beyond the great sea of
+mystery, the blaze of the temple leaped up—it was as if
+stolen out of the western sky!</p>
+
+<p>Dervail thrust spray of holly into the hand of Ardan,
+and went forward with her offering.</p>
+
+<p>Ardan could hear the low murmur of a prayer or incantation
+as water from a shallow cup in the stone was
+sprinkled in a circle about the slender blaze.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Sun and Sky,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Moon and Earth,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Fire and Water,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Living Green!</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>As the priest lifted his eyes, Dervail went forward with
+her strange offering. Without fear she walked, yet with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</span>
+a look of question. And Ardan knew it was for the first
+time.</p>
+
+<p>“As Life I make my offer,” said Dervail.</p>
+
+<p>“As Life I give it again to the elements by which life
+endures.”</p>
+
+<p>The voice of the man had a sweet singing note in it by
+which Ardan was won in surprise. He had expected
+roughness or harshness in an un-christian priest, yet Duffagan,
+who was also “Son of the Night,” was gentle beyond
+belief.</p>
+
+<p>So amazed was he at this that he scarce noted the firm,
+quick stroke of the flint knife until the wings fluttered
+once, and then were held close and steady while the blood
+trickled from the slit throat to the altar where the fire was.</p>
+
+<p>Dervail stood, serene, yet pale of face, for it was a place
+of curious imaginings. Ardan saw her cast quick look
+over her shoulder, and knew that, like him, she felt the
+movement, or the very breathing of a multitude circling
+that high place of ancient mysteries. Once he thought he
+heard the sound of shrill singing far off, to the tramp of
+thousands of feet, but in another moment he knew it was
+a distant shepherd’s pipe, and the wind hurtling through
+the forest below.</p>
+
+<p>Wind caught the flame and blew it against the hazel
+hoop of the symbols. Dervail led Ardan forward.</p>
+
+<p>“Once I was to come to this place where you read the
+stars, Duffagan,” she said. “I am here to keep faith, and
+I bring my one friend who makes offer beside me.”</p>
+
+<p>Ardan’s hand held out the branch of holly, and Duffagan
+stripped the leaves, and let them fall one by one on the
+blaze. His watching of each new flame was curious. He
+did not speak until there were left only red embers of the
+twigs.</p>
+
+<p>“Good it is that your soul is strong in faith, O Queen,”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</span>
+spoke the strange, gentle, even voice. “The trial times of
+life will call for much strength of yours, and it is well to
+prove faiths. I have fasted and prayed here, and have
+read the sky at this new time of the moon, but this is not
+a moon in which change will come to you. It is a moon
+for patience. Your friend who has come as a new star in
+your sky is safest if his going is soon. There are watchful
+eyes in the head of the cleric of Breffni. Take you
+leave as if careless of time, but ride for life when you have
+turned a hill!”</p>
+
+<p>“Cineath the cleric?” mused Dervail. “He is a ferret
+for Tiernan. I will provide for you extra horse on the
+way, Ardan.”</p>
+
+<p>Ardan gave curious glances to the man whose words she
+heeded, and made promise to act on. Dark he was, as his
+name denoted—dark, and small, and gentle—and his dark
+eyes had a strange, withdrawn look as if looking at the
+two mortals, yet listening to unseen things!</p>
+
+<p>“The Great Bear of the stars points again to the east
+at fall of night,” he said. “It is the mid-sign between heat
+and cold, and is the time for searching. The old learning
+has been lost for the reason that no royal protector dare
+stand against the craft of the saints and their followers.
+But many, Dervail, will have your name in their speech,
+and you will cause much wonder in the minds of many.
+That is a thing I read in all castings for you, and it may
+come to pass that you will be the royal one who dares
+openly sanction that ancient hidden wisdom to which each
+simple heart makes secret prayer.”</p>
+
+<p>“With aid from you, and guided by the powers unseen,
+I have brought here in secret my vow offering,” said Dervail.
+“That is my pledge—a fair white pledge—not to
+go backward on the road we are walking. In one year—two
+years—a thousand men and women will face sunwise<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</span>
+about the circle where we alone stand now. You will be
+the honored priest of divinings, the thousands will give
+you their strength when their fear is lifted—and lifted
+it will be if you show me the time and the road for Tara.”</p>
+
+<p>“That will come—and strife will come—and terrors.
+Great hostings will come, and kings will fall; but you will
+live through all, and your name—your name—it is a
+name whispered secretly now, but in days to come there
+will be shouting of that name—Dervail—Dervail—Dervail!”</p>
+
+<p>His speech was half whispered, and he said her name
+as if repeating echoes of it afar off. A faint smile was on
+his lips and his face serene.</p>
+
+<p>For the first time Ardan spoke.</p>
+
+<p>“For what reason is Tara the key to any greatness when
+Tara itself was cursed by Ruadan the saint, and is deserted
+ground, and crumbling walls in our day?”</p>
+
+<p>Duffagan did not at once make reply. It was as if he
+had drawn out of hearing. Then he came back and spoke.</p>
+
+<p>“Tara even in desolation is a word of power. Images of
+greatness belong in that place—and some mortals see
+them! Tara is the mid-court of dominion, and the Ard-Ri
+should face the sunrise from that center. Tara is a symbol,
+as are these things before me symbols of the heavens and
+the earthly life. By symbols spirit is caught in the silence
+and held, breathless, for the union with knowledge. Tara
+holds a message for the woman or man who would rule
+Erinn—and the message cannot be carried to another.
+Each finds there that which his own soul can circle. Dervail
+has made record that it is the rule desired by her. My
+task is to study stars, and phases of the moon, and find the
+safe time for such journey.”</p>
+
+<p>“Will he, my friend, be beside me?” asked Dervail, and
+Duffagan peered at her in the falling twilight.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</span></p>
+
+<p>“He will not be there. His road touches yours strangely,
+and a veil between! Is he of your kindred?”</p>
+
+<p>“I have no kindred,” said Ardan.</p>
+
+<p>“I think that is not true,” said Duffagan, “for I see you
+bear shadows or burdens of kindred.”</p>
+
+<p>“Where do you see these things?”</p>
+
+<p>“I read it in the leaves of your holly when the flame
+curled them into shapes before burning; if not kindred to
+Dervail, it is to some mortal close to Dervail.”</p>
+
+<p>“We are going, Duffagan,” she said. “The dark will be
+coming, and the spies of Tiernan on the road. I come to
+the sunset of Beltain because of your prayers here, and in
+other days many will follow me.”</p>
+
+<p>“They will,” he said. “I hear the voices of many calling
+your name.”</p>
+
+<p>He held his hands out over her head in blessing, and
+made gesture of the way they should circle the altar and
+the path of descent. He did not look at them again, and
+as they passed without the great circle they looked back.
+He was holding at arms’ length the hoop of the hazel, and
+looking through it at the faint silver line of the new moon
+against the dark purple of the western sky.</p>
+
+<p>Dervail drew near to Ardan, and laid her hand on his
+as if to know a mortal beside her, for red light from the
+sun long gone reflected itself on a cloud in midheaven and
+fell on Duffagan. It turned his robe and the stones about
+him into soft light of flame—and left a strange image.</p>
+
+<p>“It is as if a furnace of fire had opened at his feet, lighting
+him only, and leaving all the other pillars in cold gray,”
+said Ardan, as he watched the light fade again.</p>
+
+<p>“Strange signs follow Duffagan, or, does his thought
+compel them? He has fasted since set of last night’s sun,
+and will have no feast until tomorrow. All this he does
+for the craft he follows.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</span></p>
+
+<p>“His belief is strong as though his birth had been in
+Phadraig’s day, and not in this,” said Ardan. “It is a
+strange end to my last day with you, Dervail.”</p>
+
+<p>She pressed his arm and walked beside him into the
+shadows of the wood.</p>
+
+<p>“Make me a song of this place, Ardan. A song of the
+old, old days when sharp edges were yet on these great
+stones, and this hill was saffron and white with the robes
+of Ancient Faith people.”</p>
+
+<p>“That is far to go for a song, Dervail. I have made you
+songs most of my years, but this is not the place I would
+seek for songs of you, lest they be sad songs.”</p>
+
+<p>The wife of Tiernan peered at him from under her
+golden mane.</p>
+
+<p>“Is it fear on you, Ardan?”</p>
+
+<p>“I think it is not fear, but this mystic hill is not a place
+to seek lightly on the eve of Beltain.”</p>
+
+<p>“What could come to us?” she asked and clung to his
+arm. “Ardan—many times you have come close in my
+thoughts of old in my dreams. But the words of Duffagan
+of the veil between—what meant he by that? Look,
+Ardan, what other man would not turn warm when my
+warm hand touched him? Yet you are cold; what is it,
+Ardan? Did some veil indeed fall between at that altar?
+See, my hand did not touch you as we went up; yet were
+we more close than now, Ardan.”</p>
+
+<p>“Duffagan has given you dreams and fears, and it is
+best not to speak of them now in this place,” he said.</p>
+
+<p>“What could come to us?” she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>“What could not? Is that altar jewel you wear so holy
+that it is strong enough to guard you in all places?”</p>
+
+<p>She drew away and stared at him, and drew her robe
+more closely over her breast.</p>
+
+<p>“Have you ‘the sight,’ Ardan? Times are when I think<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</span>
+it. You know that great jewel of white diamond and red
+ruby?”</p>
+
+<p>“I heard of it at Armagh. It was the wondrous star of
+Clonard, and strange wealth to wear riding the forest.”</p>
+
+<p>She laughed at that, and shook forward the gold of her
+hair over her breast. They were again near to Kauth,
+who stood with the horses.</p>
+
+<p>“Tiernan forbade that the altar jewels see the light of
+day in his absence,” she confessed. “But what use has a
+pilgrim of penitence with gems of richness?”</p>
+
+<p>He did not answer, but helped her on the horse. The
+question of the jewel had changed the momentary love-light
+in her eyes, or the claim of warmth for warmth. He
+knew she had been touched by fear in the druid circle, and
+it had driven her to his arms if he would have her there.</p>
+
+<p>Kauth looked at them as they came down, but had no
+question. Though drawn to Duffagan as a mate for his
+comfort, she had no wish to know the secret things of his
+dark delvings.</p>
+
+<p>They rode hard and fast until in sight of the castle, and
+then Ardan spoke.</p>
+
+<p>“I will carry your message south, Dervail, and I will go
+tonight instead of on the morrow. I have seen your hopes
+and your dark road to them.”</p>
+
+<p>“And your thoughts are baleful and apart from me!”</p>
+
+<p>“No. Call on me for that which I dare to serve you.
+But you have taken yourself out of the world we know
+together. It may be I cannot follow. Your strange Duffagan
+says there is a veil between our roads of life—and
+neither of us can prove that this day. But take deep
+thought to what you do, Dervail. Duffagan spoke of symbols,
+and I saw one when you offered the white-feathered
+thing there for the altar knife.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ardan, what did you see?” and he knew she was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</span>
+thinking of that strange <em>crowded</em> feeling within the circle.
+The unlaid ghosts of the centuries swept to the altar at the
+call of blood.</p>
+
+<p>“I saw the white bird of a boy’s dream of beauty in a
+cloister. I saw the caged bird I rode north to seek sight
+of, and to lead spears of aid to—and I saw a queen who
+offered that bird as token for ambitions of earth power. It
+was only a symbol, Dervail, but you placed all in one
+under the knife there! Your white bird was a symbol
+instead of the children other women, in other ages, have
+borne up to that druid rath for sacrifice.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ardan!” and her white hands were flung out toward
+him. “That will be the veil between, and I will be a lone
+woman—terribly lone.”</p>
+
+<p>“You will be queen of beauty and power, Dervail. But
+put your all of white dreams and of heart-love on that altar,
+and you will then indeed be alone in life and in death!”</p>
+
+<p>She drooped there, her hair a veil about her in the
+gloaming, and her hands clasped over her knee.</p>
+
+<p>Two kerns ran out the castle gate and stood with lights
+at either side to light her entrance. She straightened and
+tossed back her hair, and rode forward in pride.</p>
+
+<p>“Yet the dream of Tara is a great dream for a life,” she
+said.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a_22" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/t.jpg" alt="T" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">The harvest of the year was not yet garnered when
+the pearl of Dervail went south to Diarmod of
+Leinster by the hand of Duffagan.</p>
+
+<p>It found him flushed with the victory of Moanmore
+against Turlough O’Brian, and strong with the thought<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</span>
+that O’Conor of Connaught owed him and owed Meath too
+much of grace to lift sword or spear if the sacking of
+Clonard Abbey by O’Ruarc was avenged at last by the
+lords of Leinster.</p>
+
+<p>In every secret way Diarmod and Malachi, Prince of
+Meath, had gathered strength and made bonds in friendship
+for that hosting when the time came, and the messenger
+of Dervail told the day O’Ruarc was going north
+on a hosting of his own against a rebellious sub-chief who
+had taken sides with O’Lochlainn of Ulster in his claims
+to the rule of Ard-Ri of Erinn as against Turlough
+O’Conor, whose word was the most weighty in all but the
+northlands.</p>
+
+<p>The days of going and the days of return had been reckoned
+with care by Duffagan, and there were plenty for the
+task.</p>
+
+<p>As to a joyous fair rode the men of the spears of
+Diarmod, and he, kingly in pride, in the midst of them.
+Years sat light on him, for the message of Dervail had
+brought back his youth. It had come at a time when the
+music of life was dulled by the discords of rule, and the
+watchful eyes of Conor, the heir-apparent. But the dream
+of the forbidden maid brought deep longings, and her
+secret call to him brought again the fairy songs of youth
+to his soul.</p>
+
+<p>Fierce was the assault on Breffni, and lightning quick
+the conquest of the castle where Kauth had seen to it that
+every lock was loosed.</p>
+
+<p>No woman was touched but the wife of O’Ruarc, who
+was bidden forth with her chosen woman, as hostage to
+Diarmod of Leinster.</p>
+
+<p>In garb royal, clad in the cloak of seven colors, walked
+Dervail out from under the roof of the prince who had been
+her Key!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</span></p>
+
+<p>The men of Leinster and Meath gave long looks to her
+as she walked between the rows of them to the champing
+racer straining on his bit, and their eyes turned to each
+other, dazzled by the brilliant beauty of her. No such
+hostage had ever been given from prince to king in
+Erinn.</p>
+
+<p>It was the hand of Diarmod touched her foot in the
+mounting, and they two were speechless as their hands
+met. It was the wild dream coming true, and the stars
+read by Duffagan had all her faith in that moment!</p>
+
+<p>Kauth mounted her horse, and among her goods fastened
+to the saddle was the gift-cup given by hand of
+Diarmod in the castle of Donough. The sight of it helped
+Dervail to her voice.</p>
+
+<p>“It has not been drunk from under that roof,” she said,
+“but now we will be drinking from it again—and at the
+well of Nemnach in Tara we will drink.”</p>
+
+<p>“Your word is the word—and will be,” said Diarmod
+the king.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_25" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/m.jpg" alt="M" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Murtagh, King of Meath, knew nought of the
+hosting until the spears of Leinster were north of
+Ath-Luain, and there was none for comfort but
+Donough of Orielle—and him only with the hope that
+Dervail would seek shelter from all men in the abbey of
+Mellifont.</p>
+
+<p>But Malachi, Prince of Meath, rode back the richer for
+the plundering of Breffni, and spoke his content at the
+sisterhood claimed for Dervail.</p>
+
+<p>“No queen so queenly in Erinn,” he made boast, “and
+it is a foolish thing to hide, as you have hid—her daughterhood!<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</span>
+Take pride that she is of our line, even though
+a shadow is on her dam—whom no one is knowing! She
+will yet be queen for Diarmod—and our house remembered
+because of her name.”</p>
+
+<p>“That has been a long, dark, fear of mine!” said Murtagh
+the king.</p>
+
+<p>But Malachi had no knowledge of the secret held by the
+older man, and thought it a foolish saying.</p>
+
+<p>“Meath has been made strong for us by this act,” he
+boasted. “The troubles of yours with the clerics will be
+at an end, for Diarmod has made pledges for Meath. From
+Clonard to the Shannon you are to be protected by hostage;
+from Clonard eastward to the sea I am to divide the
+rule. This makes stronger the border; thus much of gain
+already for your tie—whatever it be—with the wife
+of Breffni.”</p>
+
+<p>Murtagh frowned at the words and walked apart, deep
+in thought ere he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>“I wish death in peace,” he said, “and I can have that
+best by forgetting the tie. Pray God she makes choice
+of a cloister!”</p>
+
+<p>But she made choice of a different thing; from the rath
+of Malachi, whom she now called “brother,” she went for
+some secret thing to the ancient rath of the Kings at
+Tara on Midsummer’s Eve. There went Diarmod to keep
+tryst with her, and drink from the well of Nemnach.</p>
+
+<p>Until the morning star shone over the plain to the east
+they were alone on the height where his forefathers had
+been high kings through the centuries, and the look on
+his face was a look of entrancement when he came down
+from that place, and Dervail beside him.</p>
+
+<p>“She is my mate, and no woman before has been that
+to me,” he said to Malachi. “The clerics must find a way
+for it, for she is queen to me.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</span></p>
+
+<p>Yet, because of fear for her at the hands of Conor, the
+son of Mor, who was moving toward death, he took her
+not among his own children at Ferns, but in gorgeousness
+and much comfort placed her in the castle of O’Faelain in
+Kildare with a loyal guard, and the hostages of a princess
+claimed for her safety from Rhudri, lord of the castle.</p>
+
+<p>Thus came the daughter of Dyveke south into the region
+where the Danes had their holdings under Leinster, and
+where her mother had cursed the land, and all kings and
+all clans of Erinn!</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_24" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/g.jpg" alt="G" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Great wealth had been taken out of Breffni by
+Leinster—not only her own dower wealth, but
+rich plunderings of Clonard, and the droves of cattle
+taken were the wonder of the country in crossing.</p>
+
+<p>Like fire in the forest after falling of the leaves ran the
+story of that hosting, and of the vengeance on Breffni for
+the sacking of Clonard. Murtagh of Meath, and Donough
+of Orielle, and Duighal the prior went into prayer and
+deep converse over it. All things within human power had
+been done by them for the hiding of Dervail—yet had she
+ridden free and set their world afire!</p>
+
+<p>But prayers of piety could do naught to stem the flood
+of rage unloosed by her ambitions and the pillaging of
+Breffni. Turlough O’Conor, the high king, took sides
+with O’Ruarc. Erinn was divided in the struggle. The
+enemies made by Diarmod in his proud domination turned
+their spears against him, and annihilation threatened on
+every side. Turlough, the High King, sent a priest to deliver
+the doom of Leinster unless Dervail and her dower<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</span>
+were returned to O’Ruarc of Breffni. And troops of Breffni
+followed the messenger.</p>
+
+<p>Diarmod raged like a wounded bull.</p>
+
+<p>“My men will die for her, though they may not save
+her,” he said. “I cannot be the one to make choice; that
+is hers to make. But the army of Turlough and Breffni
+have crossed the Shannon.”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a_23" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/r.jpg" alt="R" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Rhudri of O’Faelain came riding a foaming steed,
+and stumbled, dazed and spent, before Diarmod.</p>
+
+<p>“My plea is to serve you in some other way,” he
+begged. “More than my troops are needed in the guarding
+of Queen Dervail for you. Her name has carried on the
+wind to strange places, even to the cells of monks in the
+wilderness. One of them, old and blind, and housed for
+charity in my hall, made his way in secret to her chair, an
+evil knife under his monk’s robe, and—”</p>
+
+<p>“Harm to Dervail?” thundered Diarmod, and the
+speaker quailed—“the lives of your household will
+answer!”</p>
+
+<p>“No harm has come to her beyond the baleful deed done
+under her eyes. Her dark friend, Duffagan, gave his blood
+instead of hers, and wounded the monkish murderer to the
+death. But the dying monk said some things of horror for
+her ears, and all who lavished courtesies on that fair lady
+now flee from her! It is a mystery—like rats seeking
+holes, they scatter as I turn my back. To save her there
+in life and dignity is beyond the power of man without
+guards—without servants.”</p>
+
+<p>“What is their fear?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</span></p>
+
+<p>“They will not voice it. May happen it is the death of
+the monk, or his words not heard by me. It may be the
+death of Duffagan of whom they had great awe. At her
+feet it is he died, and her own robe red with the blood of
+them both, yet there was no shrinking of her and no
+scream.”</p>
+
+<p>“She is a fitting queen, and royal her daring,” muttered
+Leinster, “and it is a baleful task to speak any going backward
+on the road for her! There is none to bear that word
+but one friend, and he would be loth, though constant.
+You, Donall, send to Glendalough for Ardan, the fosterling
+of Donough.”</p>
+
+<p>The lord of O’Faelain put out his hand to stay the son of
+Diarmod.</p>
+
+<p>“That message has gone on swift feet,” he said. “It
+was the first request of Queen Dervail.”</p>
+
+<p>“Gone? And for what purpose?”</p>
+
+<p>Donall the Illegitimate looked at him and gave quiet
+but scornful laughter.</p>
+
+<p>“Ardan has a good shape and good looks,” he said.</p>
+
+<p>The great hand of Diarmod smote him on the mouth,
+and the dirk of Diarmod was out.</p>
+
+<p>Conor, the heir-apparent, caught his arm and was flung
+aside, and Rhudri of O’Faelain stepped between.</p>
+
+<p>“Take time with you in counsel, Diarmod, ere you slay
+a son for sake of a hostage you will be forced to return.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hostage?” said Diarmod, glowering.</p>
+
+<p>“Is not that word the right word?” asked Rhudri. “It
+is the only one used for our queen guest in our keep.
+Connaught and Breffni are moving their troops to win her
+return, for the loss of Dervail is a greater blow to the pride
+of O’Ruarc than the loss of Longford and Leitrim. Is not
+hostage the wise word? Hostages are ever to be given
+back again, and in safety.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</span></p>
+
+<p>“She was hostage of Destiny to me, and not to be given
+back ever in life,” said Diarmod.</p>
+
+<p>Conor got Donall, with his bleeding mouth, out of the
+hall, and Diarmod sat steeped in gloom, turning over in
+his mind the attack on the life of Dervail. The word
+“hostage” as applied to her to cover her flight was a bitter
+word and—heavier than all—the thought of her going
+again out of his life, and she the glory of his dream of
+kingship over Erinn!</p>
+
+<p>He arose, frowning, and with set jaws.</p>
+
+<p>“No other must tell her since it must be told. I ride
+with you.”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_26" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/a.jpg" alt="A" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Ardan was first at the castle of O’Faelain, and there
+was sickness on his soul for what he met in that
+place.</p>
+
+<p>Herdsmen and kern, ploughman and smith, raged
+like a sea of storm about the walls of Faelain, and the
+name of Dervail was shouted in hate heard even at a
+distance. At times it would die away to a murmur, and
+then some wild voice would shrill aloud and the wave
+of sound would again roll upward—“Dervail the
+Shadow! Dervail of dark crafts! Dervail, the curse of
+Leinster!”</p>
+
+<p>At sight of the scholar’s robe of Ardan and the foam-wet
+steed, the mob made way, and held parley.</p>
+
+<p>“Be our spokesman to the white slut who is harlot
+of two kingdoms,” they said, “and we will let you pass
+safely. You are of the cells—they will let you speak.
