"News!" cried Brian, his blue eyes aflame with eagerness. "It says that O'Donnell bides alone by the Black Tarn, and that his horsemen from the north are camped two miles beyond the mountain, waiting for him, and that he has made pact with the Millhaven pirates and they have left for their stronghold. Answer me--whence came this? It is written in good English writing, man!" Then Turlough told of what had chanced, and when he had done, Brian stared into his gray eyes with a great wonder. Twice he tried to speak, but his lips were dry. "The Black Woman!" he muttered thickly. "Can it be, Turlough? Who is she?" "That was my thought, master," said Turlough. "Who she is none know save herself; but she deals with no good. This may be a trap; let us ride south again, and at once, lest evil come upon us." "South? Not I," laughed Brian, though his face was pale. "To horse, men!" And at his ringing shout the camp awoke, and Brian saw his vengeance drawing near. CHAPTER XV. WHAT HAPPENED AT THE TARN. It had been long, indeed, since Brian had given thought to his meeting with the Black Woman on the other side of Ireland. In that brief meeting, the Black Woman had spoken of seeing the old earl, his grandfather, in his youth. Yet it was forty years since the two earls, O'Donnell and O'Neill, had fled together from Ireland, and even then Tyr-owen had been an old man. Unless this Black Woman was close on a hundred years of age, Brian could not see how she had known Hugh O'Neill in his youth. The mere fact that she had recognized him there in the moonlight was proof of her true speaking, however. Brian could no longer hide from himself that her words had some strange prophecy in them. She had foretold his meeting with Cathbarr and with the Bird Daughter, though, indeed, she might have been attempting only to guide him on the path which he had afterward followed. While the men were saddling, Brian called Turlough and told of the hag's word that she would meet him again "on a black day for him." "Now, what think you she meant by that, Turlough? Is this the meeting?" "No, master, for it is no meeting. It may be as you think, and that she was but trying to lead you into the west; yet, for my part, I call it sorcery," and the old man crossed himself, for, like better men than himself, Turlough ascribed all he could not fathom to magic. "It seems to me that she is some witch who is hanging on your tracks, and that when--" "Oh, nonsense!" laughed Brian, flinging the matter from his mind. "At any rate, she has served me well this time. Now, what rede shall we follow in this matter, and shall we capture and slay the Dark Master first, or fall on his men first, or both together?"