"Then I will to follow your rede, divide my men as you say, and when we have slain the Dark Master, we will cut off the last of these O'Donnells of his, ride to Millhaven and take that hold, and send word to the Bird Daughter that she may keep Bertragh Castle and send Cathbarr north to me. Now go, and tell a hundred of the men how to ride around this mountain; then be ready to guide me over it to the Black Tarn." "You are a hard man, Yellow Brian," said Turlough, and turned him about and did as Brian had ordered. None the less, Brian gave some thought to that second rede of Turlough's. He saw clearly enough that with the northern horsemen driven past, scattered though they might be, they could be cut off to a man if the Dark Master were slain. But if O'Donnell should escape by some trick of fate, he could gather up his men and drive south. "If he does that, there will be slaying between Sligo and Galway," swore Brian quickly. "But I cannot see that he will escape me here. When another day breaks, I shall have won my Spanish blade again--and then ho! for the Red Hand of Tyr-owen!" So Brian laughed and donned his jack and back-piece, while Turlough drew plans in the snow and showed the leaders of the hundred how to sweep around without discovery so that they might fall on the northern horsemen at eve. Brian had grown into an older and grimmer man since the day he had stood beside the bed of Owen Ruadh O'Neill, short though the time had been. Youth was still in his face when he smiled out, but suffering had deepened his eyes and sunk his cheeks and drawn the skin tighter over that powerful jaw of his. When he had armed, he stood in thought for a little, with hand on jaw in his instinctive gesture, and wakened suddenly to find old Turlough bending the knee before him. "Now I know of what blood you come, Yellow Brian," said the old man softly. "I saw Hugh O'Neill, the great earl, standing even as you stand now, on the morning when we slew the English at the Yellow Ford." "Man, man!" exclaimed Brian in wonder; "that battle was fought fifty years ago, and yet you say that you were there?" "I was the earl's horse-boy, master." And Brian saw tears on the old man's beard. "I loved him, and I was at the flight of the earls ten years after, going with Tyr-owen to Italy, and it was these hands laid him in his grave, master; master, have faith in me--" Brian put down his hands to those of Turlough, his heart strangely softened. "He was my grandfather," he said simply, and Turlough broke down and wept like a child.