+Tell the woman, and tell the governor, that none of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</span>
+our men will fight to hold her for Diarmod. The High
+King of Erinn is against him, and much of Leinster is
+against him. A free road to her if she takes the
+Breffni way; and death on her if she makes a stand in
+Kildare! A holy man is done to death in there by her
+dark comrade, and the curse of all saints is against her
+forever for that! Dervail! Dervail, the malediction of
+men!”</p>
+
+<p>They let him pass, and inside the gates white, stricken
+faces turned to him. The guard held spear and battle-axe
+against a rush of the crazed household. They pointed
+dumbly within when he spoke the name of Dervail. Only
+one man of the guard led the way, and he halted at the
+portal of her chamber.</p>
+
+<p>A horrid weeping was heard within, quivering sobbing
+and choking. It was the woman Kauth, who had seen
+Duffagan dragged into the court below, and there hung
+in ghastly manner against the castle wall for the killing of
+Kieran Dall.</p>
+
+<p>But the more ghastly thing was that Kieran had not
+yet died. He was coming out of a swoon of pain, and
+was prodded by Dervail, who sat beside him, dagger in
+hand, and steadily, in a dull, weary tone, making question.</p>
+
+<p>“You lie, monk, but I would have you damn your soul
+with other lie at the last breath! What reason to ban my
+race more than the race of another? What reason to ban
+my mother? Speak ere I rack your wounds! What reason—blind
+monk?”</p>
+
+<p>“The reason—the reason—Dyveke—is—proving—itself—in
+you! Your hand gave death—to him—to the
+father of your child, ere you went to your lover Thorold,
+fierce Dyveke!”</p>
+
+<p>“Again you lie yourself to hell! The name Dyveke is a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</span>
+name I never heard; I am a queen—Dervail the queen!
+Speak again the name of the race of the father of Dervail—speak!”</p>
+
+<p>The woman Kauth never ceased the dreary, smothered
+keione of despairing, but neither Dervail nor the man
+with the black wounds gave heed. He had again sunk
+half out of life, and the breath of him was a hollow
+rattle.</p>
+
+<p>“Speak, monk!” And again the prick of the knife was
+in his flesh. “You said it; say it again! The race of
+ancient kings? The branch sanctified in secret ways? It
+exalts me, that blood—and you shall speak! I am Dervail—I
+would know of that race. Speak! Speak again!”</p>
+
+<p>There was a struggle, a twitching of the body, and a
+whisper.</p>
+
+<p>“The race—dies out! Hark you! I hear wild waves
+on the shore; they are shouting curses—hark you! Dervail—Dervail!
+Dervail! The world rocks with that name
+of evil—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">For eric in breaking</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">- - - - </div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">A thousand years’ yoke</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">On the bent neck - - of Erinn!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">A - - thousand years’ tribute of blood</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">- - - Inis Fair!”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Then there was only the rattle—and after that no whisper,
+and his head lolled sideways and was pricked by the
+dagger to no good. And Ardan made the sign of the cross
+at sight of the thing she did, and caught her hand in
+horror.</p>
+
+<p>“Dervail! He has gone to God—and was a holy man!”
+“He has gone to hell—and was a liar! Also he was a
+cheat! He died too soon, not telling all—only fragments
+of his hate for me. He brought death to Duffagan, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</span>
+he brought that pack of wolves howling below—and without
+Duffagan the road I crave is a dark way for me! Is
+Diarmod dead that these things are?”</p>
+
+<p>It had been a long night and a morning she had sat there
+with her blind victim, and she viewed his dead face with
+disdain. And from weariness she was as in a daze. She
+looked at the blackened dagger, and again at Kieran Dall.</p>
+
+<p>“Who was he that a place was made for him at the
+table of a noble?” she asked. “Who was he that he was
+filled with hate against me in the lands of Leinster?”</p>
+
+<p>“He was a prince whose name was hidden under the
+robe, Dervail.”</p>
+
+<p>“Learn all for me and tell me! He made speech of
+things to madden my soul! I want Diarmod, and I want
+you to go to him! Hearken to the cries down there! It
+has been since sunrise—and ever more coming. Hearken
+to my name! Dervail! Dervail!”</p>
+
+<p>“That is the thing prophesied by Duffagan, whom they
+call your ‘Dark Comrade.’ He told you in Breffni he heard
+the echoes of your name in countless voices on the winds.”</p>
+
+<p>“That is true,” and she crouched there looking over her
+shoulder at him in a strange and fearful way; “but—but
+<em>Ardan</em>—this calling is in hate! They are not human
+beings down there—they are a hunting pack, howling for
+victim!”</p>
+
+<p>“They are mortals, indeed, Dervail, but they are made
+mad by fear. An army of men are bearing shields against
+Leinster for the sake of you, and there is only one road of
+life and safety open for your feet.”</p>
+
+<p>“And that road, Ardan?”</p>
+
+<p>“That road is north into Breffni.”</p>
+
+<p>“No! Not with Diarmod for my safety; not with his
+words of bondage still sounding in my ear!”</p>
+
+<p>She rose to her feet as if the very words gave strength<span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</span>
+to her, and her eyes looked proud even while her face went
+pale at the louder screams of fierceness down below.</p>
+
+<p>“Dervail, that dream has died with your Dark Comrade;
+such is my thought. Diarmod is no longer safety for you.
+His own life he may not be saving. Between you two, all
+Leinster and Meath can be made desolate.”</p>
+
+<p>“What then? When he is triumphant, more than
+Leinster may be his. His vows to me were made in Tara,
+and who more fit than he to rule again in the ancient place
+of the great kings? No! The dreams did not end with
+Duffagan—they endure! Beside Diarmod I will ride to
+find them!”</p>
+
+<p>Ardan turned to Kauth.</p>
+
+<p>“Bring cover for the dead,” he said, “and robe your
+queen for a dreary journey—and a speedy one.”</p>
+
+<p>Kauth covered the dead face of Kieran and then backed,
+sullen and defiant, against the wall.</p>
+
+<p>“I have no queen in this place,” she said. “Because of
+her, Duffagan is beheaded, and his head on a pike below.
+I saw what I saw done on that holy man who is dead, and
+I hear what you hear below in the shoutings. I think it is
+truth they tell down there in their cries—she is a malediction!
+Death to all is her one thought, so that she walks
+safe—that is her thought. In thrall to her was held
+Tiernan and Duffagan—they were a bridge for her feet.
+But I am no longer in thrall to her! I have seen unholy
+and unlucky things, and the words of dead Kieran are a
+curse against Dervail for always. If you, Lord Ardan,
+are brave to walk beside her now—you are the only man
+brave enough for it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Madness has fallen on her,” said Dervail. “The death
+of her man took her little wit.”</p>
+
+<p>“Not all of it,” said Kauth, who had a most evil look
+with her red eyes and swollen face, and her grin of malice.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</span>
+“This is the one man who never took the gift of you at
+your offer—and he is the only one of all your lovers
+to brave your enemies to reach you this day of your
+days.”</p>
+
+<p>“Go!” screamed Dervail in white fury. “Scullion,
+whom I lifted and strove to make human! Join your
+mates below ere I have you thrown to them from the
+battlements!”</p>
+
+<p>The woman slunk to the far end of the room of shadows,
+but cowered there, fearful of going down to the screaming
+mob. Dervail turned away and covered her ears with
+white, jeweled hands to shut out the clamor.</p>
+
+<p>“Ardan,” she whispered, “it is not all a lie she tells.
+They <em>have</em> scurried away from me like rats after a singeing!
+Rhudri of the Faelain has gone, and every woman
+of them is out of sight.”</p>
+
+<p>“I know the truth of that,” he said, “for the men of the
+woodland are bearing brush and straw and great timbers.
+They will smoke you out unless you take the Breffni road
+with me, and the choice must be now.”</p>
+
+<p>“The choice?” she muttered, and walked wildly from
+window to window looking down on the horrid, waiting,
+upturned faces. “The choice? Ardan—soul of me always!
+Yours was the choice for me, and mine the rebellious
+heart! Yours was the true vision, for the vision of
+Duffagan has led me here to this trap! Yours was the
+hand I should have held to; yours was the white way for
+me, Ardan, the white way of the sun; and I am at last
+saying it!”</p>
+
+<p>She flung herself on his shoulder, and her tears of self-pity
+touched his hand as he took her in gentleness toward
+the seat by the window.</p>
+
+<p>But the seat was not reached, for the reason that
+Diarmod and O’Faelain came into the room at that minute,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</span>
+and Diarmod, in a rush of rage, caught the shoulder
+of Dervail and flung her until she stumbled and fell across
+the dead body of Kieran.</p>
+
+<p>“The shouts below are the shouts of the prophets,” he
+said, “O royal harlot, who, in making choice, passes no
+man by!”</p>
+
+<p>Ardan turned toward the king with lifted hand of protest,
+and Diarmod whipped out his dirk at that moment
+and thrust downward a mighty blow.</p>
+
+<p>“You to the white way of your choice!” he said. “You
+to your white road—the two of you!”</p>
+
+<p>Ardan fell under the weight of the blow, and blood
+stained his white garment, but a strange thing chanced at
+his falling, for the dagger was caught and wrested from
+the king’s hand.</p>
+
+<p>“A deep stroke, Diarmod, and an unlucky one. The
+youth is under misjudgment; my faith on that!” said
+O’Faelain, lifting Ardan and tearing open the white undergarment.</p>
+
+<p>He crossed himself at what he saw there—and it was
+strange enough.</p>
+
+<p>The slender blade of the king did not go deep for the
+reason that the point was bedded in a golden ring, and the
+ring on a golden flat chain fastened around the neck of
+Ardan.</p>
+
+<p>O’Faelain undid the chain and handed it to Diarmod
+with the dagger pendant.</p>
+
+<p>“God and Mary have no wish that you do murder or
+vengeance for this woman—and the sign of it is here,”
+he said.</p>
+
+<p>Ardan struggled to his feet—bloodstained and pale, his
+hand staunching the wound.</p>
+
+<p>“You have robbed me of a thing precious,” he said.
+“To a king and a lord of Erinn it can have little worth,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</span>
+but as for me, if it is my time to die, I would wish to go
+into death with that token.”</p>
+
+<p>Diarmod looked from the gold ring on which there was
+graven a circled star and words in <i>ogham</i> and as his eyes
+met Ardan’s eyes, he was more blanched than Ardan, and
+his voice was husky and strange.</p>
+
+<p>“How is this precious to you—this thing more ancient
+than you can know?” he asked.</p>
+
+<p>“It was on the breast of my mother at her death, and
+more than that I do not know. Dall Clairineach bade me
+use it as a token to any king of Leith Mogh if danger
+threatened me. For myself I would not use it—but if it
+has virtue I will use it that Dervail the queen rides safe.”</p>
+
+<p>“She will ride free,” said Diarmod in a dull, strange
+way. “Look, Rhudri—see my punishment.”</p>
+
+<p>O’Faelain looked, and crossed himself, and lifted the
+hand of Ardan to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>“O perfect prince—and the first born,” he said, “you
+are a grace, and no punishment.”</p>
+
+<p>Dervail leaned forward, breathless at the words and at
+the look of Diarmod: she was forgotten by him and by
+O’Faelain. Their eyes saw only Ardan.</p>
+
+<p>“You knew your mother?” asked Diarmod.</p>
+
+<p>“I did not know her. Death took her. Dall Clairineach
+alone knew my blood, and he gave me no word. I am of
+his clan—so I am thinking.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are of the race of Conaire Mor, and your mother
+was Dhira of the Dark Hair whom they forced from me
+and hid away—a veiled woman! None told me there was
+a son, but her son could be only mine. You are the heir
+of my youth.”</p>
+
+<p>“Dhira!” said Dervail, her head thrust forward like a
+golden-headed serpent with its stroke of poison. “<em>That</em>,
+Ardan, was the nun he took from sanctuary—that was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</span>
+the thing of which I told—and the thing you would not
+give your faith to—and you the living witness!”</p>
+
+<p>Ardan looked at Diarmod in frowning question, and it
+was the eyes of Diarmod that wavered and fell.</p>
+
+<p>“This is between these walls,” said Ardan, and reached
+his hand for ring and chain. “Beyond the portal it is never
+to be spoke. If the token brings me fealty of a guard I
+will make use of it to lead this queen back in safety to
+her kingdom.”</p>
+
+<p>“See to it, Rhudri,” said Diarmod. “All that he asks
+of Leinster is his. You had my love, boy, and today I am
+knowing that her eyes were ever looking out on me from
+your own.”</p>
+
+<p>Ardan made no reply. He was staunching the blood
+with linen torn in strips by O’Faelain.</p>
+
+<p>“Diarmod,” spoke Dervail, “has an old love weakened
+you to pleading for crumbs? Is it true that Turlough
+O’Conor and Tiernan of Breffni have cast the shadow of
+their spears against you and weakened your courage? You
+hear Ardan say he will guard me out of your kingdom, and
+you speak no word of protest? Did I then ride south
+beside you for only a holiday or a fair?”</p>
+
+<p>“You came, a stolen queen as hostage,” said Diarmod,
+“that is the tale to tell. The hours are past for words of
+that: you must go with the prince if you would keep life in
+you; the spears of two armies are already across our border
+to force your return to Breffni. I will have vengeance
+for the loss of you but that will be on another day—on
+this one there is only flight in all haste for you.”</p>
+
+<p>Thus he spoke, but his eyes were on Ardan and she
+saw it.</p>
+
+<p>“You are not Diarmod the king this day,” she said.
+“You are only a man in a trance who has the looks of
+Diarmod. This dead monk had devil’s words of you, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</span>
+of me. He called me ‘Dyveke the Dove’ and said you
+were under <i>geis</i> to hold no white birds under snare. He
+had lies of old magic, and a curse for me in all of them.
+Are you knowing that baleful rune he mouthed? Know
+you that he met his death striving to do murder on
+me?”</p>
+
+<p>“It is known, and it is a sorrow,” said Diarmod, “and
+his is the first death of the many ere the end comes; thus
+has his life paid for his prophecy. Ulster will join me to
+war against Turlough and O’Ruarc; in another year
+Leinster will have allies and strength, and you will again
+ride south to rule.”</p>
+
+<p>“Your lips speak,” said Dervail coldly. “You are not
+the king of the night on Tara.”</p>
+
+<p>Rhudri returned with a frightened maid and the cloak
+of Dervail.</p>
+
+<p>“I pledge myself to send your goods on a morrow,” he
+said; “it cannot be now. While the humor of the mob
+gives sanction to your going, is the time to go.”</p>
+
+<p>The smile of Dervail was bitter and dreary as she looked
+at the three men. She was no longer the first thought in
+any mind there. Ardan the prince, and the first-born of
+Diarmod, was suddenly most wonderful and pleasing in
+the eyes of the two men. Even the disdain of Ardan gave
+them pride in him.</p>
+
+<p>“You to have royal rule when it means naught to you!”
+she said, looking at him, “and I to be robbed of it when
+it is breath of life to me!”</p>
+
+<p>“I claim no rule—nor will I,” said Ardan. “My mother
+died in sanctuary, and thus will I. Enough sons are in
+Leinster to divide the spoils. Cover well your head in the
+veil, for rain is falling. Give extra cloak to the maid, and
+I ask grace for her, and comfort if her courage lasts
+through the trials of the way.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</span></p>
+
+<p>“She shall have honor that she heeds your word, and
+the children of her shall have honor after her, O prince,”
+said Rhudri O’Faelain.</p>
+
+<p>It was an awkward moment and strange, as Dervail
+stood, veiled and gray, beside the body of Kieran, waiting
+to go.</p>
+
+<p>“The curse came when he came,” she said, looking down
+on him. “It seems a thousand years past—and it was
+but yesternight.”</p>
+
+<p>Smoke drifted up on the heavy air, and curled blue-white
+through the windows. Some of the mob, impatient
+of delays, had fired brush, and the falling rain drowned it,
+yet it bore its warning!</p>
+
+<p>There was a lull in the shouting as the guard of the king
+formed without—and then the great gate of the castle
+opened and a horse was seen with woman’s furnishings,
+and a roar went up.</p>
+
+<p>“Dervail! Dervail! Dervail, the accursed of Leinster!”</p>
+
+<p>Dervail stooped and picked up the dagger let fall when
+she ceased the torture of Kieran.</p>
+
+<p>“Dervail, there will be another day for us,” said
+Diarmod the king.</p>
+
+<p>“Your lips speak, O king!” said Dervail.</p>
+
+<p>She felt sullenly that the dark-eyed nun—long dead—had
+thrust herself between them at the end—and in a
+strange way she felt that the monk who had saved his last
+breath for curses had some way brought all this evil to be
+when he sunk his knife in Duffagan: that, and his words
+of mystic things, had changed the world for her.</p>
+
+<p>He had caught her imagination and enthralled her soul
+by the mystic things he left in shadow, and the shadow
+and fear remained on her like a heavy cloak of gray.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she turned to Ardan.</p>
+
+<p>“Use your new strength—do not let the king show<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</span>
+himself beside me. I do not choose he should hear the
+wild beasts and their hate of me.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is their fear of you, Dervail.”</p>
+
+<p>“To the blind monk the thanks for that; but do not let
+him come.”</p>
+
+<p>So, in the gray rain, drearily falling, she rode out beside
+Ardan in the center of twice sixty of the king’s guard.
+Her name was echoed by them a thousand times with all
+the terms of evil they could invent or remember, and more
+than once a bowman sent an arrow hurtling overhead as a
+warning to haste.</p>
+
+<p>Once she looked back, thinking to see Diarmod on the
+wall, but she saw only Kauth staring down over the gateway
+on which the head of Duffagan was spiked.</p>
+
+<p>It was the first day of the deaths of the prophecy, the
+“thousand years’ tribute of blood,” for Dervail of the
+Shadow!</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_25" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/m.jpg" alt="M" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Many souls were sent for judgment in the slaughter
+done by Diarmod—and done against him in his
+revenges for the shame of losing her again to
+Breffni.</p>
+
+<p>So great was the rage against her that even the castle
+of O’Ruarc was no safety. Widows and the children of
+slaughtered soldiery cried out against the curse of her
+beauty for which men died, and she became a secret
+woman in the sanctuary of Cluain-mac-noise from which
+great wealth went out through her hands for holy walls
+and holy vessels, and endless prayer.</p>
+
+<p>And ever, for the rest of her life, on the sweet spring<span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</span>
+nights of Beltain, she knelt on the cold stone of the chapel
+floor to undo the false magic of Duffagan on the hill of the
+druids. He had seen truly there, yet his reading of what
+he saw was not true; and the proof of it was the bridge
+she had built for evil to cross on.</p>
+
+<p>It was not that she doubted the magic of druidcraft, but
+it is an ill and unlucky thing to go to the old gods after
+the saints have rung bells against them. Even the true
+things are twisted after that.</p>
+
+<p>Her beauty was still on her, and the dreams of Tara
+were not dead.</p>
+
+<p>But the fear of the words of Kieran remained as the
+shadow of a gray ghost, sending her to frightened
+prayer.</p>
+
+<p>The curse of the blind monk was too heavy to be cast
+aside even by penance, and she walked veiled and dreamed
+of a day when Diarmod would again be chief of victories
+and change the gray cloak of dread to the royal robe of
+seven colors.</p>
+
+<p>When the word came of his solemn banishing out of
+Erinn by vote of the Irish nobles, she brooded, and reckoned
+the wealth still hers, and waited message.</p>
+
+<p>When he came again, with his English allies and the
+curst name “Diarmod of the Foreigners” on him, her step
+was light with hope, for the soldiers out of England would
+make him king indeed over all the proud nobles who had
+banished him away! The dream of Tara was still a sweet,
+yet fearful dream.</p>
+
+<p>But when the death of Diarmod was come to him in
+horror, and the head of Tiernan O’Ruarc was sent to England,
+while his body was hung by the feet on the north
+wall of Dublin, then again did wild rage of the Irish burn
+high against the name of Dervail of the Shadow.</p>
+
+<p>It was sung in songs linking her ever with the hated<span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</span>
+invaders. Even through convent walls that hatred came—hatred
+against her and against the arch-traitor who had
+brought the English enemy to help win the throne of
+Erinn, because of her beauty and her daring dream.</p>
+
+<p>In secret and in darkness, she was guarded to Mellifont
+and a new name given her for safety, and among the nuns
+she was never known to have worn the royal colors of a
+queen. And the dream of Tara was a gray horror—yet it
+had been told by Duffagan that kings who battled for her
+would sink in death, while she alone survived—and it
+was so.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a_24" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/b.jpg" alt="B" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">But a monk whispered her name in the sunny walk
+of the garden one day in spring, and she looked
+again into the dark eyes of Ardan, who should be
+King of Leinster.</p>
+
+<p>He held out to her a pearl and a ring she knew.</p>
+
+<p>“These were to go back to you, and I made promise,”
+he said. “I was with him at the last, when no one else
+was with him.”</p>
+
+<p>“Did his blessing come with them?” she asked. “It is
+said he died as Kieran died—cursing Dervail.”</p>
+
+<p>“They should not have told you that.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nay, none are telling me; it is on the air wherever the
+invading enemy are known and hated—Diarmod and
+Dervail, Dervail and Diarmod of the Foreigners! In my
+dreams I am hearing the curses on the two names!”</p>
+
+<p>“Duffagan made such prophecy of your name and its
+echoes in the druid circle.”</p>
+
+<p>“He did. Give the pearl to some altar and wear you<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</span>
+the ring of your father. They are tokens of fear to me—fear
+of what I dared in my days of daring.”</p>
+
+<p>“There are other sons to wear the ring. Mine is now
+the monk’s robe. I am a builder and a carver of stone. If
+the churches rise against the invading English, I will be a
+soldier to help undo the curse of Diarmod.”</p>
+
+<p>“And the curse of Dervail,” she said, and wept.</p>
+
+<p>He made no answer.</p>
+
+<p>“Ardan,” she said, “Kieran the monk said, a thousand
+years’ bondage on Erinn for me, a thousand years of the
+yoke—the yoke on the bent neck of Erinn! You have had
+the true vision all our lives; you were the only true thing,
+Ardan. Can you read the days to come, and tell me the
+end of that curse? For the yoke is on Erinn, Ardan.”</p>
+
+<p>“I dare not read, or make prophecy, Dervail.”</p>
+
+<p>“A white road to you! The bell of vesper sounds, and
+it is Beltain—and a time of fear to me! Ardan, I have
+long had a thought unspoken. A tomb will be mine some
+restful night. I would that your hand had the carving of
+that bed. Your hand, comrade, will carve the tomb? It
+will be the end of the flight of the bird, Ardan.”</p>
+
+<p>“I will do that: I saw the form of it when we rode out
+through the smoke and the furious pack there at the castle
+in Kildare.”</p>
+
+<p>“And it will be—?”</p>
+
+<p>“The circled cross—and a gray falcon there with
+broken, trailing wings, Dervail.”</p>
+
+<figure class="chapterseparator">
+  <img class="illowp25" src="images/i052a.jpg" alt="Decorative chapter separator">
+</figure>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i229" style="max-width: 119.125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i229.jpg" alt="RANDUFF OF CUMANAC">
+ 
+</figure>
+
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</span></p>
+<figure class="figcenter illowp56" id="i230" style="max-width: 120em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i230.jpg" alt="Musical score: Coulin, Fourteenth Century.">
+
+</figure>
+
+<p class="musicTitle">Coulin</p>
+<p class="i">Fourteenth Century.</p>
+<p class="center music"><audio controls><source src="music/i230_music_correctedf.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
+Audio content is not currently supported on your device.</audio>
+<span class="xml">[<a href="music/i230_music_correctedf.mxl">MusicXML</a>]</span></p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">  
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="RANDUFF_OF_CUMANAC">RANDUFF OF CUMANAC</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poetry-containerdc">
+    <div class="firstletter"> 
+       <figure>
+         <img class="drop-capPoetry" src="images/bigs.jpg" alt="S" style="height: 100px; width: 100px;">
+       </figure>
+     </div>
+     <div class="poetrydc">
+        <div class="stanzadc"> 
+           <div class="versedc drop-cap2s">Such is the record of Kearmit;</div>
+           <div class="versedc indent2dcs">—Kearmit the holy of Cumanac,</div>
+           <div class="versedc indent0dcs">Truthful the word he has written</div>
+           <div class="versedc indent2dcs">Truthful the warning.</div>
+           <div class="versedc indent0dcs">This is the warning to pass through all lives to our people:</div>
+           <div class="versedc indent0dcs">Leave all unchristened the axe arm of Erinn forever!</div>
+        </div>
+     </div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="noindent">
+From Archibald T. De Nise, Attorney-at-Law.</p>
+<p class="bigindent">To Major Matthew Forbes.</p>
+
+
+<p><i>My dear Major</i>:—A week ago when we ended our after-dinner
+talk (in the small hours of the morning), I little
+thought that I should so soon have evidence on your side
+of the argument concerning the shadowy other life in our
+midst. I can’t say that the new evidence has convinced
+me, but it certainly has me rattled.</p>
+
+<p>I am sending you brief excerpts from a curious old Irish
+volume I am eager to have you see, and also, a verbatim
+copy of the letter which came with it. I recall that your
+family was of the last hereditary historians of Ireland in
+the seventeenth century, and with your bookish tendencies,
+added to your predisposition to delve into the uncanny, it
+gives me a hope that your inheritance of knowledge may
+help me to a glimmer of light in this case.</p>
+
+<p>I am sure that in reading the letter I enclose, you will
+not fail to recollect the statement of your friend Dartan,
+whose portrait of “Girl with the Hound,” was in the spring
+exhibition. He told us that the addition of the hound to
+that picture was at his suggestion, and that it required considerable<span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</span>
+time and trouble to find the right type of hound
+for the desired composition. By this you will note that
+the hound did not enter that family through any special
+desire of any member of that family.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy to decide that an impressionable mind, under
+the influence of powerful inherited tradition of brutal ages,
+could work itself into a state of self-hypnosis wherein the
+dream became the fact. I tell myself that such is the
+reasonable solution of the mystery.</p>
+
+<p>I work it out beautifully along those lines as I would a
+theoretical game of chess—and then that red-eyed hound
+of the picture walks across the board, and makes chaos of
+my chess men!</p>
+
+<p>You know how much the unusual personality of the boy
+has interested me from the beginning. The excitement
+over him has been tremendous—the absolute lack of
+motive—her beauty, and his youth (he is not yet twenty-three)—all
+this would be enough to make the affair celebrated
+even without the very important financial position
+held by his brother.</p>
+
+<p>I have begged the boy to help me clear up the mystery
+of it all, and he evidently thinks he has really given me
+that help in the letter I enclose, but to my mind it
+furnishes two mysteries instead of one.</p>
+
+<p>When you have read it I want you to call me up, no
+matter what hour of the day or night it is, and then come
+and talk it over—if ever a friend needed a lifeline in the
+strange sea of the uncanny, I am that friend. I worked
+personally all night on the copy I send you—it could not
+be given to a copyist.</p>
+
+<p>There are many who are confident that he is not the
+guilty one, but that his finding her there, in that condition,
+shocked him out of sanity. He gave himself up at once
+and accused himself without any excitement whatever.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</span>
+He has steadily refused to tell his motive for the act, and
+has made not the slightest attempt to vindicate himself at
+any time—not even soliciting the help of an attorney.</p>
+
+<p>When I offered him the services of my office he only
+said: “It is a kindness of you to give help at this time,
+and there is money in plenty to pay you, Mr. De Nise, but
+the work is not worth the doing, and it is I am telling
+you it.”</p>
+
+<p>More than that he has not said, and his speech has the
+unusual quality of fineness in it, at the same time that he
+uses curious phrasing suggestive of a brogue, though it is
+not a brogue. Perhaps it is that Irish music in his voice
+makes him fascinating. I have heard nothing quite like
+it. I hope you remember that in our former talk I spoke to
+you of it, and you said that prior to Elizabethan days,
+much learning and most of the music of England had been
+borrowed from the Irish scholars who took the brogue
+with them across the Irish Sea and made it fashionable.
