A slave was busy at the fire baking oat-cake; trying, at the same time, to stir the soup-cauldron and keep the greedy hounds at his elbow in order. A bard, accompanying himself on a noisy timpan, was reciting a story; there was such a jangle of sounds that Cormac could scarcely hear his own voice or those of some jugglers at coarse conjuring tricks. A piercing howl from one of the hounds suddenly silenced for the moment all other uproar. The distraught slave at the fire, wofully hindered in his work, had dealt an inquisitive beagle a sharp blow from a scalding ladle. A general commotion at the hearth ensued. The owner of the beagle had been lounging before the fire munching brook-lime and hazel-nuts; he now rose and seizing a besom of birch-twigs, dealt the slave a blow that laid him full length on the ground. In falling the slave was thrown against a couple of chess-players--upon whose play a party of idlers had been laying wagers; all of these turned savagely at the interruption of their pastime. The fall, also, disturbed some drunken revellers asleep on the floor; and they too started up with drawn swords. More than a score of dogs rushed forward and added their clamour to the uproar. “And all this spoil-sport and foolery over a cursed hound!” cried one of the chess-players. “The cursed hound of a cursed bard!” “Hound! Hound, sayest thou? And this to a bard--a Flaith, and son of a Flaith! Hound thyself--beguiled and doting tool of a king--and would thy tongue were slit for thy heresy towards us! Take thee, will I, by the apple of thy throat and cast thee forth!” The owner of the beagle was a long-armed Hibernian Pict clad in bards’ dress; druidical symbols tattooed his naked arms and legs; his beard was plaited and his long hair confined at the back by a conical spiral of bronze and gold; his garments were ragged and filthy--from sloth and not from poverty, for he was verily covered with costly ornaments and amber beads. His mouth was still full of brook-lime and nuts--in his hand was a raw onion, which he had been about to eat. “Ye cursed beggarly bards! Botch and blain of Hibernia! Paupers and panderers all! Parasites on our folly and vanity! Living by flattery, and eating us out of house and home in return! Take me, wilt thou, and cast me forth!” The bard was too angry to reply. His gold ear-rings danced with the rage that shook him. “But wait! A few more hours, and you and your stallions, your beagles and false tongues will be banished for ever! Take me, wilt thou, and cast me forth!” The bard stuffed the waiting onion in his mouth and seizing the besom with both hands took up a threatening attitude. “Peace!” said an old man, stepping forward. A sombre figure in his Irish monkish dress, cowled garment of brown frieze, book-wallet and leather-flask slung on shoulder, thick knotted stick as sole weapon.