"Why do you do that forbidden thing?" said Diarmid, that was his companion. "Have you forgotten Cathal the monk that is up there alone with death? If Molios the holy one saw you worshipping the Light he would do unto you as he has done unto Cathal." But before Mûrta answered they heard the voice of Cathal once more--hoarse and dry it was, but scarce weaker than when it thrilled them at the rising of the moon. This was what he chanted in his muffled voice out of his grave there in the hollow oak: O hot yellow fire that streams out of the sky, sword-white and golden, Be a flame upon the monks who are praying in their cells in Ioua! Be a fire in the veins of Colum, and the hell that he preacheth be his. And be a torch to the men of Lochlin that they discover the Isle and destroy it! For I see this thing, that the old gods are the gods that die not: All else is a seeming, a dream, a madness, a tide ever ebbing. Glory to thee, O Grian, lord of life, first of the gods, Allfather. Swords and spears are thy beams, thy breath a fire that consumeth. And upon this isle of Â-rinn send sorrow and death and disaster, Upon one and all save Ardanna, who gave me her bosom, Upon one and all send death, the curse of a death slow and swordless, From Molios of the Cave to Mûrta and Diarmid my doomsmen! At that Mûrta moved close to the oak. "Hail, O Cathal!" he cried. There was silence. "Art thou a living man still, or is it the death of thee that is singing there in the hollow oak?" "My limbs perish, but I die not yet," answered the muffled voice that had greeted the sun. "I am Mûrta mac Mûrta mac Neisa, and my heart is sore for thee, Cathal!" There was no word to this. A thrush upon a branch overhead lifted its wings, sang a wild sweet note, and swooped arrowly through the green gloom of the leaves. "Cathal, that wert a monk, which is the true thing? Is it Christ, or the gods of our fathers?" Silence. Three oaks away a woodpecker thrust its beak into the soft bark, tap-tapping, tap-tapping. "Cathal, is it death you are having, there in the dark and the silence?" Mûrta strained his ears, but he could hear no sound. Over the woodlands a voice floated, drowsy-warm and breast-white--the voice of a cuckoo calling a love-note from cool, green shadow to shadow across a league of windless blaze. Then Mûrta that was a singer, went to where the bulrushes grew by a little tarn that was in the moss an arrow-flight away. He plucked a last-year reed, straight and brown, and with his knife cut seven holes in it. With a thinner reed he scooped the hollow clean. Thereupon he returned to the oak. Diarmid, who had begun to eat of the food that had been left with them, sat still, with his eyes upon him.