+I assure you this lad’s manner would become fashionable
+if it could be easily imitated. It belongs to a world older
+than our day. That is the baffling impression given when
+he speaks. It is not the words alone—it is a certain lilt in
+intonation as if he had been trained in rhythmic chants.
+Strangely enough his half-brother, who is old enough to
+be his father, and has had much the same educational
+advantages, has not a particle of this manner. He is
+a plain, practical, very well-to-do Anglo-Irishman, interested
+in certain American mines, and is a local bank
+director.</p>
+
+<p>You will think me obsessed by this matter of a personality
+individual and strange—but I am only impressing
+on you the fact that I spoke to you a week ago of that
+baffling fascination in him. I want you to remember it,
+otherwise we should both fancy that my present impressions<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</span>
+are merely borrowed from the book and letter I
+send you.</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday, in desperation over having the case called for
+next week and not a single word or suggestion of help
+from him, I repeated what I have said to him so often:</p>
+
+<p>“Fergal, since you have promptly accused yourself and
+implicated no one but yourself, why—why in the name of
+all that’s holy, do you not tell to me, your lawyer, and your
+friend, at least the cause of the crime you have confessed?
+Why will you not give me something substantial to work
+on? As it is, I have nothing but absurd theories—shadows
+to pit against a prosecution.”</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me with the quiet, unyouthful gray eyes,
+which look black under jet lashes. Then he stretched his
+arms drowsily as if I had fairly beaten him into speech.</p>
+
+<p>“Aye, Mr. De Nise,” he said, and shook his head with
+its purple-black wave of hair, like nothing so much as a
+crow’s wing, except that a crow has no curls to its feathers.
+“Mr. De Nise, the wonder is on me, sir, as to what
+you would be saying if you heard in truth of the shadow I
+have fought in this—and the shadow I feared long—and
+the shadow by which I was overcome. I am not the one
+saying to you that shadows are little things to fight.”</p>
+
+<p>“You try me and see what I would say,” I suggested.
+“Tell me every word and every thought you have on this
+matter; that is the right thing to do for me as well as for
+you.” I was only too keen to encourage him, for it was the
+first time he had shown even a sign of sympathy toward
+my solicitations.</p>
+
+<p>“And you would not be thinking it moonshine from some
+Irish rath of the fairies? And you will not be having your
+laugh with the councilors and the judges over the crazed
+Irish head of me, after I have gone the Way?” he asked.</p>
+
+<p>I assured him it was too weighty an affair for laughter,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</span>
+and that I was convinced that his head had the usual
+requisites for a head. He appeared to consider that statement
+thoughtfully, but finally he said:</p>
+
+<p>“No—no, it has lived with me so long in silence that
+no words come to me for the telling. No—it will not be
+spoken.”</p>
+
+<p>I saw that he was actually striving to nerve himself for
+some ordeal, and I kept silence, looking over some notes I
+had made for the defense: few and shadowy they are, too!
+My presence without speech must have got on his nerves,
+for as if to get rid of me he spoke at last.</p>
+
+<p>“I may write it as the other records of our home were
+written—I—may do that. Yes—that is where it would
+be having the right place—in the record of the clan, for
+it is the ending of it—yes—and the right ending.”</p>
+
+<p>I knew I could make nothing for his defense out of that
+sort of statement, so I ignored it, and left the jail after
+sending for paper, pen, and ink. I looked back through the
+bars and he was seated again, his head on his hands. I
+should not have been surprised to learn that he had forgotten
+the pen and paper were there. I have not seen him
+since.</p>
+
+<p>But this morning there came to the office his half-brother,
+Raymond E. Brennan, from whom this crime has
+separated him beyond hope of reconciliation. Now that
+I think of it, they are not exactly half-brothers but by
+courtesy, since Brennan’s father married the mother of
+Fergal some years after he was born, and she a widow.</p>
+
+<p>In his hand he carried a small square package.</p>
+
+<p>“It is the book—” he said, “the book done by Kearmit
+the monk in a past century. I brought it myself, for the
+boy asked that you be let read it. It is a treasure of his
+house. He knew it by heart, and thought it a great
+treasure—as I fancy it may be, as such things go.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</span></p>
+
+<p>His tone indicated that such things did not go far with
+him, though he was tolerant.</p>
+
+<p>“Is it something concerning the case?” I asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Not at all,” he said. “It is a collection of legends
+and songs of his mother’s house, done by a kinsman of
+theirs who was a monk. It is a very ancient house, Mr.
+De Nise. According to the records, there were princes
+and abbots among them when Ireland was in her glory.
+The work on the book is of the finest and worth seeing.”</p>
+
+<p>“But I have made no request for the book, nor ever
+heard of it,” I said, for as the wrapper was taken off and
+I saw the richness and value of it, I hesitated to keep it.
+He looked at me in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>“No? That is strange,” he said. “Ah, the poor lad;
+his head is wrong; that is it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Did he tell you I wanted it?” I asked. “Please repeat
+to me exactly what he said; I am much interested in his
+case, and he speaks so little that every word is precious,
+as it may help to reveal hidden things.”</p>
+
+<p>“I know that, and am glad he has a good friend in you.
+I cannot be that. I feel that it is his head is wrong, for he
+was ever a strange lad, delving in ancient records, and at
+home with thoughts too old for his years. His mother was
+a safe, natural woman and there were times he seemed
+‘fey’ to her. He was born the night his father died, but
+he was like neither father nor mother. She told me that
+when she followed my father, and asked me to care for the
+lad. I did my best while I could, but I do not want ever
+to hear the old Irish of his voice again, or touch his hand
+again while I live.”</p>
+
+<p>“What do you mean by the ‘old’ Irish of his voice?” I
+asked, and he looked at me with a little frown of perplexity.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you know, Mr. De Nise, that is a hard question to
+answer to a man who has not heard the Gaelic about him.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</span>
+That lad was not brought up to the Gaelic speech, nor his
+parents before him, nor their parents, yet when he spoke
+first—English words, mind you—he spoke it with the
+sound on his tongue of the old Irish. That is not because
+he has not gone about and heard other speech: three years
+he was in France and in Spain. There was an old branch
+of his people came to Galway from Spain in the very old
+times. His mother said he came by the blackness of his
+hair from the Spanish kindred, for her people were fair always.
+But, as I was saying, no travel took the touch of the
+old tongue off him. You must have noticed, sir, yourself;
+it is as if he speaks in English but thinks in the old Irish.”</p>
+
+<p>Now that explained exactly that baffling music of his
+intonation, and I was glad to have it cleared up for me; if
+cleared up it is!</p>
+
+<p>“Yes—he has always been strange, but he was a lovable
+lad at that,” said Brennan. “I know it was his head
+went wrong all in a flash, and I hope the court so decides.
+But when I try to think kindly of him, there comes again
+before my eyes that awful sight of—ah—I cannot even
+speak of it yet.”</p>
+
+<p>He walked to the window and stood with his back to me.
+I could see he was much agitated.</p>
+
+<p>“Do not try to speak of it,” I said, “only try to tell me
+the word he sent concerning the book.”</p>
+
+<p>Brennan gave me a letter from his pocket and walked
+again to the window while I read it.</p>
+
+<p>There was no heading to the letter; it began abruptly in
+clear, decided penmanship.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“I know the sorrow of you—yet it may be there is a deeper
+sorrow I am now hiding. I know the hate of your heart for me—and
+all the world is with you in that.</p>
+
+<p>“I am not sending to you in any complaining, for things are
+written, and the reasons are not shown to mortals, yet we must
+abide by that writing.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</span></p>
+
+<p>“I am sending to ask a favor for the man who would save—if
+he can—the last of my family, which he cannot. I would have
+lent to him for his reading, the book of the annals of our house.
+Not the genealogy in Gaelic with its translation, but the smaller
+book with the ivory cover and the silver clasps. It is the legends
+and songs of our bards in the other days before the harps of
+Ireland were broken by the mailed fist of the enemy. The man
+I want to have read it is a lover of books, and nothing like the
+‘Book of Kearmit’ has he seen; not but what kindred clans had
+jewels of books, and more of them than in other lands, but the
+Saxon, like the Dane, in their plunderings, stripped them of the
+precious coverings, and left the vellum to rot or burn. They are
+few and rare at this day.</p>
+
+<p>“The sorrow is with me for the reason that your life is in
+shadow. Always first in my heart was held my love of you. I am
+proud now to be knowing that, and on a day to be ... you
+will know it!</p>
+
+<p>“On that day I may again call you brother—and the waiting
+for it is long to me.</p>
+
+<p class="lastwordright">
+“FERGAL.”
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>“That is the first word he has ever sent me, since that
+night,” said Brennan, “so I brought the book at once. I
+would do much more to be of use to any mortal in misery,
+but hear him, or see him, I hope I shall never.”</p>
+
+<p>While he spoke a messenger came in with a package for
+me. I still held Brennan’s letter in my hand. As I glanced
+at the envelope just received I saw that the writing was
+the same—it was the first communication I had ever
+received from Fergal.</p>
+
+<p>I opened it quickly, and found many large pages closely
+written; folded around them was a note. It said:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“Good Friend—</p>
+
+<p>“A book of old Irish legends will be brought to your
+hand this day. Before reading the letter I send in this, I will ask
+you to read the book. There is one tale of the olden days I would
+have you reading. It is called <cite>Randuff and White Enora</cite>.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>I turned to Brennan. “I should like after all to look at
+the book,” I said. “Fergal will no doubt tell me why he
+wishes me to see it.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</span></p>
+
+<p>Then thanking him for coming with it personally, I let
+him out as expeditiously as possible in my eagerness to see
+what the boy had sent me. It was a great temptation to
+read the letter first, but I put it aside and opened the book.</p>
+
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a_25" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/i.jpg" alt="I" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">It is a curiosity in book-making and binding. The
+ivory panels of the back with their scroll work of
+silver were done by no prentice hand, and the lettering
+on the vellum is so fine I had to use a magnifying
+glass to get all the beauty of line in the illuminated
+initials. How the deuce did those Irish monks of the old
+days do such work with quill pens and no glasses?
+Whoever “Kearmit of Clan Cumanac” might have been,
+his work was that of an artist, as you will see when you
+come.</p>
+
+<p>I did not linger long over the artistic binding or ornamental
+pen work, but turned at once to the story Fergal
+had mentioned. It was called <cite>The Sad Tale of Randuff and
+White Enora</cite>. It was written in verse, as many others were.
+I find that Randuff means “The Dark, Handsome One.”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_27" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/i.jpg" alt="I" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">In Tormond, north of the Shannon, dwelt the clans of
+Cumanac before the foot of the invader brought the
+curse on the land, and sent westward their mercenaries
+to wall themselves in, and to carve prayers in
+the stone over the gates, that the sons of the land might<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</span>
+not rise in their vengeance and make ashes of their
+women and children as have the Saxons with the “mere
+Irish.”</p>
+
+<p>But Brian is dust in Dunpatrick, and Cormac the wise
+has been dust a thousand years in Rosnaree, and besides
+them no king has arisen in strength to hold together the
+tribes, and strong to do righteousness on the adventurers
+who have their hirelings in mail to help them make profits
+off the land.</p>
+
+<p>And of the last law of Edward’s councilors has come the
+evil of the death of Randuff—the sweetly dark one, cried
+now by the woman, and mourned by the very trees of the
+forests he had love for! Randuff of the princes of
+Cumanac, Randuff of the sweet voice, and that voice
+chanting the glories above all sweetness of mortal: Grief
+on the loss of that one!</p>
+
+<p>Her name was Enora of the Saxons, and when she spread
+her net, and looked on him, it was a drug to his soul. The
+robe of a scholar he forgot, and holiness he forgot, and
+only marriage with her was the dream walking with him
+all the night. To his brothers in kindred he told his love
+and it needed not the telling, for all could read the wonder
+of it in his eyes—shadowed eyes the women of Cumanac
+are wailing!</p>
+
+<p>The new law of the invader forbids bonds of marriage
+between their Saxon men and our Irish women—and
+much more is the strength of the law against daughters of
+English taking a name from an Irish clan, even though it
+be a princely clan. Grief on that day!</p>
+
+<p>So it stands, and what is one man, even the youth
+Randuff, to do against that? What is one man to do with
+the pride of his clan like a black rage back of him? And
+their friendship and their love hidden from him? And
+their rule hard against him for that he would not tear the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</span>
+face of her out of his breast; and would not forget the
+White Enora of the sea-blue eyes?</p>
+
+<p>Sons of lords of Spain sailed into the Shannon mouth.
+In their own ship they came, and young they came, and
+they were his kindred. Love in their own hearts made
+them brothers to Randuff, and they alone knew of the
+stolen nights of him in her secret chamber. Only they
+knew that he fared forth as a <i>duine</i>—leading the steed of
+her father ... as a servant unknown walked Randuff, son
+of princes, to follow the white feet of the woman of the
+other shore. Grief on that day! None but the sons of the
+lords of Spain knew it, and they knew it.</p>
+
+<p>Sweet the plot for love was the plot of Randuff and the
+sons of the lords of Spain—and sweet the sailing to be
+when the bird of love flew south with them, for that was
+their dream!</p>
+
+<p>But the maid of the secret nights had a long look in the
+blue eyes of her, and the look was long for a man who
+could put her near to the throne in the court of Edward.
+Such was her look, and such was the hope, and that was
+not in power of Randuff, son of prince of Cumanac, nor
+of any other of Erinn’s princes, and she grew in fear of
+the love-nights she had loved so rashly, and in fear of the
+lover who had dared much, and would dare more.</p>
+
+<p>The Night of nights came when the sails were loosed,
+and horses were under the wall, and the lover in the secret
+door for the last time. And in fear of his wrath when she
+should say to him “No,” and in fear of her own kindred if
+they thought the truth of her—she took by her side a
+wolfhound of her knowing, and a keen knife to give help
+to the last. Grief on the night!</p>
+
+<p>With fair treacherous words, and sad words, she told
+him the will of her kinsmen was heavy on her, and the fear
+on her was a great fear, and never again could the moon<span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</span>
+light their love-nights. Her beauty had been coveted by an
+earl of England, and her parting from wild Ireland would
+be a long parting.</p>
+
+<p>So it was, and when in love his arms went around her,
+the wolfhound leaped to his throat, and her knife found the
+way to his heart. Grief on that night!</p>
+
+<p>The cries of her were the cries of a child in fright, and
+her words were of terror, and these were her words: That
+to save herself pure from a man of the Irish wilds, she had
+used the knife, and she stood there holding back the hound
+from the blood of Randuff, and told this thing, and the
+eyes of Randuff on her, and the breath of life going from
+him!</p>
+
+<p>Her kinsmen came there—and their rage was a great
+and terrible rage, and above all the rage was that of
+Alwynn, a priest of her blood, and it may be he is druid,
+too, for he is not christian surely; and it was the curse of
+curses he put on the youth there, not alone that he should
+die unshriven, but that no sons should ever again be born
+to the name, and the pride of the race, and its fruitfulness
+should die out even as the youth’s blood was flowing from
+the heart of him. Grief on that night!</p>
+
+<p>And the strength of that hate, and the words of it, wakened
+Randuff out of the death spell, and in a great slowness
+he spoke again, and the people who heard it went cold,
+and the wanton white thing fell swooning, and none of
+them are forgetting it, and this is what he said there:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“When the last of our clan’s blood is gone from this life,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Will but be when Enora finds death by this knife.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">If no sons shall be born to keep honored our name,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">From the grave one will rise to give death for this shame.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And you err, White Enora, at thought that the moon</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Will no more light our meetings: a vision—a swoon</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Comes gray on my senses, yet through it I see</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Another life living for you—and for me!”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</span></p>
+<p>Death took him, and no mortal is knowing what meaning
+was in his words. The Spanish kinsmen told their tale,
+and sailed for the south, and earth glory and sinful glory
+are the portion of Enora of the wolfhound. She is near the
+throne surely, and the children of her are honored by her
+own name forever by the royal will.</p>
+
+<p>This is the tale of Randuff and White Enora. It is put
+down by the hand of Kearmit of Cumanac as a sign against
+that family forever. No honor, no friendship, is ever to be
+taken by gift or grace of the people of her blood, and no
+other thing forever but war should be with that people. As
+White Enora with her wolfhound, and her knife for the
+lover, so is that blood to the blood of the tribes whose land
+they have coveted, and have left ravaged. May memory
+be with our people in the Day of days!</p>
+
+<p>“By the Elements, and the Father, and Son, and Sanctified
+Spirit.”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_26" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/i.jpg" alt="I" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">In a different but clear hand two pages were added:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container fs85">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Such is the record of Kearmit, Kearmit, the holy of Cumanac,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Truthful the word he has written—blessed the writing!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Truthful the warning to tribes of the Cumanac,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Truthful that warning!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Against Alba whose own sons they sold in the market, and they not in hunger,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Against that people whose daughters were coming like calves and sold like the cattle,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Against that land whose mothers were sold and they with the unborn!—</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">They are the men lacking blood but the blood of the liver,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">They are the men. The diolamhan fight all their battles.</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</span>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Loud is their laugh that Brabanters are fighting their battles, loud in their mocking!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Evil was ours in the buying of children and mothers, evil in bringing that breed.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Shadow to us for that breeding: treacheries born from the blood of their daughters.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Weakness of heart in our clans buying slaves out of Alba.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Slaves have been made of that buying;—slaves are our princes!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Sad forever the purchase—Erinn in shadow is witness!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Sing death forever ’gainst compact or truce with that people.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Leave us forever unchristened one hand of our clansmen:</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The axe hand of battle for these who have sold us their daughters.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Watch you forever ’gainst smiles, or sweet words, or hand claspings.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Think on their mothers once sold to our men for our usage,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Swearing of friends’ oath with them! Unchristened the axe arm of Erinn.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Unchristened the axe arm forever to use in the cleaving</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Of tribes who would barter a friend as they sold their own daughters.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">This is the warning to pass through all lives to our people,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">This, and the maid of the wolfhound, and she with the dagger.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">That is the soul out of Alba—the white maid Enora!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Leave all unchristened the axe arm of Erinn forever!</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">
+
+<hr class="tb"></div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>I finished the old chronicles, wondering why I had been
+asked to read of the intensity of the ancient hates, though
+I acknowledge that the form of the original is better than
+my faulty translation from the Latin. Then I opened his
+letter of which I send you an exact copy. I can’t let the
+original go—yet I want you to be entirely acquainted
+with all the evidence of which I am possessed. Call me up
+soon as you read it. Here is the letter:</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="noindent" style="margin-top: 1em">My Good Friend—</p>
+
+<p>Now that I have put my hand to it, you shall have your
+wish. To tell you will lighten the heart of me, and now
+that the end is so near I can see no harm coming from the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</span>
+truth. No man with the cleverness of you would take into
+court a letter such as this must be, and you will not tell
+the one man it would hurt—that you could not do; the
+worst you will do is to think me mad.</p>
+
+<p>If it is so now, then I was mad at birth. Yet no one
+thought it. I was different but no worse than that, and
+I will tell it you.</p>
+
+<p>My mother was of the blood of the Cumanac, though the
+name of the tribe is dead. Sons were not born—only
+daughters. The genealogy of our people is clear back to
+the days of Diarmod of the Foreigners, who is in hell if
+there be one! The women of our house married scholars,
+and into families of scholars. The record of that blood was
+the record of a province, and there was no generation of
+it lost.</p>
+
+<p>I am different from my family. They were fair, I am
+dark as our ancient Spanish cousins. My mother wept
+often on my birthdays but would not say why to me. Later
+I learned that I was born the night of the death of my
+father. There were times when she cried out that I was
+born with his brains, and my questions of ancient things
+frightened her, for I spoke as a child of things I could not
+know as a child. She thought I had “the sight,” and she
+was frightened by it, for she was a quiet, God-fearing
+woman, with only dread on her for the side of life she could
+not see.</p>
+
+<p>Because of that dread I grew silent about many things.
