but as he told them of human joys they kept still and began to weep, till
at last one of them seized the silver harp and flung it away into a pool
of water, saying, "It is the saddest harp in all the world."

Then he forgot all the human joys which seemed to those happy people only
as sorrows compared with their own; and he dwelt with them thenceforward
in perpetual youth. For a hundred years he chased the deer and went
fishing in strangely carved boats and joined in the athletic sports of the
young men; for a hundred years the gentle Niam was his wife.

But one day, when Usheen was by the beach, there floated to his feet what
seemed a wooden staff, and he drew it from the waves. It was the battered
fragment of a warrior's lance. The blood stains of war were still on it,
and as he looked at it he recalled the old days of the Feni, the wars and
tumult of his youth; and how he had outlived his tribe and all had passed
away. Niam came softly to him and rested against his shoulder, but it did
not soothe his pain, and he heard one of the young men watching him say to
another, "The human sadness has come back into his eyes." The people
around stood watching him, all sharing his sorrow, and knowing that his
time of happiness was over and that he would go back among men. So indeed
it was; Niam and Usheen mounted the white steed again and galloped away
over the sea, but she had warned him when they mounted that he must never
dismount for an instant, for that if he once touched the earth, she and
the steed would vanish forever, that his youth too would disappear, and
that he would be left alone on earth--an old man whose whole generation
had vanished.

They passed, as before, over the sea; the same visions hovered around
them, youths and maidens and animals of the chase; they passed by many
islands, and at last reached the shore of Erin again. As they travelled