The two faiths--Christian and Pagan--were strangely mingled in these northern lands. Monastery rose within sight of Druid circle--cromlech and cross side by side; the Christian crosses often owed their beauty to the druidical symbols with which they were wreathed. One night Cormac would lodge with a Druid in the shadow of an ancient tower--on the next he would crouch on the cold clay of a hermit’s cave. At Derry, or the Place of Oaks, he stayed with the monks who were building the great monastery Columba had founded--then he passed to the palace of the northern kings and joined in its revelry; in the day-time sitting and watching the feats of the juggling Druids--and at night listening to their tales as he sat with the hounds and men by the hall fire. The spirit of early Christianity was to work by degrees amongst the heathen; it was difficult to wean the people entirely from the ancient superstitions; often the priests were content, for the time, if they could but abolish the cruel and evil rites of the Druids. And Cormac--with a boy’s hopeful outlook--began to trust Ethne was in a state of transition from the pagan to the Christian faith; for she ceased to speak to him of the Druids and their religion; no longer seemed desirous of turning him towards it. Cormac and his followers rode on--through boundless forests, marshy wilds, and high-lying pasture-lands; through a land without cities; over broad, unbridged rivers that they crossed at fords and shallows on their swimming horses, or by the aid of stepping stones and hurdles; by unpaved roads and bridle-paths; galloping through scattered hamlets of wattle and wicker-work; scaring the cotter’s children at play among the marsh mallows; sometimes slackening their speed amid pastures gray with sheep. Now pausing to exchange a word with some half-crazed swineherd; now bursting into wild Hibernian songs; and for days meeting no living creature save red-deer, wild boar, and swine. Upon a wet and windy afternoon they reached the Rath of Cormac’s great kinsman, King Aedh, son of Ainmire--the friend and anointed of Saint Columba; and, like Columba of the tribe of that Conall Gulban, who had given its name to the land of Tir Conall.