+I wanted to ask why, when I closed my eyes to sleep, I
+so often rose above my body and drifted there, held only
+by the thin invisible cord, waiting for the slumber of the
+body to release me until I could go free—where?</p>
+
+<p>I wanted to ask why certain people, though dressed in
+sober friese, yet had rainbow rays of light visible—while
+others had clear white—and others the color of gloom.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</span></p>
+
+<p>I wanted to ask of the faint, sweet music of harps, heard
+in nights of clear cold and white snow under the moon—often
+I was out at dawn to find track of the musicians
+whose playing was unearthly sweet.</p>
+
+<p>But I was only a boy, and I had learned to watch and
+learn if others were in the same wonder, but it was of no
+use. There were no tracks in the snow, and no one seemed
+to me to have ears or eyes for my mysteries.</p>
+
+<p>So I grew to live much within myself, and my mother
+was a lonely woman. When the father of Raymond wed
+with her, it brought more content to us both. I think she
+feared the care of me as I grew older, and Raymond was
+the sort she could best understand.</p>
+
+<p>It was after the marriage that I first saw the land of our
+ancient people. In Galway my mother’s husband had
+bought an old estate, and Raymond had great joy in plans
+for showing me the old castle—the secret dungeon—the
+hidden stairway and subterranean gallery whose exit they
+had not yet discovered.</p>
+
+<p>That was the time I had the first glimmer of light as to
+where I had flown while my body slept!</p>
+
+<p>For I turned to the hidden stairway before Raymond
+could tell me, and I took them to the ruins of an
+old monastic cell, and told them to lift a slab there to
+find the underground entrance—and it was there as I
+said.</p>
+
+<p>My mother wept when they told her. I said I had
+dreamed it.</p>
+
+<p>In looking over the ancient documents of transfer of the
+lands, its history was clear to the days of Edward the
+Third, when a beautiful daughter of the Saxon owner had
+become a court favorite, and left the wilds of Connaught
+to carry her graces to the eastern market. The name of
+her was Enora. I was reading Latin by that time and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</span>
+found her name in our own records by Kearmit. Raymond
+came by some deeds giving names of her descendants, and
+it was a game of interest to trace them down through the
+centuries.</p>
+
+<p>Happiness was with me in that place; I had never
+heard the Gaelic until I heard it there, and the knowing
+of it seemed breathed into me with the air, for I was soon
+delving in every corner for songs of the ancient bards and
+seeking out old singers, and hearing over and over their
+tales of the breaking of Ireland’s harps by England’s laws
+that her music might be killed forever.</p>
+
+<p>The tales were sad enough, but I was only a lad and no
+sadness stayed on me, for I was in more happiness than
+ever before. In my early childhood I had been long ill, and
+debarred from ranging in freedom the field or the mountains,
+but in old half-Spanish-looking Galway I walked
+into new life—and new strength. The nights and days
+were filled with the harmonies of mere living. I was as
+one who has hungered long for full warm heartbeats and
+who grows drunken with the rhythmic music of that
+pulsing—all the world and the harmonies of it were as
+chorus to me.</p>
+
+<p>I enjoyed life with every breath of me—not as my
+mother and Raymond did, in quiet and serene, but with
+the lilt of a singing gladness that was but a reflection of
+every flower—an echo of every bird-song and the joyous,
+thunderous rhythm of the tide with its menace of
+mysteries.</p>
+
+<p>The Gaelic came to me as though in sudden remembrance,
+and I lived in the very spirit of the ancient legends
+of the Land Wonderful where turrets of sunken cities are
+seen in a clear day at the ebb, and the magic island of the
+“Land of the Ever Young” rises above the waters to the
+west every seven years.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</span></p>
+
+<p>Ireland is the tragic “different” land from every other.
+The wish is with me that I could tell to you the influences
+in that land—the inherited influences by which an unread
+peasant can recite the loves and battles of Queen Maeve,
+and the flight of Grania and her Diarmod, as if the passions
+of them had been in our own day rather than twenty centuries
+back in the shadows. Every well and river, every
+hill and battle-plain, has its legend of god or goddess, of
+the Danaans or the later wondrous Fionn and the Comrades.
+Nothing is old there, because the spirit of it is
+young. It is why the music of it has had soul enough to
+reach through the world—Teuton and Briton and Gaul
+borrowed and renamed the music of Ireland and the
+legends of Ireland, even while Britain smashed Ireland’s
+harps lest the bards keep alive forever her kinship with the
+Spirits of Beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Only fragments of the music are left to her—death and
+exile were the penalties for giving shelter to a bard, or
+giving ear to his harping. An old man of Laherdane told
+me a human life had been paid twice over for every note
+of every ancient Irish song preserved to us in this day.
+All that is left are a few airs to which the moderns strive
+to fit words, or a few verses to which they strive to fit
+music, yet the beauty of the fragments are worth all the
+strivings.</p>
+
+<p>By this you will see that, as a lad, I was overswept
+by the great wave of ancientness of the land—and the
+charm of it. You have seen Raymond, and you will
+know without any telling that he lived beside me for
+years, yet never saw the Ireland I was enthralled by. We
+had the different eyes and the different heart for its
+reading.</p>
+
+<p>I thought often enough how strange it was that while
+he was near double the years of me, yet it was the new<span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</span>
+things of today he was alive to: the trading of nations, and
+the financing of American mines, and such like, with never
+a thought of even the policies of kingdoms further in the
+past than his own generation; while I lay hidden from
+my English tutor on the cliffs above the bay, and tried to
+picture the gray-blue mist by which the magical Danaans
+made a wall between themselves and the foreign invaders
+while their hidden palaces under the green hills were being
+made ready for their using.</p>
+
+<p>I knew the magical and majestic Danaans of the land
+had dwindled in earth-power with the centuries, until in
+our day they are spoken of as fairies, or earth-spirits, but
+that lessened none of their interest to me. They had, for
+some mystic reason, drawn the veil of the invisible over
+their life. But the life did endure, and was often close
+akin to certain living mortals.</p>
+
+<p>For hours I would lie thus in the grasses, listening to
+the whisper of winds and waves, singing with them at
+times, listening for echoes, until the soft flight of velvet-winged
+bats from the cliff caves sent me home in the dark
+to tell my mother and my tutor the many echoes of ancient
+years I had heard out there with only sea and sky, bird
+and wind voices for my telling.</p>
+
+<p>I did not mean to speak falsely when I averred, despite
+lectures from my tutor and scoldings from my mother,
+that the birds did speak, and that the wind did bring whispering
+voices which none but I could hear. I heard them,
+felt their presence, and at times the veil between this and
+that other life was so thin that I could see the glad sunlight
+on faces that came—I knew not whence! Slowly,
+as I grew older, they faded—as do the many other dreams
+that come to children.</p>
+
+<p>But the echo of the whispers remained; through all of
+life they have seemed to prepare me for what was to come.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</span>
+And if my sentence from the court is death, I feel that the
+same voices will greet me again, and will say: “Rest you
+now; the time has been long to you since you wandered
+away. Your work in that life is over. Rest you with us.”</p>
+
+<p>So I grew up, my mind full of fancies; and they were
+odd and foolish, and frightening to my mother.</p>
+
+<p>“Sorrow of me,” she would say, scoldingly. “You are
+like a changeling of different blood. You do naught but
+dream in idleness, and see unchristian things that are the
+outgrowth of lazy brains.”</p>
+
+<p>It would be of no use in the world to tell her that at
+times I dreamed true—like the secret stairway, and the
+lost underground hall to which I had found the lichen-covered
+door. To say aught to her of these things in
+argument only sent her to her prayers—or to her priest,
+who deemed me but a hopeless liar, and an unrepentant
+one.</p>
+
+<p>Only Raymond did not scold. “Never you mind, mother,
+he is but a boy,” I have often heard him say; “and why
+should he do aught but dream and sing old songs if his
+happiness is in that? He has income enough to be at no
+one’s expense but his own.”</p>
+
+<p>In our house were many old books of the tribes of the
+Cumanac, and quaint old pictures of our people. My
+mother never looked at them. She only had care of them
+because her mother had known them as treasures. Kings
+had been of our family in the past, and mystical druid
+rulers in the dim shadow ages. The old legends and traditions
+over which I pored as I grew older told me of the
+beauty of our women, the bravery of our men, and the high
+esteem in which they were held even by their enemies of
+the east and north. They lived in the feudal grandeur of
+those days—kings in their own territory.</p>
+
+<p>Then the curse came!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</span></p>
+
+<p>All those tales of a life so different to that around me
+made a lasting impression on my imagination. I seemed
+to live in the lives of those who were gone centuries before
+I was born. And when alone in some old room of the
+castle with my books about me, or alone in the hills in
+the night with my memories of dreams about me, I had
+strange temptings at times. If my self-confidence had
+equaled my convictions, I would have turned scribe and
+supplied many missing chapters in the old histories.
+Strangely enough, it was not history at all that I wanted
+to write, but it was the lost songs of Ancient Ireland, and
+they held themselves high in the air—the words never
+came near—only fugitive melodies and the thrilling harp!</p>
+
+<p>I think now I should have written the history as it came
+clear in my mind, and at times in scribbling idleness to my
+pen’s point. The flashes of the ancient life were as a
+schooling for my mind and my hand. I think the songs
+would have followed if I had done good work.... It
+is my grief that I have lost the chance for this life. They
+come not again to a closed door.</p>
+
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a_26" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/w.jpg" alt="W" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">When I was seventeen my mother died. That left
+Raymond and me all alone, for his father had
+already gone the Way. He was like a father to me
+always in his care and the quietness of his love. One day
+he came to me with some papers he had found in an old
+desk. My mother, and her mother before her, had taken no
+heed to them; but they concerned a property in Scotland
+to which he said I was the heir through an ancient branch
+of our family.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</span></p>
+
+<p>“What will we do?” I asked him. Scotch cousins did
+not seem near to me. That people had helped break the
+harps.</p>
+
+<p>“I must go myself and see about it,” he said; “it is not
+a large property and may have gone to the Crown through
+being unclaimed. But by going I may at least find in it
+some old books such as you fancy, or some old pictures
+for you to dream over.”</p>
+
+<p>That is what he said: “some old books or old pictures
+for you to dream over.”</p>
+
+<p>Aye! The dreams he made true for me by that going!</p>
+
+<p>In that way he went from me to be back in a month, but
+letter after letter came, pleading business details to be
+arranged. My claim was made good, but it required much
+attention to settle the matters connected with it. So time
+went on until many weeks had passed. Then at last came
+a letter which explained all, and it said:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>“Fergal, my brother—</p>
+
+<p>“I have news to tell you—news I hope you will be glad to
+hear. Tomorrow I am to be married. It all seems very sudden
+to send you word thus, but she has been left alone in the world
+by death—herself the last of the ancient family of the Galway
+castle, who, I have heard you say, were your forefathers’ enemies
+ages ago. Her name is Ednah; she is the last of their line, and
+you the last of yours. I give her to you as a sister, and thus we
+will bury the old hates of Erin and Albion.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>I read this letter as in a dream. I had never thought of
+the marrying of Raymond. I re-read it, trying to remember
+all the tales of our old feud with her people. Why did
+that one of Randuff and White Enora come first and keep
+uppermost in my mind? Parts of the others were forgotten
+It alone remained undimmed in my memory. I tried
+to put it aside and think only of Raymond. I thought I
+succeeded, at least in the daytime.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</span></p>
+
+<p>I was out on the cliffs when they arrived, and did not
+see them at once. I came in vexed with myself for forgetting
+the hour he was to come. I found them in a room
+where our family portraits were hung. I could see them
+through the door—he so large and massive, she so slight
+and fair. His arm was about her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>I hesitated; I was only a lad, and our family had been
+one with family affections, but little of outward sign
+given of them—no kisses, no embraces, even from my
+mother; and the sight of that half-embrace was a
+strange one to me. It made me feel more keenly my
+own aloneness. Because of the shyness on me I waited
+until they should move. They had stopped before my
+picture.</p>
+
+<p>“Who is that?” she asked, and her voice was music.</p>
+
+<p>“It is my brother Fergal,” said Raymond. “He should
+be here now—the idle, dreaming fellow. He has forgotten.
+Come, we will go and look for him.”</p>
+
+<p>“Wait,” she said. “I want to look at his picture. How
+different from all the rest it is. Somewhere, sometime ...
+I have seen a face like that, or a picture, but where—where?”</p>
+
+<p>“I have no doubt there are many such happy, careless
+faces among boys,” said Raymond.</p>
+
+<p>“But is it quite careless?” she asked. “When one looks
+at it long it grows sad, then stern—and the eyes—ah,
+those eyes! If he looks at me in that way I shall fear him,
+Raymond.”</p>
+
+<p>Raymond put his hand over her eyes, and laughed and
+kissed her on the mouth. I went chill in the heart at that
+kiss.</p>
+
+<p>“What a foolish child you are,” he said. “You and
+Fergal are alike in your imaginings.”</p>
+
+<p>Then they turned and saw me. Raymond looked so<span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</span>
+happy and so different that I was glad. But I do not know
+if I can find words to tell how she looked.</p>
+
+<p>She was fair and babyish, with little ways and movements
+like a white kitten. Her hair was the yellow of the
+cornsilk, and her eyes as blue as the violet which grows
+always in the shade. She reached out her hands to me in
+a pretty childish way.</p>
+
+<p>“We are to be brother and sister,” she said. “I hope
+we shall all be very happy together.”</p>
+
+<p>I barely touched the hands of her—such pretty hands—but
+that touch tingled through all my blood. I stammered
+and blushed with embarrassment. I had known so few
+women, and none well, and I had never seen any as beautiful
+as my brother’s wife. She was dainty and delicate
+as the snow maiden that fades when brought down to the
+level where humanity lives.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps that was why I feared to touch her, even. If
+I did by chance, my hand would tremble and my face flush.
+She laughed over it to Raymond.</p>
+
+<p>“He will never be my brother,” she said. “He is as shy
+of me as if I were still a stranger.”</p>
+
+<p>One day Raymond spoke to me of it:</p>
+
+<p>“Why are you so foolish,” he asked. “Ednah wonders
+why you have dislike of her. You are almost of an age—born
+in the same year—and should be better friends.
+Yet you range the mountains alone more than ever. Even
+the books are forgotten by you.”</p>
+
+<p>In answer I asked to go away to school, or to travel. I
+had never before cared for anything but our old house
+and the forest near, or the musty books in the time-worn
+cases. Now the air had grown close; all the quiet of the
+forest, all the hum in the grasses, could not bring to me
+their old, drowsy rest; and the wind no more carried
+echoes of whispering voices!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps it is best that you should go,” said Raymond.
+“Travel may cure you of this strangeness and shyness. I
+shall give up this place for a while and cross seas. Ednah
+has horror of these old walls, and will stay in no room of
+them alone. When you join us again you will find us in
+some sunnier place.”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_28" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/s.jpg" alt="S" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">So I made my farewells and went wandering. For
+three years I never saw Ireland. All that time I
+was going, going—never at rest. And though
+through every hour of it I longed to go back, and feared
+to, I could not explain whence the fear came.</p>
+
+<p>Then Raymond wrote to me in Spain to join them here.
+I was almost twenty-two. There were property matters
+to be arranged, and my presence was required. I am not
+sure if I was glad or not. I did not sleep at all, and I
+sailed on the first ship.</p>
+
+<p>Once on the sea the fear fell away. Almost the music
+of dreams came back to me. The three years of wandering
+had driven out the dreams and remembrance had not been
+happiness.</p>
+
+<p>But the ship to the west brought me into starry nights
+of sweetness and wonderful dreams when all the world
+was of hope, for the fear was gone on the waves.</p>
+
+<p>Raymond did not expect me so soon, and I found their
+new home all alone. Only Ednah was there. She ran
+down the steps to meet me. Back of her was a tall hound.</p>
+
+<p>“Fergal, Fergal!” she said, and the blue eyes of her
+were bright as if with tears.</p>
+
+<p>I am not knowing if I spoke to her—I think I did not.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</span>
+But I took her hand. She offered her cheek as if for a
+brother’s caress, but I did not touch it. I only looked at
+her, and we walked up the steps together, and the hound
+followed.</p>
+
+<p>“I am glad it is today you came,” she said. “I am all
+alone. Ah, we have wanted you so often! The world felt
+so empty—empty as all my life used to be! Now all
+will be different—you are here.”</p>
+
+<p>She showed me a portrait lately finished of her with the
+hound at her knee. The artist had asked that one be
+secured for the painting, and Raymond had tried to find
+one to look most like an Irish wolfhound for the harsh
+note of contrast with her own whiteness. She told this
+frankly as a child, and laughed because the dog would not
+follow Raymond when she was near. Then she showed
+me all their wonderful new home, and the Italian garden
+above the river, and a wonderful pergola where yellow
+roses and crimson roses burned like flame.</p>
+
+<p>We sat in that dream place through the sunset. I listened
+and said little. Her glad voice was as cool, sweet
+rain that falls on sun-scorched sands. I was beside her
+until the dusk, drinking in tones of music, but never once
+did I look in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>And Raymond came when the night fell.</p>
+
+<p>I scarce know how to tell of the days to follow. The
+fear and shyness came back to me. But I was older and
+could hide it more than when she first came to my sight,
+and Raymond had pleasure to think I was feeling more
+friendly toward the lovely wife. But I avoided being
+alone with her, and with the tall hound ever her shadow.</p>
+
+<p>Even when she rode horseback above the cliffs of the
+river the hound was at the heels of her horse, and was
+known widely by the new friends of Raymond. The portrait
+was shown in a great gallery, and was called “Beauty<span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</span>
+and the Beast.” But you have seen that, and know the
+pride of Raymond that she was his. He housed and
+dressed and adored her as queen of the world.</p>
+
+<p>But it was herself gave long, strange looks to me, and
+looks of question they were, too. Everyone sought her
+except myself, and she was noting that, even though the
+eyes of Raymond were blind by his love for us both.</p>
+
+<p>One day I came in with scarlet blossoms for which she
+had asked.</p>
+
+<p>She was coming down the great stairs and smiled at me.</p>
+
+<p>“How lovely,” she said; “we have dinner-guests tonight,
+but I shall wear no jewels. I want only those scarlet
+blossoms in my hair; bring them in here to the musicroom.”</p>
+
+<p>I followed her, and stood there holding the flowers; but
+she did not take them. She only looked at me and laughed
+a little.</p>
+
+<p>“One would think me an old witch-wife of your Irish
+hills, you shun me so, brother Fergal,” she said, “and I
+think I shall make you do penance here. You must fasten
+the blossoms in my hair with your own hands. You should
+learn to be gallant, Fergal, else when you meet your ladylove
+you will never know how to woo her.”</p>
+
+<p>I held the flowers in silence and tried to fasten them.
+My fingers were shaking. The perfume of her hair made
+me drunk as wine.</p>
+
+<p>“Your hands are nervous doing work so new to them,”
+she said, and laughed. “You foolish boy, what can I do
+more than to fit up this room for you only, with its Irish
+harp and its Irish music and a pot of Shamrock in each
+window. It is enough to make any other man love me—but
+not Fergal!” she said, and sighed, and then laughed.</p>
+
+<p>I could not answer her words of light mocking, and the
+great hound, stretched at her feet, arose and the bristles<span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</span>
+on his neck stood upright as my hands touched her hair.
+He was ever on guard for her, and it was a jest that she
+had to put chain on him for the lessons with a dancing-master.
+He would allow no stranger to touch her, and
+me he was ever watching in jealousy.</p>
+
+<p>Raymond’s wife noted it, and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>“He has the jealousy of a man in love,” she said, “but
+you know nothing of that jealousy, for it is only books and
+old music you have in your mind. You are almost a year
+older than I, and have traveled around the world, yet are
+afraid of women. And to think I once dreamed of fearing
+you—or your picture—that is amusing to me now! I
+have never once seen your eyes look in a rage as I thought
+they might. But it is seldom you favor me even with a
+glance. I doubt if you could tell the color of my eyes.”</p>
+
+<p>So she chattered on, smiling up at me, mocking at my
+silence and at my shaking hand.</p>
+
+<p>“I have fear that this will not be done to your pleasure,”
+I said at last.</p>
+
+<p>She laughed again. “Fergal,” she said, “is it all women
+you are fearing, or only me?”</p>
+
+<p>As she spoke her head was turned to look up at me. I
+still held the flowers in her hair. My wrist was near her
+cheek. In turning, her lips touched it. Perhaps it was
+accident. I do not know.</p>
+
+<p>The golden hair of her was over my hands, her red
+mouth on my wrist, and the wonderful child-eyes of her
+looking into my own. She raised one hand and clasped
+my arm. I threw it from me with a force that staggered
+her back to the wall, and the tall hound pressed close to
+her and growled deep threat to me. The flowers in my
+hand I dashed to the floor, and I left her there like that.
+As I went down the steps I heard my name called by her,
+but I never looked back.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</span></p>
+
+<p>That night I spent in the forest.</p>
+
+<p>When morning came again I told Raymond that my
+wandering years were not over. The Foreign Legion of
+France might need another sabre. I was willing to offer
+one to her—or to Ireland, if need arose in the south. And
+it was not a time for youth to be easy in comfort in any
+house.</p>
+
+<p>Raymond laughed, and said I could send money enough
+to buy them a seasoned soldier instead of myself, and told
+me he would take it ill if I sailed before Ednah’s birthday,
+for it was in his mind to give an entertainment that I
+might meet their many new friends. His wife joined us
+in silence and clasped his arm and stood with eyes downcast.
