It was on that day Ula spoke for the first time. "I will go, Coll mac Torcall: but I go not alone. Urla that I love goes whither I go." "She is my spoil. But, man out of Eirèann--for so I know you to be, because of the manner of your speech--tell me this: of what clan and what place are you, and whence is Urla come: and by what shore was it that the men of Lochlin whom we slew took you and her out of the sea, as you swam against the sun, with waving swords upon the strand when the viking-boat carried you away?" "How know you these things?" asked Ula, that had been Isla, son of the king of Islay. "One of the sea-rovers spake before he died." "Then let the viking speak again. I have nought to say." With that the Maormor frowned, but said no more. That eve Ula was seized, as he walked in the dusk by the sea, singing low to himself an ancient song. "Is it death?" he said, remembering another day when he and Eilidh, that they called Urla, had the same asking upon their lips. "It is death." Ula frowned, but spake no word for a time. Then he spake. "Let me say one word with Urla." "No word canst thou have. She too must die." Ula laughed low at that. "I am ready," he said. And they slew him with a spear. When they told Urla she rose from the deer-skins and went down to the shore. She said no word, then. But she stooped, and she put her lips upon his cold lips: and she whispered in his unhearing ear. That night Coll mac Torcall went secretly to where Urla was. When he entered, a groan came to his lips, and there was froth there: and that was because the spear that had slain Ula was thrust betwixt his shoulders by one who stood in the shadow. He lay there till the dawn. When they found Coll the Maormor he was like a seal speared upon a rock, for he had his hands out, and his head was between them, and his face was downward. "Eat dust, slain wolf," was all that Eilidh whom they called Urla said ere she moved away from that place in the darkness of the night. When the sun rose, Urla was in a glen among the hills. A man who shepherded there took her to his mate. They gave her milk, and because of her beauty, and the frozen silence of her eyes, bade her stay with them, and be at peace. They knew, in time, that she wished death. But, first, there was the birthing of the child. "It was Isla's will," she said to the woman. Ula was but the shadow of a bird's wing: an idle name. And she, too, was Eilidh once more. "It was death he gave you when he gave you the child," said the woman once. "It was life," answered Eilidh, with her eyes filled with the shadow of dream. And yet another day the woman said to her that it would be well to bear the child and let it die: for beauty was like sunlight on a day of clouds, and if she were to go forth young and alone and so wondrous fair, she would have love, and love is best.