They tied their horses to bushes, for the number so tied already showed that the stables were full, and shoved their way through a crowd of peasants who stood about the door, and went into the great hall where the dance was. The labourer, the half-witted fellow, the farmer and the two lads mixed with a group of servants who were looking on from an alcove, and Duallach sat with the pipers on their bench, but Costello made his way through the dancers to where Dermott of the Sheep stood with Namara of the Lake pouring Poteen out of a porcelain jug into horn noggins with silver rims. ‘Tumaus Costello,’ said the old man, ‘you have done a good deed to forget what has been, and to fling away enmity and come to the betrothal of my daughter to Namara of the Lake.’ ‘I come,’ answered Costello, ‘because when in the time of Costello De Angalo my forebears overcame your forebears and afterwards made peace, a compact was made that a Costello might go with his body-servants and his piper to every feast given by a Dermott for ever, and a Dermott with his body-servants and his piper to every feast given by a Costello for ever.’ ‘If you come with evil thoughts and armed men,’ said the son of Dermott flushing, ‘no matter how strong your hands to wrestle and to swing the sword, it shall go badly with you, for some of my wife’s clan have come out of Mayo, and my three brothers and their servants have come down from the Ox Mountains’; and while he spoke he kept his hand inside his coat as though upon the handle of a weapon. ‘No,’ answered Costello, ‘I but come to dance a farewell dance with your daughter.’ Dermott drew his hand out of his coat and went over to a tall pale girl who was now standing but a little way off with her mild eyes fixed upon the ground. ‘Costello has come to dance a farewell dance, for he knows that you will never see one another again.’