“When you had been away for a day the guards were surprised. They were looking from the heights of the Dun, and the Flower of Allen was with them. She, for she had a quest’s eye, called out that the master of the Fianna was coming over the ridges to the Dun, and she ran from the keep to meet you.”
“It was not I,” said Fionn.
“It bore your shape,” replied Gariv Cronan. “It had your armour and your face, and the dogs, Bran and Sceo’lan, were with it.”
“They were with me,” said Fionn.
“They seemed to be with it,” said the servant humbly
“Tell us this tale,” cried Fionn.
“We were distrustful,” the servant continued. “We had never known Fionn to return from a combat before it had been fought, and we knew you could not have reached Ben Edar or encountered the Lochlannachs. So we urged our lady to let us go out to meet you, but to remain herself in the Dun.”
“It was good urging,” Fionn assented.
“She would not be advised,” the servant wailed. “She cried to us, ‘Let me go to meet my love’.”
“Alas!” said Fionn.
“She cried on us, ‘Let me go to meet my husband, the father of the child that is not born.’”
“Alas!” groaned deep-wounded Fionn. “She ran towards your appearance that had your arms stretched out to her.”
At that wise Fionn put his hand before his eyes, seeing all that happened.
“Tell on your tale,” said he.
“She ran to those arms, and when she reached them the figure lifted its hand. It touched her with a hazel rod, and, while we looked, she disappeared, and where she had been there was a fawn standing and shivering. The fawn turned and bounded towards the gate of the Dun, but the hounds that were by flew after her.”
Fionn stared on him like a lost man.
“They took her by the throat--” the shivering servant whispered.
“Ah!” cried Fionn in a terrible voice.
“And they dragged her back to the figure that seemed to be Fionn. Three times she broke away and came bounding to us, and three times the dogs took her by the throat and dragged her back.”
“You stood to look!” the Chief snarled.
“No, master, we ran, but she vanished as we got to her; the great hounds vanished away, and that being that seemed to be Fionn disappeared with them. We were left in the rough grass, staring about us and at each other, and listening to the moan of the wind and the terror of our hearts.”
“Forgive us, dear master,” the servant cried. But the great captain made him no answer. He stood as though he were dumb and blind, and now and again he beat terribly on his breast with his closed fist, as though he would kill that within him which should be dead and could not die. He went so, beating on his breast, to his inner room in the Dun, and he was not seen again for the rest of that day, nor until the sun rose over Moy Life’ in the morning.
