the supper-table to-night alone with the youth
you are to marry." "That will do me no harm," said Gilveen, and she took
the needle and went away smiling. Morag went to the Castle again that
night, but this time she took the Little Red Hen with her. She scattered
grains on the table and the Little Red Hen picked them up. "Little Hen,
Little Red Hen," said Morag, "he slept too when I gave the seven drops
of my heart's blood for his mother's sake." The Little Red Hen flew
into Flann's face. "Seven drops of heart's blood, seven drops of heart's
blood," said the Little Red Hen, and Flann heard the words.
He opened his eyes and saw the Little Red Hen on the table and knew that
she belonged to one that he had known. Morag, at the other side of the
table, looked strange and shadowy to him. But he threw crumbs on the
table and fed the Little Red Hen, and as he watched her picking up the
crumbs the memory of Morag came back to him. Then he saw her. He knew
her for his sweetheart and his promised wife and he went to her and
asked her how it came that she had not been in his mind for so long. "I
will tell you how you came to forget me," said she, "it was because of
the kiss you gave Gilveen, and the enchantment she was able to put on
you because of that kiss."
There was sorrow on Morag's face when she said that, but the sorrow went
as the thin clouds go from before the face of the high-hung moon, and
Flann saw her as his kind comrade of Crom Duv's and as his beautiful
friend of the Spae-Woman's house. They kissed each other then, and every
enchantment went but the lasting enchantment of love, and they sat with
hands joined until the log in the fire beside them had burnt itself down
into a brand and the brand had burnt itself into ashes, and all the time
that passed was, as they thought, only while the watching-gilly outside
walked from one side of the Castle Gate to the other.
Gilveen had come into the room and she saw Flann and Morag give each
other a true-lover's kiss. She went away. But the next day she came to
the King's Steward, Art, who at one time wanted to marry her, and whom
she had refused because Aefa, her sister, had married one of a higher
degree--she came to Art and she told him that she would not marry Flann
because she had found out that he had a low-born sweetheart. "And I am
ready to marry you, Art," she said. And Art was well pleased, and he and
Gilveen left the Castle to be married.
Then the day came wh
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