The young warrior opened his eyes. His face was as white as the Druid robes around him. He leant forward in his saddle--his eyes were wide with hunger--the hunger of fierce, stifled excitement. With one sweeping glance he took in all the scene before him--the struggling hosts that seemed to circle to the far horizon--the smoke blending with the dark sky above--the stars blending with the distant fires--the distant fires that brought the dull glitter of far bog and quagmire into the play of universal flame. Burning flame that added crimson to the flowing blood--flesh to the glancing steel--gold to the poured-out mead--and snow to the naked limbs of the frenzied dancers. His ears were deafened by savage yells, screams of pipes and cries of terror-stricken brutes. Suddenly he leapt to his feet on his saddle--the flame danced on his brandished sword and on his eyes--fire seemed to fill his veins. A battle-cry rang from his mouth. Something fiercer than love of battle came upon him--bloodshed, and steel, and mead, and women, and danger urged him forward into what looked like a whirlwind of fire and weapons. He sprang with a savage cry to the arms of those awaiting him. He drained the horn of mead held to his lips. The jewelled fastenings of his robe were unclasped--and seizing sword and shield he flew, naked limbed and quivering, into the mazes of sword and fire. CHAPTER VIII. ETHNE AGAIN AS LEADER. Just at dawn he left them--after the human sacrifice had taken place. He had not realised that the wild and terrible night would end in such a sacrifice. And it was only when it happened that the full horror of the festival burst upon him. Then--just as suddenly as he had entered upon the scene--he turned and left it. He went forward blindly. Stumbling, sometimes, over the prostrate bodies of bacchantes--stupid with mead, half-dead from excess. The day had fully dawned, the fires were waning, the air was full of smoke. Once he hurried forward surrounded by a bellowing herd of cattle; and once he narrowly escaped being gored to death by a maddened bull. The forests through which he passed swarmed with the sheep and oxen of Rath and Dun--herding with the forest swine, and deer, and bears. Weird creatures, whom he could scarcely term men, fled at his approach; they had been startled from their forest-lairs and were now returning--shaggy-haired, blink-eyed, stained with woad, and clad in skins of sheep and bear. Once only he stopped in his wild flight; when he found a stag wounded fatally in an encounter with a fellow stag; he stayed to plunge his sword to its heart and end its sufferings. In doing so he shed tears to think of the sufferings and terror of the animals in the night just past. His speed was terrific as he ran through marsh and forest, tearing his way through bracken and knee-holly. He fled as though pursued; and it was himself he fled from--his own flesh and mind degraded by the dread rites in which he had shared.