"That shall not be against me," he said. "Truly I am a man no longer, if thee and thine will have me as one of the wood-folk." At that Deòin called. Many green phantoms glided out of the trees, and others, hand-in-hand, flower-crowned, crossed the glade. "Look, green lives," Deòin cried in her sweet leaf-whisper, rising now like a wind-song among birchen boughs: "Look, here is a human. His life is mine, for I saved him. I have put the moonshine dew upon his eyes. He sees as we see. He would be one of us, for all that he has no tree for his body, but flesh, white over red." One who had moved thitherward out of an ancient oak looked at Cathal. "Wouldst thou be of the wood-folk, man?" "Ay, fain am I; for sure, for sure, O druid of the trees." "Wilt thou learn and abide by our laws, the first of which is that none may stir from his tree until the dusk has come, nor linger away from it when the dawn opens gray lips and drinks up the shadows?" "I have no law now but the law of green life." "Good. Thou shalt live with us. Thy home shall be the hollow oak where thy kin left thee to die. Why did they do that evil deed?" "Because I did not believe in the new gods." "Who are thy gods, man whom this green one here calls Cathal?" "They are the Sun, and the Moon, and the Wind, and others that I will tell you of." "Hast thou heard of Keithoir?" "No." "He is the god of the green world. He dreams, and his dreams are Springtide and Summertide and Appletide. When he sleeps without dream there is winter." "Have you no other god but this earth-god?" "Keithoir is our god. We know no other." "If he is thy god, he is my god." "I see in the eyes of Deòin that she loves thee, Cathal the human. Wilt thou have her love?" Cathal looked at the girl. His heart swam in light. "Ay, if Deòin will give me her love, my love shall be hers." The Annir-Choille moved forward, and brushed softly against him as a green branch. He put his arms around her. She had a cool, sweet body to feel. He was glad she was no moonshine phantom. The beating of her heart against his made a music that filled his ears. Deòin stooped and plucked white, dewy flowers. Of these she wove a wreath for Cathal. He, likewise, plucked the white blooms, and made a coronal of foam for the brown wave of her hair. Then, hand in hand, they fared slowly forth across the moonlit glade. None crossed their path, though everywhere delicate green lives flitted from tree to tree. They heard a wonderful sweet singing, aerial, with a ripple as of leaves lipping a windy shore of light. A green glamour was in the eyes of Cathal. The green fire of life flamed in his veins. IV Molios, the saint of Christ, that lived in the sea-cave of the Isle of the Peak, so that even in his own day it was called the Holy Isle, endured to a great age.