“And you, Cormac of Fail, you--and I also, forgive me, Sun in heaven--fought for the faith that cursed the home of our ancestors!” Cormac looked at her with a frown for a time. Ethne’s sudden transports of emotion had enchanted him. Now he felt he could never look at them without conjuring up that dreadful scene when she had helped in the human sacrifice. She read his thoughts and her fury increased. She knew that the last few days marked an era in Cormac’s life; he had passed, like lightning, from boyhood to manhood; in doing so the tie between them had changed--she had no longer the same power. He had slipt upon the black stallion’s back, without saddle and without bridle, one hand grasping the creature’s tangled mane, the other urging it forward. The horse bounded and leapt furiously, but Cormac sat firm--a picture of youthful skill and ease. “To the North!” he said, glancing back at Ethne. “To the North--where you have promised me warriors!” So they went on day by day--over rich loam and peat and chalky marl--towards the wilds of the North. To the steep and savage hills and cliffs of Tir Conall’s coast, to Tir Conall’s broad and treeless waste of moor and bog--everywhere and always the wild sea thrusting fierce arms into the jagged land; till Cormac felt there was less of land than of water in his path; for the rains of autumn had commenced--tarn, river and mountain stream were brimming. Far North they went, until the Ultima Thule of Hibernia--Innistrahul--lay before them. And then they turned westward; where the troubled sea, beating under beetling cliffs, sprang higher in the air than the highest tower of Hibernia. The bittern and the white stork--coot and heron--were thick in the marshy land around him; from moor and heath came the weird cries of curlews, and the fallows were strewn with their egg-shells. Here he discovered tribes that were sib to him in the country off Tir Conall. When the two sons of his ancestor, Niall of the Nine Hostages, made sword-land of so much of Ulster they gave to the northern lands beyond the country of The Waters, the names of Tir Eogan and Tir Conall--that is to say Tir Eogan or the Country of Eogan, and Tir Conall, or Country of Conall.