A wolf tracking a wounded doe howled, and the howling wailed from corrie to corrie. Darthool stirred, but slept again. An eagle screamed as it rose and wheeled against the broadening light, but its wild voice was drowned in silence. Then came the first sun-rays rippling, dancing, leaping, from amid the crested heights and peaks to the eastward, and Nathos awoke. For some moments he lay breathless with wonder. Darthool, in all her radiant beauty, was by his side, her golden hair ablaze in the sunlight, and her fair face like a flower amid the bracken. It was too great a wonder. Then he knew that Concobar’s hounds might any hour now be upon them, and so he put his dream away from him, and stooped and kissed Darthool upon the lips. With a cry she woke, and put her arms about him. Hard it was for him to add to her weariness; but she rose at once, and seemed, indeed, in his eyes, as fresh as any fawn of the hill-side. She went to a little tarn close by and drank of the cool, sweet water. As she drank Nathos looked at her, and again wondered if she were not one of the divine race of old, the mysterious Tuatha-De-Danann, whom, ages before, the Milesians had driven to the hills and remote places. So fair was she that his heart ached. Then a swift pulse of joy leaped within him, and he was glad with a great gladness. Thereafter they sped swiftly onward, and now Nathos exulted, for he recognised the peaks and the trend of the valleys. Within an hour from the rising of the sun he saw the grey walls of the dun of the sons of Usna. His long cry--that of the heron thrice repeated--brought Ailne and Ardan forth. Darthool looked at them wondering, for they, too, were taller and nobler than other men, and only less beautiful in her eyes than Nathos himself. But if she wondered, much more did they marvel at what they saw. Never had they beheld any woman so beautiful, and their first thought was that of Nathos, that Darthool was of the fair divine race who were now so seldom seen of men. But when Nathos had told them all, and that she who was now his bride was no other than that Darthool whom Concobar the high king had set aside to become his queen, they were filled with sorrow. Well they knew that Concobar MacNessa would not lightly relinquish the fair maid whom he had so long secreted in the forest-lios, and that blood would flow because of this thing. “Moreover,” said Ailne, “hast thou forgotten the prophecy? There is the saying of Cathba the Druid, of which we have all heard: that from the daughter of Felim the Harper would come sorrow to the king, and severance of the Red Branch from the lost kingdom of Uladh, and rivers of blood.”