And it is pleasure for Scathach the Queen to see this: To see the good fruit that grows upon the Tree of the Stones. Long, speckled fruit it is, wind-swayed by its yellow roots, And like men they are with their feet dancing in the void air! O, O, arone, a-ree, eily arone! When she ceased, all there swung swords and spears, and flung flaring torches into the night, and cried out: _O, arone a-ree, eily arone, arone, O, O, arone, a-ree, eily arone!_ Scathach laughed no more. She was weary now. Of what avail any joy of death against the pain she had in her heart, the pain that was called Cuchullin? Soon all was dark in the rath. Flame after flame died out. Then there was but one red glare in the night, the watch-fire by the dûn. Deep peace was upon all. Not a heifer lowed, not a dog bayed against the moon. The wind fell into a breath, scarce enough to lift the fragrance from flower to flower. Upon the branches of a great oak swung motionless a strange fruit, limp and gray as the hemlock that hangs from ancient pines. ULA AND URLA[16] "Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World! You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurled Upon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ring The bell that calls us on: the sweet far thing. Beauty grown sad with its eternity Made you of us, and of the dim gray sea." [16] The first part of the story of Ula and Urla, as Isla and Eilidh, is told in "Silk o' the Kine," at the end of _The Sin-Eater_. [The name, Eilidh, is pronounced Eily (_liq._) or Isle-ih.] Ula and Urla were under vow to meet by the Stone of Sorrow. But Ula, dying first, stumbled blindfold when he passed the Shadowy Gate: and, till Urla's hour was upon her, she remembered not. * * * * * These were the names that had been given to them in the north isles, when the birlinn that ran down the war-galley of the vikings brought them before the Maormor. No word had they spoken that day, and no name. They were of the Gael, though Ula's hair was yellow and though his eyes were blue as the heart of a wave. They would ask nothing, for both were in love with death. The Maormor of Siol Tormaid looked at Urla, and his desire gnawed at his heart. But he knew what was in her mind, because he saw into it through her eyes, and he feared the sudden slaying in the dark. Nevertheless he brooded night and day upon her beauty. Her skin was more white than the foam of the moon: her eyes were as a starlit dewy dusk. When she moved, he saw her like a doe in the fern: when she stooped, it was as the fall of wind-swayed water. In his eyes there was a shimmer as of the sunflood in a calm sea. In that dazzle he was led astray. "Go," he said to Ula, on a day of the days. "Go: the men of Siol Torquil will take you to the South Isles, and so you can hale to your own place, be it Eirèann or Manannan, or wherever the south wind puts its hand upon your home."