+She looked very white and very childish. We had
+not spoken.</p>
+
+<p>“You young people have been dull here,” her husband
+said. “Suppose we have a ball for your birthnight; something
+to repay the great hospitality of the people. What
+do you say, my child? I must not have you lonely.”</p>
+
+<p>She spoke her pleasure, and, the choice of entertainment
+being left to her, it was a masquerade she made choice of.
+“It is more gaiety,” she said.</p>
+
+<p>“A masque it shall be, then,” said Raymond. “And
+you, Fergal, must have no thought of leaving us until
+after that.”</p>
+
+<p>“Are you going again?” she asked, and her blue eyes
+had pleading in them.</p>
+
+<p>I could make her no answer.</p>
+
+<p>“So he threatens,” said Raymond. “You must help me
+to persuade him to be sensible and stay where he is. Perhaps
+we can find him a sweetheart at the ball. You must
+get a fine dress, Fergal, and we shall have it the night
+Ednah is twenty-two.”</p>
+
+<p>I was arranging some books in a case while they talked.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</span>
+I did not want to look in her eyes and see the appeal there.
+One of the volumes slipped from my hand to the floor. It
+was our old book of legends, and it lay open at the tale of
+Randuff and White Enora.</p>
+
+<p>“Here is my dress,” I said, and tried to laugh. “What
+was good enough for our ancestors centuries ago is good
+enough for me now. I shall wear the dress of Randuff
+of Cumanac. Here is a description of it in the legend.”</p>
+
+<p>Ednah stared at me. “Randuff of Cumanac,” she half
+whispered, “do you mean that ‘Randuff’ of the Lady
+Enora’s song?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, if that is what you are calling him,” I said, “but
+the song I never heard.”</p>
+
+<p>“How do you know of him?” asked Raymond.</p>
+
+<p>“I heard the rhyme of the killing often when I was a
+child,” she said. “My grandmother never tired repeating
+the old tales of our ancestors. It gave me fear of the wild
+Irish. How bitter those old traditions made the people!
+The Lady Enora was sung as a very brave maid. Grandmother
+always spoke of the Cumanac as our enemy. Had
+she lived she would not have allowed me to be under the
+same roof with a descendant of theirs—never!”</p>
+
+<p>“How ridiculous in this age to remember the old feudal
+hates,” said Raymond. “I do not think the mother of
+Fergal knew even the legend. She read only books of
+piety, and was too sensible to take heed of hates so
+unchristian.”</p>
+
+<p>“It may seem silly to you,” said his wife, “but my
+grandmother was thought a wise woman.”</p>
+
+<p>“What will be your dress?” asked Raymond, stroking
+her hair in a caress.</p>
+
+<p>“I think I shall not tell either of you that,” she said.
+“It will be much more amusing to puzzle you. I shall
+receive my guests in evening dress and then mask in whatever<span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</span>
+I decide upon. You must not coax me to tell. On my
+birthnight you must let me have my own way.”</p>
+
+<p>My friend, this story may seem strangely long to you,
+but when I write of it, every word, every look, is coming
+back to me.</p>
+
+<p>No persuasions could induce Raymond to mask the night
+of the ball. “I am too old,” he protested. “At forty-five,
+people lose zest for masques.”</p>
+
+<p>My dress they called a success, but Ednah said:</p>
+
+<p>“There is one thing needed for that costume: you have
+no dagger.”</p>
+
+<p>“It was forgotten by the costumer,” I told her, “and I
+had none that would answer.”</p>
+
+<p>“Wait,” she said, “I have one—an heirloom. How old
+it is I do not know. We had several in an old chest.
+Grandmother knew the history of each, but I never could
+remember them. I kept a very ancient Spanish one for a
+paper knife: I am sure it will do.”</p>
+
+<p>She left us, running along the hall, the great hound leaping
+beside her in play, her white ball dress fluttering like
+wings; to see her thus none would have thought such a
+childish butterfly could be the hostess of the evening.</p>
+
+<p>Raymond looked after her in pride and great content.</p>
+
+<p>“Like a child she is,” he said. “Just as thoughtless and
+innocent; twenty-two today, and does not look seventeen.
+Ah, Fergal, there is only one life for a man: you must also
+get a wife. You will be more content to stay home from
+wars then.”</p>
+
+<p>I had no answer for him, and he laughed at me as he
+watched her come back with the dagger. It swung by
+a silver chain and there were jeweled clasps to the
+chain. The handle formed a cross, and the sheath was
+oddly carved and inlaid; the blade ... but you have
+seen it!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</span></p>
+
+<p>I tried to clasp it, but the fastenings were difficult to
+manage.</p>
+
+<p>“Clasp it for him, Ednah,” said Raymond. “I must
+have this hound chained for you, else no mask will serve
+you or no stranger be let dance with you.” So he spoke
+and laughed and left us alone.</p>
+
+<p>The chain of the girdle was in her hand and her eyes
+on mine. “Shall I?” she asked.</p>
+
+<p>“If you please,” I answered, “since your husband bids.”</p>
+
+<p>“I am more kind to you than you are deserving,” she
+said, and sighed. “You have not even said you were sorry
+for hurting me that day.”</p>
+
+<p>“If ever I have hurt you, I am sorry,” I said as coldly
+as I could, but I feared while I spoke that she would know
+the tremble in my throat. I might have been brutal that
+day, but to tell her so I did not dare; I was afraid. And
+looking down at the bent golden head of her, I told myself
+that never another day should see me under the roof with
+my brother’s wife.</p>
+
+<p>“You are hurting me now,” she whispered. “Fergal,
+you are hurting me always when you speak to me with
+that ice in your voice.”</p>
+
+<p>“Never will you hear it after tonight,” I answered. “I
+am going tomorrow.”</p>
+
+<p>She stared at me, and put out her hand as if about to
+speak, then dropped it and walked away.</p>
+
+<p>The ball was a very gay one. I surprised Raymond
+by showing no shyness whatever among the ladies
+who thronged the rooms. He said the mask gave me
+boldness. He was trying to discover his wife, and had
+failed.</p>
+
+<p>“Several times I thought I had found her,” he said, “but
+I am always mistaken. She has been very cunning. If
+you find her first, Fergal, bring her to me.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</span></p>
+
+<p>I danced and jested with many, but in none did I
+discover her.</p>
+
+<p>At last, wearying of all the gay pretenses, I went out
+into the night. The Italian garden above the cliffs was
+deserted by others for the dance, and the pergola of the
+yellow roses was my own. It was there I had sat that first
+evening of her witcheries. And there I sat again with
+my head in my hands—wishing for the dawn that would
+take me away without offense to the man I felt deep love
+for.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_27" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/t.jpg" alt="T" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">The moon was at full and the grounds almost as day
+except under the thick vines. Music came faintly
+to my ears through the open windows, and dew lay
+over the grass like dust from the stars. A bed of petunias
+near me exhaled that fragrance which the moon, but never
+the sun, has power to draw out.</p>
+
+<p>The peace of it all oppressed me. The perfume of the
+flowers was sweet, but I hid my face in my hands. I knew
+that the time was past when the scent of flowers or music
+of winds or my own dreams would bring content to me.
+Better, I thought, if I were dead and forgotten as the
+Randuff whose dress I wore.</p>
+
+<p>How long I was sitting there I do not know. At last I
+felt that I was not alone, and looked up. By my side was
+a girl in a dress such as I had never seen save in antique
+pictures. It was of something with lights in it like the
+waves of the ocean when the moon shines. Her face I
+could not see for the misty lace over it.</p>
+
+<p>The glamour of the scene was about me. I forgot the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</span>
+crowds dancing within; I forgot all save the presence of
+this girl, or was it a dream-girl like the visions of my
+childhood?</p>
+
+<p>“Who are you?” I asked, and there was awe and wonder
+on me.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you not know?” came the answer in a whisper.
+“Have you forgotten, Randuff of Cumanac?”</p>
+
+<p>“Randuff?” I repeated, scarcely knowing what I said.
+My brain seemed whirling and the music of the dance
+drifted away. Through it I heard the muffled, far-off bay
+of a hound!</p>
+
+<p>The girl touched me with her hand, and I held it fast.
+Her presence was an intoxication of joy to me. I have no
+words for the telling of the witcheries I felt myself yielding
+to. Was I Fergal or was I Randuff? I could not tell.</p>
+
+<p>“Of course, Randuff,” she whispered with her lips on
+my throat, “and I am your Enora who has found you
+again. This night only is ours out of all the years of life.
+Were you wishing for me?”</p>
+
+<p>“I was,” I said, and I spoke truth. It seemed to me that
+all of life had been nothing but waiting for that one night,
+and her near me.</p>
+
+<p>“And you are not afraid now?” she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>And I said: “There is no fear on me of anything but
+to lose you again, as we have lost each other until now.”</p>
+
+<p>“We have only this night out of all the others,” she
+repeated. “Give me your kisses, Randuff.”</p>
+
+<p>And then I knew what a woman’s kiss meant to a man,
+though it was not as a woman I was thinking of her, but as
+a spirit of the far past come back for that one night. My
+arms were about her—her face to mine; broken, tender
+words were whispered in my ears. What I replied I do
+not know. I felt her kiss on my mouth; I heard her
+breathless whispers.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</span></p>
+
+<p>And back of it all I heard the wild baying of a hound!</p>
+
+<p>“One night of life together, my Randuff,” she sighed.
+“Is it not worth more than a long lifetime apart?”</p>
+
+<p>I could not speak—I could not! She lifted her hand to
+bring my face again to hers. Some jewel in her bracelet
+caught in the lace mask, and the veil of lace fell from about
+her head.</p>
+
+<p>The moon shone full in her eyes through the rose vines
+of the pergola, and the soul of me was frozen there, for
+the girl who had witched me by the touch of her fingers—whose
+lips I had kissed, whose love I had taken—was
+the wife of my brother!</p>
+
+<p>I tried to rise; I could not. I tried to speak, but my
+tongue seemed paralyzed. She must have felt something
+of what I wanted to say, for terror was on her, and she
+clung to me, whispering:</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t, Fergal; don’t look at me like that! I could not
+have you go away so. Now, though you go, I will know
+your love is mine. Nothing can change that. Your love is
+mine!”</p>
+
+<p>I knew she was speaking the truth. Our lives were each
+other’s, though the bond of it was sin. I heard her whispers
+in a strange, double sense, for in clearness, as though
+there was no other sound under the heavens, I was hearing
+the bay of a hound, and him on a trail!</p>
+
+<p>She came closer to me. Her lips were touching mine
+which were locked, giving no response to her caresses. I
+was as a man struck dumb with the horror. My brother—who
+had been like a kind father to me, always!</p>
+
+<p>When I could hear her again, she was whispering:</p>
+
+<p>“Why must you go—ever? Do not be leaving me.
+Raymond need never know—”</p>
+
+<p>Then it was that I killed her, as the hound, in great
+leaps, entered the pergola, dragging his chain in the moonlight.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</span>
+One blow of the dagger, and she lay on my arm,
+white and innocent-looking as a sleeping child. The hound
+leaped for me, but the same dagger caught him in the
+throat. Another stroke left him twitching and quivering
+at my feet.</p>
+
+<p>I stood between them, watching them long, to be sure
+no breath of life was there to come back.</p>
+
+<p>Then I lifted her in my arms and bore her to the house.
+On straight through the rooms I went, where the masked
+dancers scattered with shrieks from my path. At last I
+saw Raymond, and carried her to him.</p>
+
+<p>“I have found your wife,” I said, and laid her in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>And for that, the judges, who cannot know, will be giving
+me death.</p>
+
+<p class="lastwordright">
+FERGAL.<br>
+</p>
+
+<figure class="chapterseparator">
+  <img class="illowp25" src="images/i266.jpg" alt="Decorative chapter separator">
+</figure>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i267" style="max-width: 119em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i267.jpg" alt="THE DARK ROSE">
+</figure>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</span></p>
+<figure class="figcenter illowp53" id="i268" style="max-width: 121.6875em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i268.jpg" alt="Musical score: Roisin Dubh, The DARK ROSE, Sixteenth Century.">
+</figure>
+
+<p class="musicTitle">Roisin Dubh</p>
+<p class="i center">The DARK ROSE</p>
+<p><i>Sixteenth Century.</i></p>
+<p class="center music"><audio controls><source src="music/i268_music_correctedf.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
+Audio content is not currently supported on your device.</audio>
+<span class="xml">[<a href="music/i268_music_correctedf.mxl">MusicXML</a>]</span></p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_DARK_ROSE">THE DARK ROSE</h2>
+</div>
+<hr class="tb"><hr class="tb">
+
+
+
+
+<div class="poetry-containerdc">
+    <div class="firstletter">  
+         <figure>
+            <img class="drop-capPoetry" src="images/i269.jpg" alt="A" style="height: 150px; width: 150px;">
+         </figure>
+    </div>
+    <div class="poetrydc">
+       <div class="stanzadc"> 
+          <div class="versedc drop-cap2"><i>AND gun-peal, and slogan cry</i></div>
+          <div class="versedc indent2dc"><i>Wake many a glen serene,</i></div>
+          <div class="versedc indent0dc"><i>Ere you shall fade, ere you shall die,</i></div>
+          <div class="versedc indent2dc"><i>My Dark Rosaleen!</i></div>
+          <div class="versedc indent2dc"><i>My Own Rosaleen!</i></div>
+          <div class="versedc indent0dc"><i>The Judgment Hour must first be nigh,</i></div>
+          <div class="versedc indent0dc"><i>Ere you can fade, ere you can die,</i></div>
+          <div class="versedc indent2dc"><i>My Dark Rosaleen!</i></div>
+        </div>
+   </div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The lad Hugh scarce knew he was breathing the words,
+singing through his mind. Old Shamas Ronayne had been
+telling over the tale of Red Hugh O’Donnell, dead in
+Spain three hundred years ago, yet alive and youthful over
+all the land where his song of the dark rose was sung.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>My Dark Rosaleen!</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>My Own Rosaleen!</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“And he also had the name of Hugh on him. It’s myself
+is wishful I could see a man like that in our own day—Shamas
+swears they don’t make them any more.”</p>
+
+<p>He followed the sheep up through gorse and fern in
+the Kerry hills, and cut himself a rude flute of alder, and
+strove to catch the notes of the song on it, and tried again<span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</span>
+softly whistling with a blade of grass held over his lips,
+and gave both up for the murmured words:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>O my Dark Rosaleen!</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent4"><i>Do not sigh, do not weep;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>The ships are on the ocean green;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent4"><i>They march along the deep!</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The drifting glory of the clouds, silver and luminous
+and softly gray, made wondrous forms and pictures against
+the blue of the sky, and the deeper, darker blue of the far
+sea. He drowsed there over the mystery of <i>Rosaleen</i>—had
+she been a maid beloved and estranged? Or, was she,
+indeed, a dear secret name for the shadowed land for which
+O’Donnell had fought and from which he was self-exiled?</p>
+
+<p>The <i>suantre</i> of the sleepy winds lulled the lad into slumber
+before he decided the centuries-old mystery, but it
+remained with him in a misty dream, and in the dream
+he saw that the dark rose—the hidden rose—was a
+Leanan Sidhe, a fair mistress of the Secret People whose
+magic palaces were hidden under ancient raths of green,
+and where legendary heroes waited the mystic music of
+the awakening on Erinn’s day of destiny.</p>
+
+<p>There was, in this confused dreaming, more than a little
+of the tellings or the singings of old Shamas by the peat
+fire in the long twilights. A glen on the Kerry coast,
+where the sea-rovers of thirty centuries agone left records
+on the white strands, is a wonder-place for dreams. Queen
+Banva of the rath on Slieve Mish gave her name to the
+island in that place and was consort of King of the Forest
+in far-dim days when the forests were mighty and the great
+brown deer ran in countless herds and were gentled and
+gave milk only to the music of the voices of maidens—and
+the soothing and crooning and gentling harmonies
+of that music remain today, and is called the “music of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</span>
+Fairie,” and men wonder at the sweetness of it, and the
+living spirit of it.</p>
+
+<p>The giant deer are gone, and the forests of wonder are
+gone—and the speech of that day was long forbidden—only
+the spirit of the music has lived in the hearts of the
+children of Banva.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" style="max-width: 79.875em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/s.jpg" alt="S" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">So the lad, Hugh, whose head was ever filled with one
+old legend, or another old song, merged crowned
+Banva the Fair, and a nameless fairy sweetheart,
+and the dark mystic rose-maid, immortalized by Mangan,
+into his dream there on the hillside in Kerry, and had grief
+that each was sad, for their tears were falling and his words
+of comfort were useless, and the music of the song came
+to his help, and he awoke himself with the whisper:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>O my Dark Rosaleen!</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent4"><i>Do not sigh—do not weep!</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>But it was not tears at all that were falling on his face
+and his hands: it was a swift, showery rain falling between
+two great blue and sunny plains of the sky—just one
+drifting cloud of rain from Slieve Mish, and it above him!</p>
+
+<p>The sheep were over the hill and beyond, and guilt was
+on him as he ran after, pelted by the rain.</p>
+
+<p>Through the gray mist of it he could see the patch of
+white they made on a sunny knoll toward which the
+shadow of the rain-cloud was moving.</p>
+
+<p>But a nearer sound came to his ears through the swift
+drive of the shower—the bleat of a lamb, astray from a
+heartless parent. He stood in his tracks hearkening to it,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</span>
+for it sounded from the druid rath above, and it was a
+queer place for the straying of a lamb up there among the
+bare stones when there was good grass, and that green,
+all below it.</p>
+
+<p>But he ran across the old hill road and up the other side
+of it to where one hawthorn shone white in bloom at the
+summit.</p>
+
+<p>It was a stiff run in the pelting rain, but the sounds were
+nearer each step. He crossed one circle of the long
+crumbled earth wall, then another, and plunged in between
+the standing stones and, breathless, dropped down on the
+stone paving with the rescued lamb in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>He was guided to it more by sound than sight, for the
+shower was now a tempestuous gray wall of falling water,
+and with his treasure-trove he moved back under the
+shelter of roof formed by three enormous slabs. Once it
+might have been an underground temple, but the earth
+about it had washed away, and it was like nothing but a
+shadowy tunnel of great stone—and other great stone
+slabs fallen about.</p>
+
+<p>He wiped the water from his eyes, peering out the way
+he had come, and then settled the lamb beside him and
+leaned back to wait the sunshine or the lessening of the
+downpour.</p>
+
+<p>But he straightened quickly at what he saw in the
+shadow of the other wall, and the heart in him gave a
+great leap, for he had met one of his dreams, or a queen
+of a legend come alive again!</p>
+
+<p>For a girl sat there in a greenish-gray dress, and touches
+of scarlet in the lining of the cloak over her shoulders. It
+was the cloak made the picture so complete in the ancientness
+of the suggestion—he could not know it was an
+idealized copy of a Connemara hooded cloak.</p>
+
+<p>The two young things sat gazing at each other as if<span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</span>
+entranced. The face of Hugh was white, yet not with
+fear. There was awe on him, but there was also joy, for,
+much as he had dreamed of the queens of beauty in old
+legends, not one dream held as much of charm as the
+uncrowned maid whose garb was so near the color of
+green lichen-covered stone that he feared she would fade
+back into the shadows of it.</p>
+
+<p>Then she smiled in an adorable way.</p>
+
+<p>“I saw you sleeping in the bracken as we passed up the
+old road,” she said. “You looked like a picture of Shelley
+I have.”</p>
+
+<p>Hugh had not ever heard of that name, but there surely
+were many names in the old legends not known to Shamas,
+who was his one great historian.</p>
+
+<p>“That is an Irish name, I think, but it is not mine,” said
+the lad politely. “I am Hugh of the glen below, and I am
+thinking it is yourself would be Banva or Maeve but for
+the dark hair of you—and the dark brightness of the eyes
+of you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Maeve—Maeve?” she repeated and regarded him with
+twinkling humor. “Is it Queen Mab you mean—of the
+fairies?”</p>
+
+<p>“It is—but she was a fair-haired woman, and nothing
+like you at all. I could not make guess at the name on
+you, yet it has the right to be a bright name, and beauty
+in it.”</p>
+
+<p>“You would not guess it ever, for it is no queen in a
+book,” the girl said with a little ripple of laughter. “It
+is common as the bracken, and more common than the
+hawthorn in bloom there by the stone pillar, for it is Rose.”</p>
+
+<p>“Rose! the dark rose? Dark Rosaleen?” And the voice
+of Hugh was a whisper of awe. “I think now you are
+Maeve indeed, witching me with that name!”</p>
+
+<p>“You are silly from tending sheep too much,” said the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</span>
+mocking beauty. “Why should a fairy witch you? And
+why should it be with my name? The dark rose! Am I
+then so dark? You are not polite as I thought you at first—and
+I wish the storm were over.”</p>
+
+<p>Hugh caught his breath in a real terror at thought of
+her anger.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, it is tricking me you are,” he said, “for how would
+you not be knowing that the dark rose is the dearest flower
+growing to every one of the real Irish? Since Hugh
+O’Donnell was making that song away there in Spain,
+and since Mangan turned the verse of it to ‘Rosaleen,’
+that rose is the sacred thing in many a breast. Shamas
+Ronayne was telling that to all of us boys, and he is wiser
+than most. I went asleep thinking of you, and singing
+the song, and—glory be to the name!—was it that was
+bringing you here to this far-away rath?”</p>
+
+<p>“Thinking of <em>me</em>—and singing the song? Hugh of the
+glen, how could you think of a stranger you never saw or
+heard of? And what was the song? I said you looked
+like Shelley, the poet, and maybe it’s a song you made
+yourself.”</p>
+
+<p>The color flooded his face at that, and she clapped her
+hands gleefully.</p>
+
+<p>“It is—it is—it is!” she chanted, and smiled at his
+blushes.</p>
+
+<p>“It is not then!” he denied awkwardly. “I have tried
+to find words for songs, and I did sing them to the sheep—as
+you maybe know,” he added cautiously, “but how could
+a shepherd know all the man-thoughts of ‘Rosaleen’?
