he door?

_Queen_: It is business that cannot wait. Here
now is a request I have written to the bully of
the King of Alban, bidding him to strike the head
off whatever man will put the letter in his hand.
Write your name and sign to it, in three royal words.

_King_: I wouldn't sign a letter out of my right
hour if it was to make the rivers run gold. There
is nothing comes of signing letters but more trouble
in the end.

_Queen_: Give me, so, to bind it a drop of your
own blood as a token and a seal. You will not
refuse, and I telling you the messenger will go
with it, and that will lose his head through it, is no
less than that troublesome cook!

_King: (With a roar.)_ Anyone to say that word
again I will not leave a head on any neck in the
kingdom! I declare on my oath it would be
best for me to take the world for my pillow and
put that lad upon the throne!

_(Queen goes back frightened to door.)_

_Gateman: (Coming in.)_ There is a man coming
in that will take no denial. It is Fintan the
Astrologer.

_(Fintan enters with Dall Glic, Nurse, Princess,
Taig, Manus and Prince of the Marshes
crowding after him.)_

_King_: Another disturbance! The whole world
would seem to be on the move!

_Queen_: Fintan! What brings him here again?

_Fintan_: A great deceit? A terrible deception!

_King_: What at all is it?

_Fintan_: Long and all as I'm in the world, such
a thing never happened in my lifetime!

_Queen_: What is it has happened?

_Fintan_: It is not any fault of myself or any
miscounting of my own! I am certain sure of
that much. Is it that the stars of heaven are
gone astray, they that are all one with a clock--unless
it might be on a stormy night when they
are wild-looking around the moon.

_King_: Go on with your story and stop your
raving.

_Fintan_: The first time ever I came to this place
I made a prophecy.

_Dall Glic_: You did, about the child was in the
cradle.

_Fintan_: And that was but new in the world.
It is what I said, that she was born under a certain
star, and that in a score of years all but two,
whatever acting was going on in that star at the
time she was born, she would get her crosses in the
same way.

_Dall Glic_: The cross you foretold to her was
to be ate by a Dragon. You laid down it would
come upon a twelvemonth from this very day.

_Fintan_: That's it. That was according to
my reckoning. There was no mistake in that.
And I thought better of the Seven Sta