en he heard a voice just under
the ground at his feet say, "Shout--shout out your own name, Son of King
Connal!" Then the King's Son shouted out his own name and the whispers
ceased in the wood and the shadows went backward and forward no more.

He went on and came to a stream within the wood and he went against its
flow all night as well as all day, hoping to meet some living thing that
would tell him how he might come to the dominion of the King of the Land
of Mist. In the forenoon of another day he came to where the wood grew
thin and then he went past the last trees.

He saw a horse grazing: he ran up to it and found that it was the Slight
Red Steed that had carried Fedelma and himself from the house of the
Enchanter. Then as he laid hold of the steed a hound ran up to him and
a hawk flew down and he saw that they were the hawk and the hound that
used to be with him when he rode abroad from his father's Castle.

He mounted and seeing his hound at his heel and his hawk circling above
he felt a longing to go back to his father's Castle which he knew to be
near and where he might find out where the King of the Land of Mist had
his dominion.

So the King of Ireland's Son rode back to his father's Castle--

His hound at his heel,
His hawk on his wrist.

WHEN THE KING OF THE CATS CAME TO KING CONNAL'S DOMINION

I

The King of Ireland's Son was home again, but as he kept asking about a
King and a Kingdom no one had ever heard of, people thought he had lost
his wits in his search for the Enchanter of the Black Back-Lands. He
rode abroad every day to ask strangers if they knew where the King of
the Land of Mist had his dominion and he came back to his father's every
night in the hope that one would be at the Castle who could tell him
where the place that he sought was. Maravaun wanted to relate to him
fables from "The Breastplate of Instruction" but the King's Son did not
hear a word that Maravaun said. After a while he listened to the things
that Art, the King's Steward, related to him, for it was Art who had
shown the King's Son the leaden ring that was on his finger. He took it
off, remembering the betrothal ring that the Little Sage had made, and
then he saw that it was not his, but Fedelma's ring that he wore. Then
he felt as if Fedelma had sent a message to him, and he was less wild in
his thoughts.

Afterwards, in the evenings, when he came back from his ridings, he
would cross the meadows w