+No, young, dark rose-lady, it was only one man made that—and
+the heart of him dying in him with the sickness for
+home. He had only thirty years of life, had Hugh O’Donnell,
+and Shamas was telling us that the poets of Ireland
+die in youth for the reason that the People of the Hidden<span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</span>
+Raths want verses and music under the green hills, and
+they call the young away while their dreams are on them.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are a very queer boy,” she said, “and I won’t
+believe there was a song of any rose until I hear it.”</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>“You may be having the Gaelic?” he ventured, but she
+shook her dark-ringleted head. In his heart he thought
+she was but trying him, and probably knew all the tongues
+of all the lands of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>“Then I’ll be giving you the Englishing Mangan made
+of it; but the words will not sing themselves to the Irish
+air O’Donnell made; but that is right enough, too, when
+you think of it. Second-best music is good enough for the
+English who smashed the Irish harps, and this is a verse of
+it. There are many verses to ‘The Dark Rose.’”</p>
+
+<p>And with the lamb snuggling under his arm and the
+slanting rain making a gray veil of all the outer world,
+Hugh threw back his head, unconscious of lack of training
+as a meadow lark, and sang—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>I could scale the blue air,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent4"><i>I could plow the high hills;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Oh! I could kneel all night in prayer</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent4"><i>To heal your many ills!</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>And one beamy smile from you</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent4"><i>Would float like light between</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>My toils and me, my own, my true,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent4"><i>My Dark Rosaleen!</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent4"><i>My Own Rosaleen!</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Would give me life and soul anew,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>A second life, a soul anew,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent4"><i>My Dark Rosaleen!</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The girl leaned forward, watching him, as startled at the
+unboyish song as he had been at sight of her.</p>
+
+<p>“That is a song I never heard,” she said, “and it is a
+lovely one; but what does he mean by ‘a second life’?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</span></p>
+
+<p>“I never heard anyone asking that,” said the lad, wrinkling
+his brows. “I will be the one to ask Shamas of it,
+for I heard him say there was no line of that song without
+a meaning to it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Who is Shamas?”</p>
+
+<p>“Sometimes he is a tinker, and he has made more than
+one circle of Ireland in his time. He was the one to be
+teaching us ‘The Dark Rose,’ and telling us of the poets
+of the ancient old days when a poet was highest man in a
+kingdom, and no gifts too great for him—I’m thinking
+that was even before Padrig was coming over with the
+bells. I’m wishing you had the Gaelic. Shamas has poems
+by the hundred, from the songs of Dierdre, and Liadan
+(whose home was right here in Kerry itself)—down to the
+March of Brian, and the Coulin, which he is singing at me
+often enough—and him laughing! But it is in Gaelic all
+the words of them are, and no English words fit the music
+at all. I’m thinking you should have the Gaelic, Dark
+Rose.”</p>
+
+<p>“I wonder if I should? My nurse knew Gaelic, but they
+laughed at her songs until she grew silent, and then they
+told me she died. I was little then.”</p>
+
+<p>She sat thinking a moment, humming softly in a gentle
+croon and moving her head to keep time to the melody
+while the eyes of Hugh grew bright.</p>
+
+<p>“You do know it, you do!” he said joyously, but she
+shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>“No—the words will not come, though once I did
+know that sleepy-time song of Kathleen, but all I can
+remember is—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Sho heen sho lo, O lulla lo!</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“But you have the memory of the ancient music, and it
+is old beyond count! Also there are English words put<span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</span>
+to that one, and I hearing a girl back from America singing
+it—and this is the English of it:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>I’ve found my laughing babe a nest</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent4"><i>On Slumber Tree.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>I’ll rock you there to rosy rest,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent4"><i>Asthore Machree!</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Oh lulla lo, sing all the leaves</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent4"><i>On Slumber Tree!</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Till ev’rything that hurts or grieves</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent4"><i>Afar must flee.</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The girl sat looking at him, and the tears were bright in
+her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“That is it—that is the song of poor old Kathleen. To
+think I would hear it in this cave on a Kerry hill.”</p>
+
+<p>“And why not? This is not a cave, but a druid’s temple
+where they tell that the new fire was given out to the
+people at Samhain, and the druids had the making of that
+fire on an altar here and the giving of it. But children and
+mothers and their <i>suantre</i> songs were before that time
+surely, and many a one could have been crooned in this
+place, for great gatherings were here. Even the old people
+are liking to hear the music of the slumbersongs. They
+say it brings back the voices of mothers—here.”</p>
+
+<p>He touched his breast, and had a smile, gentle and deprecating
+lest she should think it childish indeed that old folks
+should care for lullabies, but she was gazing at him
+curiously.</p>
+
+<p>“You strange boy!” she said, and laid her slim hand on
+her own breast. “I never knew anyone like you; you
+made me hurt—here—when you said that! You make
+me want to cry—yet there is not a word in the song for
+crying! I think I have a hundred cousins, but none of
+them knows the things you know; yet, one time we were
+Irish, too.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</span></p>
+
+<p>He smiled at her mysteriously.</p>
+
+<p>“To be sure you are, else how could you be the Dark
+Rose and come to this fairy rath of the hawthorn tree? It
+is ‘fairie’ they are naming in these days the great mystic
+people of old in Ireland, and great and good they were and
+are, in spite of saints, bells, and banning. (May they hear
+me say it!) Shamas says Irish blood must ever waken to
+send back its answer to Irish music—and that is what it
+was doing when you said it hurt you: it is my thought that
+it was only calling you awake.”</p>
+
+<p>“You strange shepherd and wonderful boy,” she said,
+and her voice was so full of sweetness and kinship that
+he leaned forward and looked, slightly smiling, yet very
+earnest, into her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“Tell me—Dark Rose—have you been wandering
+away and only now found your way back? Or have you
+gone far out on some tide of forgetting, or of slumber,
+maybe—and the lullaby and the heart-song of the Dark
+Rose is calling you awake?”</p>
+
+<p>“Are you a wizard in shape of a boy that you know even
+my thoughts?” she asked. “For I was thinking that song
+of Kathleen must have been sleeping in my mind a long
+time—a very long time, and all of the words gone. Yet
+the music did wait to be called awake, and it was you
+called.”</p>
+
+<p>“I think it was Maeve and Banva calling, and both of
+them queens calling to you! But you are awake again—and
+you are surely the Dark Rose living again!”</p>
+
+<p>“I wish my cousins could hear you call me that,”
+she said, and laughed; “they would think it a new sort
+of compliment. When they want to praise, they say
+a girl is fair and not dark, and they never heard the
+song.”</p>
+
+<p>“It may be that the sleep is on them, too, and it may be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</span>
+you will call them awake. I am thinking there will be
+many to answer a call when you cry it.”</p>
+
+<p>A rainbow shimmered through the mist, and a curious
+radiance heralded the breaking of sunrays between the
+clouds. The storm ended quickly as it began, and Hugh
+rose to his feet with the lamb content on his arm. The
+raindrops still shone on his gold-brown curls, and the time
+had been short in the strange shelter, yet he did not feel
+as if it had been: all the generations since O’Donnell made
+the song seemed to have been bridged over by the dark,
+bright beauty of that strange girl in the gray shadow.</p>
+
+<p>She also arose, but did not emerge; her eyes were on
+him, slender and at ease in his homely garb of homespun,
+weather-stained and worn. The sun touched his hair into
+a shimmer of radiance and the white of the lamb was
+made whiter by the arrows of the sun now far down the
+west. She could not but note a certain patrician cast to
+his features, and the slender shapeliness of the hand holding
+the lamb, and she saw him as a picture in whatever
+light he moved, first Shelley, and now—</p>
+
+<p>“Shepherd Hugh of the glen, you would have given me
+a fine fright, rushing in here after me, had you been anyone
+else than yourself,” she said, “yet I know not a thing
+of you for all our talk. I am sure you are a poet, and if
+there were Irish princes left in Ireland, I would know you
+were one of them, but after all I only know your name is
+Hugh, and that you have a friend, Shamas, a tinker.”</p>
+
+<p>“And I am only knowing that you are the Dark Rose,
+and that the fairies brought you here on eve of Beltain
+that I might see you once and be content: my great thanks
+and my love to them—may they hear me say it!”</p>
+
+<p>“Content?” she murmured—“not even asking who I
+might be?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not even asking,” he said, smiling back to her. “I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</span>
+care not a rush the name others may be putting on you.
+Queen of fairies, or maid of the cinders, they may be calling
+you, but the Dark Rose are you to me!”</p>
+
+<p>“There may be a day when I come again to Kerry,” she
+said. “Would I find you if I asked for Hugh of a glen?”</p>
+
+<p>“I am foster brother to Michal Donn, and his shieling is
+back of beyond on the other side there. I am of the Siod.”</p>
+
+<p>“Siod?” and she stared at him; “Sidhe, I read that in
+tales of fairies—it is their name! I do not need to be
+Irish to know that. I thought you were not mortal!”</p>
+
+<p>“And I knew you could not be,” he retorted in her own
+mood. “If you are again on this hill of Kerry, I will be
+telling you the tale of that Siod clan. There was a woman
+who came out of the mists long ago, as you have, and left
+thought and mind on a mortal clan. It is told around the
+peat fires at fall of night, but they speak of other things
+when I join their circle.”</p>
+
+<p>“Was she also a flower?”</p>
+
+<p>“No—she was born of the sea, and the name put on her
+was Moruadh (sea-maid), and it became, in time, Maurya.
+A prince of the Children of the Sea took her for wife and
+was banned for it by the druids—and that was even
+before Padrig was brought captive slave from Gaul.”</p>
+
+<p>“A prince of the Children of the Sea?”</p>
+
+<p>“Munster clans of the west are called that, for their
+fathers came over the sea from some lost land—yes, that
+is what has been told of them always.”</p>
+
+<p>“I am coming back some day, Hugh of the Fairies,”
+she said.</p>
+
+<p>A long signal call came to them. His eyes met hers in
+question. She nodded her head.</p>
+
+<p>“They are far away yet,” she said, and she seemed reluctant
+enough at the sound. “So you are of the sons of Irish
+princes, yet you herd sheep on the Kerry hills?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</span></p>
+
+<p>“So do others whose genealogies reach to the generations
+when the Son of Mary was born; true that is, though
+many would be doubting it. Some souls are born for palaces
+and walls and roofs—others for the surge of the sea
+and stout decks—and others to feel ever the springing
+grass under foot. I am of that last, and Shamas was telling
+my father never to house me, or break my reed pipe
+until I had reached height and made my own choice; and
+I have yet some growing to do.”</p>
+
+<p>“And what will you be then: herder of sheep?”</p>
+
+<p>“I think I will just be playing the pipe to the sheep and
+singing old songs until you are coming again.”</p>
+
+<p>“To the fairies’ rath?”</p>
+
+<p>“I think it will be in the fairies’ rath.”</p>
+
+<p>She broke a spray of the hawthorn bloom, and stood
+looking at him.</p>
+
+<p>“It has been very wonderful,” she mused. “I will not
+believe any of it when I wake tomorrow, but I will take a
+bit of the hawthorn for proof. If—if I come back to these
+hills I will send you a message of hawthorn, and you will
+come again and tell me of Ireland’s music and her poets—perhaps
+you will then have poems of your own.”</p>
+
+<p>“I am the one would be thankful if that could be,” he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>Voices were heard on the wind, and the bark of a dog.
+The sun was touching the very edge of the far sea.</p>
+
+<p>“Do not move from that pillar, and you will be out of
+their sight,” she said. “I will give them a fright to think
+I was alone in this waste place. I will tell them a fairy
+prince was my host: they will never believe me, but I
+know it is true.”</p>
+
+<p>She broke the spray of hawthorn in two parts.</p>
+
+<p>“Why did the tinker laugh at you when he sang the song
+of the coulin—and what is that? Is it another mystery?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</span></p>
+
+<p>“It is not. It is the ancient Irish way for men to wear
+the hair, long and tied back. Under the old English laws
+men were punished for keeping that old custom or using
+Irish speech. It is me he is laughing at, and telling me I’ll
+be sent to the Castle yet in punishment for my long hair.”</p>
+
+<p>“It makes you look like old pictures,” she said, “and
+surely a boy can do that much as he pleases in these days.
+This is your hawthorn to prove I was here and had shelter
+with you. What is the name of this place?”</p>
+
+<p>“It is Templard—the high temple—and should be sung
+in a song because the Dark Rose has stood under the
+hawthorn shade in this place,” he said, and she laughed
+silently at that.</p>
+
+<p>“How they would joy to hear me called dark anything,”
+she said.</p>
+
+<p>The voices were nearer, and one man’s voice calling,
+“Rose! Rosa! Rosalie!”</p>
+
+<p>“It is one of the hundred cousins,” she laughed. “You
+will see, Hugh of the Siod, that they call my name in
+many ways, but only you have called me Rose the Dark.
+Fare you well, shepherd boy, until you make music to call
+me back to Kerry.”</p>
+
+<p>“I will be making that music,” he said.</p>
+
+<p>She let fall the spray of hawthorn lightly on the white
+lamb in his arms just as a dark hound halted on the summit
+of the earth wall; she ran to meet him, poised there
+like a green bird with scarlet wings as her cloak blew back
+in the wind.</p>
+
+<p>There were shouts, a clamor of voices, and then the one
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>“Rose! You here safe, and the peasants searching the
+bogs for you!”</p>
+
+<p>“Whist!” she called down to them mockingly, “this is
+no place for your shouting and your hounds. I have been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</span>
+spending an hour with the fairies in their rath of Templard,
+and the rest of you are not to put foot in it. Not at all
+after the sun is down,” and she pointed to the ball of celestial
+fire sinking beyond oceans—“the mystic hour is
+past.”</p>
+
+<p>Then she darted down, laughing, and only the hawthorn
+spray was left to show she had not been a vision, laughing,
+mocking, weeping, adorable in young beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Once Hugh caught sight of her again. A carriage with
+black horses waited on the old road used by the peat-cutters
+of the bog beyond. Toward it she walked with a
+tall man and the hound between them. A half-dozen men
+and boys followed through the whins and rocky pasture—they
+did not look back, and he knew fear was on them
+for all her mocking; and no maid or man of the glen would
+choose the ruins of Templard for a resting place at setting
+of sun on any day.</p>
+
+<p>She halted once on a velvet-green knoll and for a few
+heartbeats she stood—a flash of crimson against the
+deep purple of the sky. She did not look back, but with
+upflung hand made a gesture of hail and farewell, and
+Hugh smiled at that, and waved in return though he knew
+she would not see.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_29" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/i.jpg" alt="I" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">It was late twilight when he brought down the sheep
+to the fold, and Molly Donn, his foster sister, put
+before him a brown loaf baked in the hearth oven,
+the pitcher of new milk, and boiled potatoes, while a white-haired
+little old man puffed at his pipe and looked him
+over.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</span></p>
+
+<p>“You ranged the ewes over far when you took them to
+the rath of Templard,” he remarked, and Molly rested the
+needles in her knitting to stare at him.</p>
+
+<p>“Shamas man, have you indeed ‘the sight’ that you
+look over all the pasture range—and you not beyond the
+boolie this day?” she asked, and the old man with the
+grave mouth, and merry blue eyes, puffed his pipe and
+chuckled.</p>
+
+<p>“Have thought with you, Molly girl,” he suggested.
+“What need of the second sight, when he sports a twig of
+hawthorn flower from the fairy rath on that hill? That
+hawthorn is ever the first to be blooming.”</p>
+
+<p>“You have sharper eyes than the youth about you,
+Father Shamas,” said Hugh, and laughed at the fear in
+the eyes of Molly. “I was in truth on that hill, and fell
+asleep and dreaming in the bracken until the rain fell—that
+was when the sheep strayed a bit, but all are safe
+home again.”</p>
+
+<p>Molly made the sign to ward off evil, and looked her
+horror at him.</p>
+
+<p>“Asleep in the bracken of Templard and this on the
+eve of Beltain!” she whispered. “Saint Bride to your
+saving! Fear would be on me over the dreams of
+Templard.”</p>
+
+<p>“Save your fears, Molly asthore. The dream was a
+beautiful dream, and I am the richer.”</p>
+
+<p>Old Shamas regarded the glowing eyes of the lad. “The
+dreams of the young are seed for the harvest of old age,”
+he said. “It is good to dream in beauty, else the old days
+will be gray days.”</p>
+
+<p>“It’s only guessing at that you are, Shamas,” retorted
+Hugh, “for there is no age on you—nor will ever be.”</p>
+
+<p>The old man and the lad looked in each other’s eyes with
+the smiling content of comradeship, but Molly, turning the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</span>
+heel of the hose, did not see the look, and was slow in
+imagination for a Kerry coast woman.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s glib you are growing with the tongue, Hugh, lad,”
+she admonished him. “I was never daring to cross my elders,
+nor was Michal at your age. When your father is coming
+back, or sending for you for the schooling, he will be putting
+blame on us for the bold words of you—and God
+and Mary know it is no fault of mine!”</p>
+
+<p>“True for you,” laughed Hugh, “it is not—Shamas is
+the one to blame.”</p>
+
+<p>Michal came in at that, shaking the water from his coat-amore,
+for the rain was again falling.</p>
+
+<p>“Lucky it is it held off so long,” he said, “for the hunt
+was up for a bit of a girl straying on the mountain, and
+lost from the old castle.”</p>
+
+<p>“What is witching you?” demanded Molly. “You
+know well the castle of Argial is a forsaken place.”</p>
+
+<p>“It has been, but the new heir, Hector Laud, must be
+giving it an overlooking, and brought along friends for
+gay doings.”</p>
+
+<p>“Fine it would be to have a new and young lord of
+Argial again—that has never been known in our time,”
+mused Molly.</p>
+
+<p>“This one is new but not young; Denis and Tim Doherty
+saw him. He is a pale, masterful kind of man, and proud
+at that. They say it will be a great wonder if he gets the
+girl he is wanting as mistress of Argial, for she has
+lightning in her blood, and the devil’s share of courage.
+Well, Time tells the story! That girl it was started
+the hunt, and Tim was after getting two shillings for
+taking his gray pony and going the bog boreen in the
+search. No, he was not the one to find her. She was
+found, and he earned the two shillings in ease and
+comfort.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Who was the lost one?” asked Shamas, for Hugh
+made no question.</p>
+
+<p>“It was the daughter of a Maurice, and she English, and
+knowing not a path of all Kerry.”</p>
+
+<p>“Maurice is not a name of England,” mused Shamas,
+“not at all of England.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well—God knows! That is their saying, and she has
+only her beauty for wealth and her uncle keen on the
+match when the time comes. She’s only a bit of a slip
+yet, and time in plenty ahead! Denis was fair enchanted
+by a glimpse of her behind the black horses of Argial, and
+them galloping to put fear on a soul! His saying was that
+the cuckoo would sing in falling snow for that daughter
+of Maurice, whoever she may be.”</p>
+
+<p>Molly on the creepie by the hearthstone clicked her knitting
+needles, and glanced her impatience at Michal, busy
+with his supper.</p>
+
+<p>“That would be the man of it,” she said in disdain of
+masculine weaknesses. “Every man-jack of them agog
+over a bright eye, and never a knowledgeable word from
+you of where the child was lost, and who had the finding
+of her.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, blather of you, Molly! That’s the woman of it—wanting
+to know the ins and outs of all things going. Give
+me another mug of milk, girl! No one was finding the
+stray at all. She walked out from Templard when she
+got ready, and no fear on her and not a hair of her head
+wet! She had mocking and laughter for Laud of Argial
+and told of a King of the Fairies who made music for
+her in the ruins, but Argial had blackness of thunder
+in his looks and drove like the devil down from the
+mountain.”</p>
+
+<p>“Glory be to God!” breathed Molly, crossing herself.
+“A slip of a girl like that to venture in Templard this day!<span class="pagenum" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</span>
+Hugh, lad, when the sheep were straying over there beyond
+did you get sight of her?”</p>
+
+<p>But Hugh was sprawled on the hearth with a bit of
+paper and pencil. He was tousling his curls for straying
+thoughts, and making scribbles there by the glow of the
+peat fire. Molly repeated her question before he gave
+heed to it.</p>
+
+<p>“I saw no daughter of a Maurice there, and no bride of
+Argial,” he said stolidly. “What I saw on Templard
+was a different thing. Did I not tell you I fell asleep
+in the bracken and had a dream? Whist, Molly dear, and
+let be, for I heard music there and am making a song
+of it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, Shamas man,” begged Molly. “Say something
+for me to put the fear of God on that lad! You know
+well it is ill luck to sleep on a fairies’ rath, and ill luck
+to make songs to their harping, and worst luck of all for a
+maid or man to follow fairy king, or fairy mistress, to a
+rath on a Midsummer Eve, or on this eve of Beltain. Tell
+it to him, Shamas, for—Bride and Mary to our helping!—it
+is only to you he will hearken.”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_28" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/a.jpg" alt="A" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">And in the old Kerry castle of Argial, a dark old man,
+in an invalid’s chair, frowned at the girl called by
+Hugh the Dark Rose, and all the laughter and joy
+were gone from her face.</p>
+
+<p>“I will not have you mock your host and my friend!” he
+said, and his clenched hand fell on the tea-table and set
+the china and silver a-tinkle. “I will not have it from
+you! Gerald and you have bread and comfort under his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</span>
+roof—and that is more than I can give you; and bread
+alone is more than I may have at the last—with stocks
+going smash, and no hope of retrieving losses, I will not
+have this rebellion and mockery of yours!”</p>
+
+<p>The girl looked from his angry eyes to the brandy and
+soda on the tea-table.</p>
+
+<p>“I meant to ask you about that, about the little inheritance
+of Jerry’s and mine—if—it is gone—?”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course it’s gone—gone long ago—with my own!
+I tell you there is only one way of school and comfort for
+both of you.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, uncle,” the girl went over and stood back of his
+chair as if speech were less hard if his eyes were not on
+her; “Jerry and I have endless numbers of cousins somewhere
+here in Ireland—”</p>
+
+<p>“All poorer than church mice; and the ones with means
+have all gone to America or the continent. Sensible
+enough they are, too!”</p>
+
+<p>“Yet there might be some left who would let us make
+a home with them—even a home on a farm would not be
+bad. We are not quite paupers; surely, we have a little
+left, and I would work—do anything—”</p>
+
+<p>His laugh with a deal of scorn in it, halted her.</p>
+
+<p>“Do anything! Then do the only sensible thing there
+is to do. Settle your mind to be civil and be mistress of
+Argial when the time comes. Hector is enough of a connection
+of the family to accept favors from. Gerald will
+be provided for; he will get his bit to secure a commission,
+and he would think you a fool to talk of work—and perhaps
+a clerk’s grind for him! Why, it is a dower for a
+princess Hector Laud is offering for you—and you talk of
+a group of unknown Irish cousins, poverty-stricken as
+yourself! It is too absurd for words. Don’t let me hear
+any more of it.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</span></p>
+
+<p>There was silence for so long a time that the man in
+the chair grew restless and turned half around; his voice
+was more conciliating.</p>
+
+<p>“Be a good girl now! You must know you are the only
+hope left. Hector adores you, and your mockery is serious
+to him. You are too young to know what is best. Why
+start a fool’s hunt for Irish cousins you never saw when
+an English cousin offers you the key to his treasure
+chests?”</p>
+
+<p>“I care little enough for the treasure chests—though
+I do love the Kerry hills,” she said at last.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, that’s something! You can have all of them you
+want when married, but not a foot shall you go alone on
+them again while we are in the castle. And that will only
+be until tomorrow. You will go back to school until common
+sense has ended your flighty rebellion. It is a choice
+between starvation and the income of a girl-queen. Poverty
+is an enemy to fight against—it will conquer you in
+the end!”</p>
+
+<p>“It may overpower me when I think of Jerry and his
+future,” she said quietly, “but to be overpowered does not
+mean to be conquered.”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a_27" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/i.jpg" alt="I" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">In an early April a woman rode down the boreen of
+the glen from Templard, and her eyes rested often
+on the simple growths—from cress of the brook to
+the buds on the prickly thorn. She reached out and touched
+the green ivy in the dusky wood, and pinned a bit of it on
+her coat of darker green.</p>
+
+<p>Molly Donn, catching glimpse of her through the open<span class="pagenum" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</span>
+door, flew hurriedly to combing her hair with one hand,
+and pushing Shamas toward the door with the other.</p>
+
+<p>“Go on now—it is herself! Have manners and give
+her greeting whilst I make myself tidy. God save her!
