“When?” he asked. “When we go North--an army awaits us there. We will start to-morrow.” For a time he wavered; then consented to go with her. CHAPTER IX. TO THE NORTH. They spent that night in the wattled cote of a wood-cutter. Tamed wolves and great hounds slept on the straw beside them, making the air so foul that they were glad to leave at the first streak of dawn. A lowering sky--dark and thunderous--shadowed the frowning wastes before him. Patches of white bog-cotton sprang here and there--ghastly in the early light; brimming pools flashed like dull steel around; the stretches of furze and heath held a dull crimson in their hue like the spent blood on a battle-field. A sighing hermit--from his cell in a roadside cavern--aided them in their search for a horse for Cormac’s use; pointing with a fleshless hand, to a clough in a line of low barren hills, where sluggish runlets gleamed silvery, in the dank soil of a peat valley. “In that peat morass,” the hermit told them, “a hundred stallions have been driven--as spoil in a feud between two kings, that is laying waste the country side. A score of them have foundered in the bog--and, I doubt not, will fall easy prey to any passer-by.” There, knee-deep in slough and peat, Cormac found a beautiful creature; tired and spent with struggling in the bog--the veins under its satin skin netting its body like cord; its eyes strained and blood-shot. An animal so black and glossy that beside it the black peat looked as grey as ashes. They found it a long, hard task to draw it from the bog; and only to be done by harnessing Ethne’s stallion to the struggling creature, and thus dragging it forth. Whilst the animal rested and recovered its full strength the woman and boy disputed over the road they should travel on. “Come with me first to Tara,” Ethne said. “Come and see the place where our ancestors reigned as gods and kings. Come and see the halls where Tuathal held his feasts--where, every day, three hundred cup-bearers handed golden goblets to the royal guests--and every king in Hibernia came and paid homage to their over-king.” “I will not go to Tara!” said Cormac, firmly. He felt that it was too near the late scene of horror. It was near the Druids’ sacred place of fire. “You will not!” cried Ethne, angrily. Then a change came over her face, and she grew as pale as death. “No--you had better not. You are a Christian, and even Christians feel shame when they look on Tara. For was not the curse that it is under laid on it by one of your saints?” She dropped her voice to sad, moaning tones like the wind among the branches overhead. “Yes, the feasts are no more and the golden roof is falling--the wind is sweeping through the sacred halls! Tara is deserted! Tara is accursed--and the evil was wrought by the Christians!” Then she raised her voice in a scream, and looked at him with glaring eyes.