Concobar himself saw that food and milk was sent in plenty to the lios, and once in every seven days he went thither himself. As year after year passed the secret of the hiding-place of Darthool went out of men’s minds, and none knew of the lios save the king, and the sister of the nursing woman, who was his own foster-child and under _geas_ or bond to him. This woman was named Lavarcam (_Leabharcham_), and was fair to see, and whom Concobar held to be discreet and trustworthy beyond any other of his own people. She was of the royal household, and of the women trained as chroniclers and relaters.[17] The little starry-eyed babe grew to a child, and from a child to a fawn of a girl, fair to see, and from a young girl to a maid, of a beauty so great that Concobar knew when she came to full womanhood she would be indeed as Cathba the Druid had prophesied. Darthool saw no one but her nurse, and the tutor whom the king had sent to teach her all that could be taught, and not only in learning, but in courtesy and nobility; and Lavarcam, who alone went to and fro. From the time that Darthool passed out of her first girlhood the king saw little of her, but twice in each year--at the Festival of the Sun in the time of the greening, and at the Festival of end Summer at the fall of the leaf; and this because of a warning that had been given him by Cathba the ancient Druid. How can the beauty of so fair and sweet a woman be revealed? Her loveliness was even as Cathba had foretold. It was a surpassing loveliness, and the three women who saw her often marvelled at it, and wondered no more that Darthool should be kept apart, for of a surety she would be a torch to put flame into the hearts of men, and to set great duns and raths and towered capitals and warring nations ablaze. The poets have sung of her, and no man has sung but out of his deep desire. Her great sad eyes, so full of dream, were blue as are the hill-tarns at noon, and often dusky as they when passing clouds put purple into their depths; and like a golden web her hair was, sprayed out with shining light, wonderful, glorious; and her rowan-red lips were indeed that strange crimson fruit which Cathba had foreseen--rowan-red against the cream-white softness of her skin. Cream-white her body was, and her neck like a tower of ivory; slim and graceful was she as a fawn, and fleet of foot as the wild roes on the hills, and when she moved in the sunlight or the shadow she was so beautiful that tears came at times to the eyes of the women in that lonely place. Yet even more wonderful was her voice--low and sweet and with music in it, like the whisper of the wind among the reeds, or the ripple of green leaves, or the murmuring of a brook.