+No word of anyone has overpraised her!”</p>
+
+<p>Shamas, a little older, a little whiter, did as bidden, and
+looked his wonder when the rider spoke.</p>
+
+<p>“You are Shamas? Are you not?” she asked, and her
+dark eyes had searching kindness.</p>
+
+<p>“It is Shamas, indeed, I am called, my lady,” he made
+answer, “though there is many another of the same name
+on the Kerry coast, and I’ve no monopoly.”</p>
+
+<p>“There can be only one here at the foot of Templard,”
+she said, “one with—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">The ever young blue eyes,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Beneath the thatch of snow.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“Ah then, you’ve been seeing the lad’s bits of verse, and
+songs of the Kerry hills,” he said; and the old face was
+illumined. “Sure enough he did not forget his old
+friends—not even a pet cow or a sheep! Why, I find
+myself giving looks to the bog-berries and the bracken
+under foot as never before—and all because he bore them
+in his mind and put them in his songs across the sea
+beyond.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes—I’ve been seeing the songs—and hearing them.
+My brother is home from the front and tells me they are
+sung in the trenches by the soldiers. He is not well
+enough to ride, so I have come alone. I thought you
+would perhaps tell me a little about the boy who wrote
+the ‘Legends of Desmond.’”</p>
+
+<p>Molly appeared at that moment, eager and voluble
+with offered hospitality.</p>
+
+<p>“Who could tell you if not Shamas Ronayne?” she<span class="pagenum" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</span>
+asked. “Didn’t he teach the lad them old tales and songs
+of old battles?—Indeed, he did then, and it’s proud we are
+of Hugh, and joyful that his heart has remembrance for
+the glen folk. It’s proud, too, we are that the lady of
+Castle Argial has his name among the many who would
+crave remembrance of her—and will you please to come
+within, for a rest on the way?”</p>
+
+<p>The lady of Argial dismounted, and looked with interest
+at the low room, stone-floored, and the walls brown with
+peat smoke. The simple furnishings were clean, but the
+bareness of it all seemed to appall the visitor.</p>
+
+<p>“And this was the cradle!” she said at last, and looked
+at Shamas, as to one who would understand. “Tell me of
+him.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is not much to tell,” said the old man. “He was ailing
+as a young lad, and was left behind when his father
+sailed for the western world. The grass under his feet here
+was the right cure for him. Ere the day came when his
+father struck the rich luck of mines and such wealth as is
+to be had for the looking over there, the lad Hugh had a
+mind full of tales of old Munster—and more than the tales,
+for he had the feel of the land and could sing it—yes, he
+could do that! When tutors and the learning of books
+were coming his way, he made that learning serve for telling
+the old tales in a new manner and saving the old songs
+in print, so cheaply that even the husband of a one-donkey
+farm could afford the price of it. Many wise men were
+making record of old Irish for the scholars and the learned—that
+is what he is saying, but the thing he was wishful
+for ever was to make it easy for the lad of the cow-path—and
+the digger of peat—and the herring fishers along the
+shore. Yes, that was the wish of him.”</p>
+
+<p>“He has his wish,” she said. “Hugh Siod is a name
+well loved by many.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Aye, and hated as well,” murmured Shamas. “You’re
+not the first to ride this path asking of him; the sergeant
+of constabulary has gathered in more than one copy, and
+others are hid as the history of Keating was hid for generations
+among the Irish. My own is under the hearth.”</p>
+
+<p>“Whist man,” muttered Molly, who was setting the
+black kettle on the hob for making of tea, “why bury a
+crock of coin only to lift the cover off for the passer-by?”</p>
+
+<p>But Shamas smiled at the visitor, and lifted the stoneflagging
+where a flat package reposed in the excavation
+beneath.</p>
+
+<p>“Let be, Molly,” he said tolerantly, “the lady of Argial
+has blood in her of the nobles who had banishment—‘to
+hell or Connaught’ put upon them by the invader. The
+daughter of Maurice could not be an informer against her
+own.”</p>
+
+<p>“She could not,” said the lady of Argial. “My grandfather
+was killed for Ireland—and my father went into
+exile to escape the same enemies. I am only learning
+these things now, for it was long kept hidden from us.”</p>
+
+<p>“Aye! That is often the way of it,” agreed Shamas.
+“The young in free lands could not have understanding of
+it, and what use to put shadow on them? Look at this
+now”—and he opened the package and turned the leaves
+of the little volume to a tale, <cite>The Wife of Desmond</cite>. “There
+now is a lament, second to none ever written: not Dierdre
+for her lover—not Nuala in her exile, ever had the heart
+wail for hearts’ losses equaled by the Irish bride of Desmond
+at the slaughter of her infant sons and their father,
+who had dared Saxon laws to marry in honor an Irish
+maid!”</p>
+
+<p>“That was a true tale, and a terrible,” agreed Molly, who
+was at the open door watching the path, “but fear goes
+with it, and what profit in the printed words of such,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</span>
+when troubles might come to all of us for the very sight
+of it here?”</p>
+
+<p>“It teaches the young from songs what they never
+would glimpse from the books of historians,” said their
+visitor. “I had taunts given me in schools that my people
+were of jails, and exiles. I carried the shadow of that in
+silence all my youth. This book told me they were not
+criminals—they were patriots—and my pride in them
+now is beyond word. Think of that!—I—who scarcely
+dared speak the name of them all my life!”</p>
+
+<p>“And you a grand lady, too!” breathed Molly in amaze.
+“And it is noble I am sure your forbears were, and not
+to be spoke of by the likes of me who has no reading of
+books to my knowledge. But indeed now there have been
+no bad killings this while back, and it is a good herring year,
+and the new litter of pigs gives us promise of comfort for
+the winter, to say nothing of the nest-egg Hugh himself
+has been sending me! No, my lady, it is myself is glad
+enough to hear speech of these things, for Shamas here,
+and Michal, who is gone to the harbor, give me no light
+on it at all; but when a good year is with us why put in
+time with reading of the old-time slaughterings?”</p>
+
+<p>“To justify our fathers who sacrificed themselves for
+freedom. It is a wonderful word—freedom! The pity
+is that few value it until after it has been lost.”</p>
+
+<p>There was weariness in the sweet, deep voice, and a
+moment of shadow in the dark eyes, and the old man
+nodded his head slowly.</p>
+
+<p>“It came your way early,” he said, “but it has been
+bringing understanding with it.”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” she said lowly, “this little book brought the
+understanding. I owe much to it; I drifted in discontent
+from port to port until it found me! I bought a hundred
+copies for my brother who is afire with hope these days.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</span>
+Surely, our Irish regiments, fighting abroad, must win us
+justice at last here at home!”</p>
+
+<p>“A blessing on the day!” said Shamas. “It is a proud
+time for us, Lady Argial, that your heart is with the cottagers
+here in Kerry. There’s many an Irish estate give
+over to cattle and keepers and mayhaps some gentleman
+for the fall hunting, and no spirit of life in it at all,
+and it kills the land, that does. It kills the spirit of a
+land—or—drives it too far afield to find the way back
+again!”</p>
+
+<p>“Wouldn’t himself be proud to see you here now, drinking
+tea from his own cup, and with the book of his writing
+to your hand?” said Molly, beaming hospitality—and
+settling herself on the doorstep with her own cup of
+tea after presenting her visitor with a gilded guest cup.
+“Now wouldn’t it be a proud day the day he would see
+you so?”</p>
+
+<p>“I did see him once; it seems very long ago. He was
+a slender young lad with a wonderful smile and odd sayings.
+He sang a song on the mountain—a song of Ireland—it
+had charm and mysteries in it. That was years
+ago.”</p>
+
+<p>“And the song was <cite>Kathleen na Hulihan</cite>?” ventured Shamas.
+“He ever was singing or whistling one of them,
+and there have been many.”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” said Lady Argial, with the book open at <cite>A Legend
+of the Dark Rose</cite>—“no—it was a different song. But my
+brother has a new song of Kathleen and he says the boys
+are singing it in camp. He found it in an American paper,
+but the poet’s name I could not learn. I think the writer
+of this book would love it, though it is the sad song of an
+old man.”</p>
+
+<p>“I am wondering if you would let us have it?” asked
+Shamas. “Not so many new songs come up the glen—it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</span>
+would be a favor of grace, if it would not be asking too
+much?”</p>
+
+<p>“How could you ask too much? You who taught a
+bird its song here in the Kerry hills,” she said, and the
+flush of pleasure mounted to the white thatch of his hair.
+She finished the tea and sat looking over the far green.</p>
+
+<p>“I do not sing, but I can repeat three of the verses:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>O Kathleen na Hulihan,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent2"><i>It’s old I am and gray,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>The autumn leaves they drift around</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent2"><i>The ending of my day.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>The red leaves—the dead leaves—</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent2"><i>They drift about my way,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Kathleen na Hulihan, today!</i></div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>O Kathleen na Hulihan,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent2"><i>I wandered far from you.</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>I took a woman to my wife</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent2"><i>And kind she was and true,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>But your gray eyes looked out on me</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent2"><i>Within her eyes of blue;</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>And, Kathleen na Hulihan,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent2"><i>My soul went after you!</i></div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>O Kathleen na Hulihan,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent2"><i>Your face is like a star!</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Your face has led me to your feet,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent2"><i>Through wastes and waters far!</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Your face has made a day for me</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent2"><i>Where only twilights are!</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>O Kathleen na Hulihan, my star!</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>There was silence for a little when she ended and Shamas
+looked at her with a glint of tears in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“My star!” he said, nodding gently, “a star indeed—and
+a poet of another land knowing it and singing it! This
+is a day to live for—a day of great comfort, and you bringing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</span>
+it to me! Now, Molly, woman, you’ll have no more
+moments of fear for Hugh, and the tales he has retold,
+when that telling has brought the lady of Argial here to a
+shepherd’s cot, and her bringing a new Kathleen to us—a
+star indeed—a star indeed!”</p>
+
+<p>“It is myself is proud as any of Hugh,” said the cautious
+Molly. “But the boys are wild over him, and many a poet
+of Ireland has died in exile for less than he has dared say—and
+you know that well, Shamas, and this is a time of
+fear at the best, and you are knowing that, too!”</p>
+
+<p>Lady Argial was reading the kindly, yet careful, inscription
+in the book from under the hearth.</p>
+
+<p>“And this is his own writing to you—others will envy
+you his love written there. Tell me if there is anything
+in which he needs help.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nothing we can know—not wealth surely, for the
+father has left him enough and to spare. Every penny
+the book brings goes to a fund for Ireland—and more
+besides!”</p>
+
+<p>“I did not know that—there was no one to tell me,”
+she said, rising. “It was a fancy I had that he was maybe
+poor and alone. But perhaps he is not alone either?”</p>
+
+<p>“He is alone except for Dark Rosaleen, or Kathleen na
+Hulihan,” said Shamas, “and I think he will be having no
+other sweetheart.”</p>
+
+<p>Their visitor stood in the doorway and looked back into
+the dusky room of the one window, and then to the almost
+frail little old man whose spirit was not at all frail.</p>
+
+<p>She clasped hands with him, and with Molly Donn,
+and mounted the black horse from the stone wall at the
+stile.</p>
+
+<p>“I do not mean that Argial shall be merely a hunting
+lodge ever again,” she said. “Come to me as a friend if
+ever there is favor or justice you have to ask.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</span></p>
+
+<p>On the hill above she halted to look back and wave her
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>“Like a queen on a throne she looks there!” said Molly
+all a-flutter, “and like a queen, too, she sat, simple as the
+likes of us—on a seat here under our own eaves! Shamas,
+dear, did you ever hope to see the day?”</p>
+
+<p>But Shamas did not answer. His eyes were on the dark
+horse and its rider outlined against the shining glory of
+gold-and-primrose clouds behind which the sun was passing
+in partial eclipse.</p>
+
+<p>She looked like a statue there, for horse and rider were
+flat, dark outlines against the sky—themselves in passing
+shadow and the radiance beyond.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not the picture by which the old man was
+held—it was a sudden forward movement of hers as if
+peering down the sea road at something not discernible
+by the two watchers of the cottage. The horse moved
+and half turned, restless and eager to be gone, but she
+halted him there—waiting.</p>
+
+<p>Then the cart of Michal came over the brow of the
+hill, and a tall man beside Michal lifted his cap in recognition,
+and the woman, leaning forward, waved her
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>“Glory be!” muttered Molly. “And who would be the
+stranger there with Michal?”</p>
+
+<p>But old Shamas knew!</p>
+
+<p>“It’s himself,” he said, and his voice trembled. “I can
+go the Way in content now that my eyes are on him again—it’s
+himself come back to us!”</p>
+
+<p>The stranger leaped from the cart and strode over the
+upland green where the woman waited. His cap was in
+his hand, and the shock of bronze-gold curls were gone;
+one lock over his forehead was the only reminder of the
+golden crown she had remembered.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</span></p>
+
+<p>“O Fairy Prince of a holiday!” she said, and smiled
+in quick appraisement.</p>
+
+<p>“O Dark Rose of a dream!” he answered, and bowed
+before her. “This is a more wonderful coming back than
+I could have hoped—it has taken ten years to earn it!”</p>
+
+<p>He apparently did not note her half-extended hand, but
+stood as a courtier might before a queen, yet with a sort
+of gay comradeship in his smile, and the caress in his voice.
+The horse reached forward with pointed ears of inquiry,
+and then snuggled its nose against his shoulder. He
+lifted his hand and stroked the black satiny skin.</p>
+
+<p>“It is a fine welcome to Kerry he is giving me,” he said,
+with laughing touch of brogue. “Ah! It’s great just to
+be breathing the air again!”</p>
+
+<p>“A welcome to Kerry is what we all give you, Hugh
+Siod,” she said. “You forgot to pipe to the herds here
+until I came again, but you kept well your boy-promise
+to make songs for Ireland!”</p>
+
+<p>“For the Dark Rose,” he corrected her, and smiled.
+“I think I promised to make them on the fairies’ rath, but
+we human things drift in strange currents sometimes, and
+my songs were made in another place.”</p>
+
+<p>“They go to my heart,” she said, “and not mine alone.
+My brother idolizes you; I must tell you of Jerry and his
+comrades. Your songs have been an inspiration.”</p>
+
+<p>He stood while she told him of the wounded brother,
+and the hopes for Ireland founded on the Irish troops,
+drilled to fight, if need be, their ancient enemy for equal
+rights, yet putting aside, temporarily, their own great
+cause, and marching to battle beside that enemy when
+devastation threatened a larger world.</p>
+
+<p>The glint of laughter went out of his eyes as they talked
+there—and they talked long.</p>
+
+<p>She grew pale and still as he told her of things beyond<span class="pagenum" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</span>
+the seas, of foreign alliance by which all Ireland could be
+made a battlefield, of the political groups who stayed at
+home to undo the work of the Irish regiments in which
+her pride was so great.</p>
+
+<p>“For that I have come—and come in secret,” he confessed.
+“Because of what I have written in my passion for
+Irish freedom, strange things have been told to me. All
+my heart is with them—but this is not the time! I have
+crossed the ocean to tell them that, and to bring word
+from men more important than I. I go to Cork and then
+to Dublin to do what I may.”</p>
+
+<p>“And then?”</p>
+
+<p>“I have been helping recruit in Canada, but others can
+carry on that work now. If I escape alive from my Irish
+friends when I tell them the truths I bring—well—if
+there is room for me in an Irish regiment, that is where I
+will be. There is yet work to do.”</p>
+
+<p>Her hand crept up to her throat as she listened to him.</p>
+
+<p>“Once you made me weep when you crooned a lullaby,”
+she said, “and now, for all my gladness and pride in your
+work, you are giving me a great fear! You make me
+understand things that were dark. I fear—I fear my
+brother may know of that group you came to reason with,
+I fear it greatly! And—you maybe know the position
+and inclinations of Lord Argial—”</p>
+
+<p>“I know,” he said quietly, “yours will not be the only
+family divided in Ireland—there will be tragedies as dark
+as any I have sung, and the day is past when they can be
+hidden as of old.”</p>
+
+<p>“You know the censor has suppressed your <cite>Legends of
+Desmond</cite>?”</p>
+
+<p>“I ought to,” and his smile twinkled out again. “But
+sailors sing the songs of them aboard ship, and teach them
+to sweethearts ashore, and I heard a shepherd whistling<span class="pagenum" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</span>
+one of them as we crossed over the plain below—so—one
+way and another they will bear their message, if it is
+worth the bearing!”</p>
+
+<p>“It is—it is!” she said earnestly. “You have wakened
+many of us to greater pride in our heritage. I am only
+one of them. Did you know—have you ever chanced on
+the trace of a link between your family and our own? My
+brother found it in some old record of genealogy of Munster.
+I—he takes great pride in it. I—am able to claim
+myself as your kinswoman—though far removed.”</p>
+
+<p>“Not so far!” he corrected. “You may remember that
+I recognized you as kindred even when awed by you, and
+O’Donnell’s Dark Rose was called by him ‘The Flower of
+Munster.’”</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him as he spoke lightly of the things of
+which he had written as a religion.</p>
+
+<p>“I have found many of my Irish cousins in the ten
+years,” she said, “but not one of them is like you. I rode
+up to Templard today, but all is different; there is no
+hawthorn blooming and no white lamb, and no shepherd of
+songs!”</p>
+
+<p>“I never went there again,” he said very quietly. “It
+is a place to dream about. When I have done something
+of use to Ireland—of real use—I will go up again to the
+old temple. It has always been sanctuary to me. I would
+wish that the hawthorn might be in bloom when I go
+again—and that I might see you there!”</p>
+
+<p>She had the same wish, and he knew it without words.
+The childish promise of tryst when his songs called
+her back to Kerry was not forgotten by either of them.
+Ten years of life in the world had dragged their long days
+between a lad and a maid whose hands had not even
+touched, yet nothing in that life had been more real than
+their dreams of each other.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</span></p>
+
+<p>“I must go,” she said. “It is wonderful that you
+returned here today—the day I came just to look at the
+place where you had once lived! I wonder if I will ever
+see you again, Hugh Siod.”</p>
+
+<p>“I think you will,” he said; “wherever they send me I
+will find my way back some time. You wear the green—dear
+color of hope, which is all that is left to Ireland!
+Hope then with me that the hawthorn may be in bloom
+when I do come—hawthorn time is the glad time, and the
+winter left behind.”</p>
+
+<p>“I will—I will!” she said.</p>
+
+<p>They looked at each other steadily and turned away. He
+halted once to watch her riding swiftly up toward the far
+summit, and then he followed Michal to the cottage.</p>
+
+<p>“Would you look at that now?” demanded Molly
+watching afar, “not even a handshake did she give him—and
+she all fine words here in praise of his writings! Sure,
+the quality folk is a puzzle any way you take them, and it
+would hurt her none at all to be human to him as she
+was to us!”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_30" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/t.jpg" alt="T" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">The stars were out when the lady of Argial rode
+along the great oak avenue from the forest, and had
+joy in the night odors of swelling buds, and the
+promise of earth that winter was indeed gone.</p>
+
+<p>A leaping light against the windows told that a cheery
+fire had been made, more for the brightness of it than the
+need of warmth. And she thought of the long talk there
+she would have with Jerry over the strange hour at Siod’s
+old Kerry home.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</span></p>
+
+<p>But when she reached the hall, angry voices came to
+her ears, and she faced a strange scene from the library
+door.</p>
+
+<p>Jerry, on his crutch, stood, a picture of helpless fury,
+and watched Hector Laud of Argial tear leaf by leaf a
+book apart, and toss them on the blaze.</p>
+
+<p>“I will have no smuggled seditious books under my
+roof,” he declared, “and no plotting traitors!”</p>
+
+<p>“You are the sort of man to make traitors!” said Jerry
+hotly. “You are the sort of man against whom people
+rise in ever-widening circles until it is called Revolution!
+Can you put lock and key on thoughts by burning a
+thinker’s books? I will not stop another night under your
+damned roof if I have to hobble on crutches over the
+mountain!”</p>
+
+<p>“Jerry!” She was beside him, with her arms about
+him—and staring hard at Laud, who calmly continued his
+task instead of flinging the volume at once to the flames.</p>
+
+<p>“Rose, Rose! It is the songs of Siod! My songs! It
+is brutal,” muttered Jerry, and before either realized what
+she was doing she darted forward and tore the remnants
+of the volume from the grasp of her husband.</p>
+
+<p>“They are Ireland itself, the very spirit of Ireland! And
+no fire ever made by you—or made by your blood—can
+burn that spirit out, Hector Laud!” she said.</p>
+
+<p>The men were no more astonished than herself at her
+act. Laud stared at her, sneering, incredulous.</p>
+
+<p>“Irish bombast!” he remarked. “So my wife is also a
+reader of this forbidden drivel of old legends! It is as well
+I came unexpectedly to note what was holding you so long
+in the wilds of Kerry. Is my castle one of the several used
+in these days for traitorous sedition?”</p>
+
+<p>“Our blood breeds no traitors,” she replied evenly,
+“neither do we permit insult. Jerry is right. You can<span class="pagenum" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</span>
+have your roof for your own usage. A thatched cottage
+will give us more of self-respect.”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t be absurd!” suggested Laud. “You know perfectly
+well I won’t allow you to go, and will not have a
+scandal. That thing in your hand is smuggled literature
+of a pernicious sort. If I choose I could put your brother
+under arrest for having it here. Burning it is the simple
+way out.”</p>
+
+<p>“Legally, I suppose he is right. Rose,” said Jerry at last.
