“No.” “Then let us go to thine own land. He can do no more than send emissaries after us, and with these thou canst deal swiftly, Nathos.” At that, Nathos lightly laughed. “Truly, I am seeing Concobar as a man sees his own shadow in the water. He is a great king in Uladh, but he is no more in Alba than any hero of the Red Branch. Come, Darthool; across the Moyle are the pine-green shores of Alba. It is a fair, beautiful land. The sea-lochs reach far among pine-clad hills, and green pastures are on the slopes of the great mountains and around the shadowy, inland waters. The forests are full of deer and wild birds, the rivers and lochs of fish, the pastures of cattle and sheep and swift brown mares. Thou shalt have milk to drink, and the red flesh of the salmon, and the brown flesh of the deer, and the white flesh of the badger. Thou shalt lack for nothing, who art my queen; and thou shalt have love till the sun grows a lordlier fire and the stars leap in their slow dance from dusk to dawn.” “I will come,” Darthool whispered, with glad eyes. “Only thou must not delay. Thy coming must be now. Thou must not even enter the rath again. Otherwise it is never the waters of the Moyle that we shall see, but only the red flame in the eyes of Concobar.” Even while Nathos spoke his eyes grew hard, and his hands slipped to the javelin he had by his side. While Darthool watched him in amaze, he swung the iron-pointed shaft at a place where a bent bracken hung listless in the air. “Is it a wolf?” cried Darthool, in sudden affright. “It is worse than a wolf,” answered Nathos; “for if thou wilt go to that place thou wilt see either a slain man, or the form of a man, in the grass beneath the bracken.” Swiftly Darthool ran to the spot wherein the javelin had swung singing. There was no one there, but, where the javelin still quivered slightly, she saw the still warm shape of a crouching man, and discerned, by the bending of the bracken, what course he must have twisted away. Nathos followed and stood beside her. As he stooped to pluck the javelin from the ground, he descried a wooden-hilted knife. “It is as I thought,” he said gravely. “Concobar has set a spy upon me. No Ultonian carries a knife such as this. It belongs to the hillmen of the north-west, of whom a few years agone we made slaves. Mayhap one of these men who were with the swineherd has been told to follow me secretly wheresoever I go.” Darthool turned and looked at Nathos with eyes filled with a new fear, because of her love of him. He took her hand in his. “There is yet time, Darthool. Wilt thou go back to the rath, and stay there till Concobar wills thee to be his wife?” “I cannot go back.” “Then come, O Darthool.” And with that the twain turned and moved swiftly northward through the forest, by the way Nathos had already passed.