But when he awakened she was gone.

She was going back secretly, in dread of the sons of Morna,
slipping through gloomy woods, keeping away from habitations,
getting by desolate and lonely ways to her lord in Kerry.

Perhaps it was he that was afraid of the sons of Morna, and
perhaps she loved him.



CHAPTER III

THE women druids, his guardians, belonged to his father's people.
Bovmall was Uail's sister, and, consequently, Fionn's aunt. Only
such a blood-tie could have bound them to the clann-Baiscne, for
it is not easy, having moved in the world of court and camp, to
go hide with a baby in a wood; and to live, as they must have
lived, in terror.

What stories they would have told the child of the sons of Morna.
Of Morna himself, the huge-shouldered, stern-eyed, violent
Connachtman; and of his sons--young Goll Mor mac Morna in
particular, as huge-shouldered as his father, as fierce in the
onset, but merry-eyed when the other was grim, and bubbling with
a laughter that made men forgive even his butcheries. Of Cona'n
Mael mac Morna his brother, gruff as a badger, bearded like a
boar, bald as a crow, and with a tongue that could manage an
insult where another man would not find even a stammer. His boast
was that when he saw an open door he went into it, and when he