+“I don’t want to make trouble for you. Let it be burned
+rather than that.”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_29" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/t.jpg" alt="T" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">The boy had sunk in his chair—rather pale and
+shaky from his brief fury. She put her arm about
+him with a wonderful smile in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>“There are different ways of burning,” she said. “Sacrifices
+are offered in that way.”</p>
+
+<p>She knelt on the hearth and held out the book in both
+hands, looking across at Jerry.</p>
+
+<p>“This is my sacrifice for my soldier brother,” she said,
+“that he may, without blemish, fight ever in the right,
+for Ireland!”</p>
+
+<p>She laid the leaves on the blaze and knelt watching until
+there was left only a glowing curl of ash. Hector Laud
+regarded her somberly. Never before had she so openly
+defied him. He was in sullen rage, knowing that he had
+gone too far, and his rage extended to the book, and the
+writer of it.</p>
+
+<p>And he knew himself justified in his rage when she rose
+from her knees and smiled on Jerry.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</span></p>
+
+<p>“It is gone, soldier boy!” she said. “The pages are
+gone out of sight, but the real book is here,” and she
+touched her breast. “I know it all by heart, as does more
+than one of the Irish, and I will teach it all over to you
+again!”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a_28" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/a.jpg" alt="A" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">A fortnight later the hell of revolution broke
+loose in Dublin, and a reign of terror ruled. Wild
+fear dominated the official group, and strange jail-yard
+killings sent a shudder around the world. Hector
+Laud was sharer of that obloquy, and his wife, to whom
+no one would tell the truth, divined the unspoken. She
+shut herself in a room apart, and refused to look on his
+face.</p>
+
+<p>Jerry was brought to her there, shot and speechless, and
+gave work for her hands. The wound temporarily affected
+his speech and he had lain apparently dead for over an
+hour in the barricaded street where the bullets sang their
+death-song over him. Then some stranger had gone into
+that inferno after him and got him to safety. Civilians
+were forbidden within that street, and the stranger had
+been taken before the military authorities to answer for his
+humanity. No one could learn what had become of him;
+no one but the sister of the boy was especially interested,
+and it was difficult for any friend to seek answers to her
+questions, knowing that her husband was the one man
+whose information concerning suspects, arrests, and executions
+was absolutely accurate. He could tell her if anyone
+could—but no one could even hint that to her! Every
+friend of hers was shrouded in gloom because of the bond<span class="pagenum" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</span>
+between them—they called him “Butcher Laud” when
+out of her hearing.</p>
+
+<p>The second day Jerry could articulate, but his nerves
+were a jangle, and his eyes pleaded with her.</p>
+
+<p>“Kerry, Kerry!” he whispered over and over. The
+physician listened and assented.</p>
+
+<p>“Get him out of this if you can. Everyone he sees here
+is filled with the devil’s own horrors we’ve been going
+through. By all means get him to the hills where there is
+peace.”</p>
+
+<p>Jerry whispered for “Siod,” once or twice, but no one
+knew where to find Siod.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_31" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/i.jpg" alt="I" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">It was the last week in April, gloriously bright, and
+the warm sun calling out patches of bloom in every
+southern nook. The green grass was springing, and
+the coils of fern uncurling in wood and sedgy marge.</p>
+
+<p>She rode west to Kerry in a curious trance-like state
+with the wounded boy and a nurse. There were moments
+when she felt the after-effects of some shock she had lived
+through, though the actual shock, or the nature of it, had
+been forgotten!</p>
+
+<p>She wakened herself sobbing of some unknown sorrow,
+and the eyes of Jerry followed her in mute question. He
+could whisper disjointed words, but was forbidden attempt
+at conversation. Rest and nursing were his only need.
+The wound coming so soon after his former convalescence
+had been too heavy a strain for quick recuperation—yet
+he would recover and, as the physician said, live to fight
+again.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</span></p>
+
+<p>The very birds of the air appeared to be bearers of disaster
+to the hills, for there was no welcome there for the
+family of Argial; herdsmen and farmers who once met her
+with the smile of welcome on every road now turned aside
+in the hidden boreens, or crouched back of hedges as she
+walked abroad.</p>
+
+<p>Shamas Ronayne alone came to her, a frail old white
+figure in gray, and driving the white donkey of Michal
+Donn.</p>
+
+<p>“None other would be coming for question to a Laud
+of Argial, and I am the one coming,” he said. “What may
+happen to me is as nothing at all, for my time is near, and
+none to sorrow.”</p>
+
+<p>“I will sorrow,” said the lady of Argial. “The very land
+itself sorrows for every man like you who passes. You
+are of the living records of the unwritten things—the
+sacred things.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is of the lad,” he said. “He was to come back once,
+or send word back to us once, when he had given his message
+in Dublin and joined a regiment. No word has come,
+and it is nearing a month. He was not of the revolution,
+for his message to them was a different one entirely.
+Kerry and Cork he reached in time, but Dublin he could
+not have. His name is not heard of, though many are
+asking.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, my own brother is asking—and my own heart is
+asking.”</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her with a new, wondrous look of comprehension,
+and tears shone in the unfaded blue of his
+strangely youthful eyes. He touched her green sleeve, as
+he might have touched the sacrament.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah! ‘Rose of Kerry!’ I should have known, I should
+have known!” he said. Her eyes, darkest gray, shaded
+darker by black lashes, met his gaze steadily and in pride.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</span>
+His own eyes closed, and he murmured a prayer at what he
+saw there.</p>
+
+<p>“It has been always, I think,” she said. “I was
+as a child walking in sleep—and he called me
+awake!”</p>
+
+<p>“Aye! And your voice would now be calling him to
+answer if any voice could,” said Shamas. “I have been
+walking the glen paths in the night with a great fear on
+me, and no shape to that fear. ‘Before the hawthorn is
+in bloom,’ was what he said at his going away, but the
+buds have opened surely on Templard, and no word coming!
+The man they wedded you to is the man who knows
+all things of them in prison, and them who were killed
+there. I—we all had thought that you would surely be
+knowing.”</p>
+
+<p>“Shamas,” she whispered, and then again in growing
+horror—“Shamas!”</p>
+
+<p>“Aye,” he answered. “There are fearful hearts waiting
+the words, but none would be asking an Argial, barring
+myself—and it is you I am asking.”</p>
+
+<p>“And I am no Argial!” she said. “I am only a woman
+of Ireland, this day. If a crime has been done against him,
+Argial must answer!”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i029a_30" style="max-width: 79.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i029a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/s.jpg" alt="S" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">She sent message by wire so imperative that
+some reply must come back. After that there
+was nothing to do but the waiting, and Shamas
+she would not let go.</p>
+
+<p>They talked long, and their speech was all of him, and
+she told him of their childlike game of the fairy queen and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</span>
+the Irish prince who found her in the shadows of the druid
+temple on Templard.</p>
+
+<p>“I mind well the day,” said Shamas, “for on the hearthstone
+that night he wrote the poem-tale of the Dark Rose
+of Red Hugh O’Donnell, and it blooming again in Kerry
+for fragrance to all Ireland—alive and blooming after
+three centuries of heavy feet trampling it in the mire! He
+worked all the night at it, and his eyes alight and no
+weariness on him! Molly was in a fair fright over it, for
+he said he was writing a dream he had in a fairy rath—and
+it the eve of Beltain! As this is.”</p>
+
+<p>“This?” she said, and stared at him.</p>
+
+<p>“Aye, what else? In the cities the people are forgetting
+them old days of the fields and the new bloom, but here we
+are not forgetting, for it ends the black winter for us and
+gives us hope of harvests to come.”</p>
+
+<p>“And I forgot!” Her voice was incredulous. “Shamas,
+my mind has been full of him, yet for the first time in ten
+years I forgot! Since last Wednesday I have walked as
+in a trance, and I seem to have lost dates or records of
+time. Beltain to come:—and I to forget! Why, it was
+like a tryst-time, a day to wish myself back on Templard,
+and hear his voice again there—his young voice singing.”</p>
+
+<p>“Wednesday,” mused Shamas. “That was the night I
+walked sleepless. The restlessness would not take itself
+away. So—Sunday and all as it is, I could stand it no
+longer, and took the road to you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Sunday?” she repeated. “I had forgotten that also!
+The hour has gone by when an answer could reach me by
+wire on a Sunday! It will be morning now before we can
+get it, but you must not go back until it comes. You are
+the only comforting soul near me.”</p>
+
+<p>“I could not sleep under the roof of Argial,” said
+Shamas.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Neither will I this night,” she said, “but you can rest,
+and wait, and what I can do for your comfort I will.”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a_29" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/t.jpg" alt="T" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">The twilight crept through the dusky wood, and quiet
+settled over the sombre mass of gray Argial. A star
+glimmered here and there in the deepening sky.</p>
+
+<p>She paced her chamber alone—waiting!</p>
+
+<p>A lad passed through a far meadow singing a love-song
+to some mate of the thatched roofs, and she paused at the
+window listening until the last sound died away—but it
+was another voice of which she was thinking.</p>
+
+<p>“And this night!” she murmured. “This sleepless night
+of the tryst-time! Ah, to be but once on Templard under
+the stars—and his young voice singing there carefree as
+before!”</p>
+
+<p>She walked away from the window and the witcheries of
+the thought. She lit a reading-lamp, and picked up a little
+book—Meyers’ translation of the fragments of verse of
+<cite>Liadan and Kurithir</cite>. The ancient love-story of the two poets
+had its own fascination for her always, but this time her
+eyes rested on one verse and did not go beyond. It was
+Liadan’s recognition of the forbidden voice singing its love
+to her—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Belovéd is the dear voice I hear!</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>I dare not welcome it,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>But this only do I say:</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent4"><i>Belovéd is the dear voice!</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>She sat quite still, looking at it. Her dark eyes grew
+darker, wider; every sense seemed suddenly alert in a new
+way. Her breath was stilled to listen; no sound broke<span class="pagenum" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</span>
+the darkness or echoed in the halls—yet far away beyond—above—she
+felt the vibrations of wordless harmonies!</p>
+
+<p>They passed, and left her staring at the words:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Belovéd is the dear voice I hear</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>I dare not welcome it!</i>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>She arose, took from a closet a long-hooded cloak of
+green, and turned out the light.</p>
+
+<p>“But I dare,” she whispered, and slipped out and down
+to the stables in the moonless night!</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i025a_32" style="max-width: 80.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i025a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/i178d.jpg" alt="T" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">Through the gray forest, darkening to green, she
+rode. And over the high moor the black horse sped
+like a night-bird skimming the earth. She was filled
+with a great exultation—the cloud under which she had
+been oppressed seemed to lift when she emerged from the
+forest of Argial. She knew she was doing the thing she
+had longed to do always—and if there was but hawthorn
+abloom on the height it would be recompense!</p>
+
+<p>Willingly and joyously the horse ran to the first circle
+of the rath, but beyond that he would not go! In vain she
+whispered—in vain she petted and caressed him. He
+planted his feet and pointed his ears and reared only to
+come down again in the same spot. She walked him
+quietly to a different point and tried again—nearer he
+would not approach.</p>
+
+<p>She slid from his back and petted him—he was wet and
+trembling.</p>
+
+<p>“This then must be the place of parting,” she whispered.
+“Why should you have fear of it?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</span></p>
+
+<p>She wondered why she whispered where there were none
+to hear, but could not answer her own query. There
+seemed to be utter stillness on the world, and she scarce
+heard her own footfalls as she went up and up over the
+circles, her eyes straining for first glimpse of the hawthorn—if
+it should not be in bloom!</p>
+
+<p>But it was. Even in the night without moon she could
+see the soft white of it, and as she crossed the third
+circle the whiteness of it grew more clear until she glanced
+above to see what sudden light of star was reflected by it.</p>
+
+<p>The sky was the same, and the stars were the same; the
+mass of bloom gave out its own soft radiance in the night.</p>
+
+<p>And besides the bloom there was a movement. She
+heard a breaking branch, and halted there, breathless,
+listening!</p>
+
+<p>Then his voice—the voice she had listened for—the
+voice like no other—spoke.</p>
+
+<p>“Come no nearer!” it said. “I broke the hawthorn for
+you and have waited four days and four nights—longer I
+may not. Hush! Do not speak to me! I know the thing
+you would know—and the thing Shamas has asked—and
+it is for you to see.”</p>
+
+<p>She did not speak, for she could not! A strange cold
+wall seemed to circle her, and her eyes were drawn to the
+shadow of the cromlechs where the two had once sheltered
+from storm. She peered forward as dim light fell on the
+darkness under the arch—and through it—as if far away,
+and seen through reversed opera glasses, she perceived men
+in uniform—other men in civilian dress—a stone wall
+very high—and a man there who appeared to dominate—it
+was Hector Laud of Argial. Men with rifles passed
+across the scene, and a man under guard entered. He
+wore a cap, and her heart leaped and then grew cold—cold
+as her speechless lips.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</span></p>
+
+<p>He was questioned by Argial, and by others; he shook
+his head. He spoke, but she could not hear the words.
+Once he smiled at them in a tired way, as at some question
+many times answered. Argial turned aside and made a
+sign; a man with a white handkerchief folded it and moved
+forward, but the man alone by the wall waved him away.
+He removed his cap and let it fall beside him on the
+paving; he spoke a brief word or two, looking straight
+ahead as if into her eyes, and then stepped back against
+the wall and made a signal. The wind tossed aside the
+lock of bronze-gold hair on his forehead and he stood an
+instant with his hand over his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Then something happened, and he sank forward and lay
+there and shadows blotted all out as the men, Hector
+Laud among them, bent over the fallen body!</p>
+
+<p>“That is how it was,” she heard him say. “I have at
+last done something for the land, and so dared come again
+to meet you here. O Dark Rose—I have sung your songs
+as I could—but strength is going again. Hush—do not
+speak! You will rest and wake to find the hawthorn
+abloom. You will grieve—but green hope will cover your
+life! You will not be without love—without music!”</p>
+
+<p>He moved out from the screen of the white bloom, and
+the radiance of it shone on his face, grave and pale. In his
+left hand he bore the broken branch; his eyes were luminous
+and wonderful in the starlight.</p>
+
+<p>A puff of wind blew aside the curls over his forehead,
+and she would have cried out if she could, for a dark mark
+was there—the open path of the lead of death! He lifted
+his hand, and it also was pierced.</p>
+
+<p>“No,” he said, reading her thought, “they do not use
+nails in palms today for their crucifixions, but we still die—guiltless!”</p>
+
+<p>She strove to break through the frozen silence in which<span class="pagenum" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</span>
+she was locked—only to speak to him once—once! Only
+to tell him—</p>
+
+<p>But his luminous eyes forbade, though the smile there
+was the smile of perfect understanding. Music came from
+somewhere about them—the <i>suantre</i> by which earth-cares
+are silenced—she felt her eyes closing under its magic—many
+harp strings were sounding softly afar off—was it
+the lullaby he had once sung to her under the druid arch?
+She did not know—she was so nearly wrapped in slumber.</p>
+
+<p>But through that mist of far harmonies there came one
+clear, low voice—his young voice singing the prophecy of
+the <cite>Dark Rosaleen</cite>.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>Your holy delicate white hands</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent2"><i>Shall girdle me with steel!</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>And I will rear your royal throne</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent2"><i>Again in golden sheen!</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent0"><i>’Tis you shall reign, and reign alone</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent2"><i>My Dark Rosaleen!</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent2"><i>My Own Rosaleen!</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<figure class="chapterseparator" style="margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;">
+  <img class="illowp25" src="images/i034.jpg" alt="Ornate separator">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-capi" src="images/i.jpg" alt="I" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+
+<p class="drop-cap2">It was there they found her asleep in the early dawn,
+wrapped in the green-hooded cloak and the spray
+of hawthorn across her breast.</p>
+
+<p>Only Shamas and Hector Laud came over the third
+circle, and Shamas crossed himself at the sight.</p>
+
+<p>“It is a priest we should have brought with us to this
+place,” he said, “for no living woman would sleep on
+Templard.”</p>
+
+<p>Laud of Argial was blanched by fear, and halted on the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</span>
+edge of the rath and called to the man holding the horses
+below.</p>
+
+<p>But she wakened at the shout, and stood up. The languor
+of sweet sleep was still on her eyes and she smiled
+at Shamas, whose gaze was the first to meet hers.
+The hawthorn fell at her feet; she lifted it, looked at
+the dew on it and on the cloth of her cloak—and remembered!</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes were dark lightning as she faced Argial.</p>
+
+<p>“Not one step nearer, so long as you live, and may yours
+be a long life—and remorseful!” she said. “My question
+to you has been answered without you, and this place is
+too sacred for your feet!”</p>
+
+<p>“You are a raving madwoman,” he cried, and his face
+flushed red in anger. “Who else would range the forests
+at night and sleep on the moors alone?”</p>
+
+<p>“I was not alone, Shamas,” she said, ignoring Argial and
+looking only at the old man. “He was with me here. Yes—he
+kept tryst with me on Templard and sang me to sleep
+with a song of hope! It is true, Shamas! He came
+back from the dead to do that, and he left this broken
+bloom here as witness when I would waken; it is true,
+Shamas!”</p>
+
+<p>“I believe it is true,” said the old man, “for sleep was
+put on me, too—a heavy sleep of rest—and that is the
+first sleep coming to me for four nights—his soul is no
+longer calling us to hearken—God and Mary save him!”</p>
+
+<p>“Four nights,” she repeated. “Yes, that is what he
+said—four days and nights he was waiting for me, and
+the blossoms held for me here!”</p>
+
+<p>Laud of Argial glared at the two and uttered an oath of
+destruction on the old man.</p>
+
+<p>“Are you both maniacs?” he demanded. “How did you
+know to tell us to follow her tracks to Templard? And<span class="pagenum" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</span>
+who is the lover who sings you to sleep. You—you—shameless
+with your peasant mates!”</p>
+
+<p>“It is the man you had killed in secret against a prison
+wall four days ago,” she said steadily, but without looking
+at him. And to Shamas she said: “That is indeed how
+Hugh Siod died! He saved my brother and died for
+it. Did they think to silence his songs by killing the
+poet?”</p>
+
+<p>“You are both insane rebels!” shouted Argial. “A second
+time I have followed you to this place of secret meetings—and
+it will be the last—you shall go in a locked
+room of Argial until you are sane again!”</p>
+
+<p>“I will go in no room of Argial ever again,” she said.
+“The cart of Shamas or Michal will bring my wounded to
+me in some more simple abiding place; and friends will
+be found.”</p>
+
+<p>“They will surely,” said Shamas, “and honor will be
+yours—and love will be yours.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are moon-struck Irish dreamers, silly as children!
+Do you think I will allow you to disgrace Argial
+with a scandal of this sort? You will go back with
+me if I have to call those men below to bind and carry
+you!”</p>
+
+<p>“Man,” said Shamas, stepping between them, “go easy
+with your threats in Kerry. She has but to call out to
+the men down there what she told to us here of Hugh
+Siod—and you might not yourself see Argial ever
+again!”</p>
+
+<p>“Stand aside! I have my rights—she is mine—she
+is—”</p>
+
+<p>“No!” said Shamas Ronayne with such quiet force that
+Argial moved a step back at the intensity of the soft voice.
+“No, Argial! Rights of her you have never had, and there
+are many knowing that! She was traded to you by a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</span>
+gambler who did not own her—and that in her young,
+unknowing years! There was never bond of right between
+you two, and now there is foul murder dividing
+you!”</p>
+
+<p>Argial glared cold fury at the incredible peasant.</p>
+
+<p>“And this is your new sort of courtier?” he sneered at
+her; “the sweepings of the mud-huts!”</p>
+
+<p>She drew a great breath of freedom and shook back
+the hood from her dark hair. The first rays of the sun
+struck the gray pillars back of her, and the white hawthorn,
+and flooded her with the rosy radiance of a new day.</p>
+
+<p>“It is, indeed!” she said, and a throb of exultation was
+in her voice. “Both peasants and princes come from the
+huts of our land. They are the souls to whom he sung of
+freedom; they will be my courtiers—and my brothers,
+and my sons! Hugh Siod came back from death to sing a
+prophecy here to me—I will live among his people and
+work for that prophecy all my days!”</p>
+
+<p>Argial scowled from her to the stalwart Kerry man
+climbing the hill, and turned away.</p>
+
+<p>Shamas gazed at her with a reflected light of joy on his
+face.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>O Kathleen na Hulihan, your face is like a star</i>,” he murmured.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="i015a_30" style="max-width: 81.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i015a.jpg" alt="Decorative thought break">
+</figure>
+
+<figure>
+  <img class="drop-cap2" src="images/a.jpg" alt="A" style="max-width: 5em;">
+</figure>
+<p class="drop-cap2">According to official records it was six days after
+Beltain ere the dominating political group of Dublin
+Castle was forced to make public an account of
+the execution, without trial, of the writer, whose palm and
+brain were pierced by the same bullet in the jail-yard on<span class="pagenum" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</span>
+the twenty-sixth day of April! There had been ten days
+of absolute secrecy covering the matter, and the explanation
+of Argial to his superiors concerning its ultimate
+publicity gave him a bad hour.</p>
+
+<p>To tell them that a girl on an old rath on a Kerry hill
+had seen a vision of that death, and could not be silenced,
+was an absurdity not to be advanced.</p>
+
+<p>The investigating board was composed of hard-headed
+unimaginative men, and Argial preferred reprimand from
+them for lack of executive ability, rather than be ridiculed
+by them for repeating any such curious phantasies as those
+evolved by the Irish mind!</p>
+
+<figure class="chapterseparator">
+  <img class="illowp25" src="images/i266.jpg" alt="Decorative chapter separator">
+</figure>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</span></p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp53" id="i319" style="max-width: 113.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i319.jpg" alt="Music score: Lullaby, Traditional.">
+</figure>
+
+
+
+<p class="musicTitle">Lullaby</p>
+<p class="i">Traditional.</p>
+<p class="center music"><audio controls><source src="music/i319_music_correctedf.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
+Audio content is not currently supported on your device.</audio>
+<span class="xml">[<a href="music/i319_music_correctedf.mxl">MusicXML</a>]</span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="ACKNOWLEDGMENT">ACKNOWLEDGMENT</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The books mentioned below have been of much assistance
+to me while preparing these tales of Ancient Ireland,
+and I hereby express my indebtedness to the authors of
+the respective volumes.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Graves, Alfred Perceval, <i>Songs of Erin</i>. Boosey &amp; Co.,
+London.</p>
+
+<p>Gregory, Lady Isabella Augusta, <i>Book of Saints and
+Wonders</i>. Charles Scribner’s Sons.</p>
+
+<p>Hull, Eleanor, <i>Textbook of Irish Literature</i>. Benziger
+Brothers.</p>
+
+<p>Hyde, Douglas, <i>Literary History of Ireland, from the Earliest
+Times to the Present Day</i>. Charles Scribner’s Sons.</p>
+
+<p>Joyce, Patrick Weston, <i>Ancient Irish Music</i>. Longmans,
+Green &amp; Co.</p>
+
+<p>Keating, Geoffrey (1570?-1644?), <i>History of Ireland</i>
+(<i>Foras Feasa ar Eirinn’</i>, preface signed by the author
+in 1629).</p>
+
+<p>Mangan, James Clarence, <i>Complete Poems</i>. P. J.
+Kenedy &amp; Sons.</p>
+
+<p>Meyer, Kuno, Translation from the <i>Book of Lismore</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Petrie, George, <i>Ancient Collection of the Music of Ireland</i>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Annals of the Four Masters.</i> Compiled by three scholars
+of the historic O’Clery house and Peregrin
+O’Duidenan, the historian and genealogist, early
+in the seventeenth century, and produced by John
+Colgan in 1645. The annals begin with the deluge,
+and close with the year 1616.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The initial letters used at the beginning of the Tales,
+and other decorations in book and cover, are taken from
+<i>The Book of Kells</i>, acknowledged to be the most beautiful<span class="pagenum" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</span>
+illuminated vellum in the known world. This ancient
+volume is the work of an unnamed Irish monk of Kells
+monastery in the seventh century. The weird and commanding
+beauty of the pages have been at once both the
+inspiration and despair of artists for centuries, and the
+wonder of line and color would be unbelievable but for the
+ancient manuscript treasured at Trinity College, Dublin.
+The soul of an artist went into the precious volume known
+even in tenth-century Europe as the “wonder of the Far
+Western World.”</p>
+
+<p>The music for the book was arranged by Geraldine G.
+Saltzberg.</p>
+
+<p>All quoted verses or chants are in italic.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+M. E. R.<br>
+</p>
+
+
+
+<div class="transnote">
+<h2>Transcribers Note</h2>
+<p>Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected
+after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation
+of external sources.</p>
+<p>Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, and
+inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.</p>
+<p><a href="#hisforest">Pg 40</a> “His forest was ful” changed to “His forest was full”</p>
+</div>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77880 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
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@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
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@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook #77880
+(https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77880)