at last his horse's
hoofs ploughed through wet, yellow sands, and he saw black rocks
rising up at each side of a little bay, and inland were fields green
or brown, and white cottages thatched with reeds, and men and women,
toil-worn and clad in earth-coloured garments, went to and fro about
their tasks or stopped gazing at the rider in his crimson cloak and at
the golden trappings of his horse. But among the cottages was a small
house of stone such as Oisin had never seen in the land of Erinn;
stone was its roof as well as the walls, very steep and high, and
near-by from a rude frame of timber there hung a bell of bronze. Into
this house there passed one whom from his shaven crown Oisin guessed
to be a druid, and behind him two lads in white apparel. The druid
having seen the horseman turned his eyes again to the ground and
passed on, regarding him not, and the lads did likewise. And Oisin
rode on, eager to reach the Dun upon the Hill of Allen and to see the
faces of his kin and his friends.

[Illustration: "The white steed had vanished from their eyes like a
wreath of mist"]

At length, coming from the forest path into the great clearing where
the Hill of Allen was wont to rise broad and green, with its rampart
enclosing many white-walled dwellings, and the great hall towering
high in the midst, he saw but grassy mounds overgrown with rank weeds
and whin bushes, and among them pastured a peasant's kine.

Then a strange horror fell upon him, and he thought some enchantment
from the land of Faery held his eyes and mocked him with false
visions. He threw his arms abroad and shouted the names of Finn and
Oscar, but none replied, and he thought that perchance the hounds
might hear him, and he cried upon Bran and Sceolaun, and strained his
ears if they might catch the faintest rustle or whisper of the world
from the sight of which his eyes were holden, but he heard only the
sigh of the wind in the whins. Then he rode in terror from that place,
setting his face towards the eastern sea, for he meant to traverse
Ireland from side to side and end to end in the search of some escape
from his enchantment. But when he came near to the eastern sea and was
now in the place which is called the Valley of the Thrushes,[24] he
saw in a field upon the hillside a crowd of men striving to roll aside
a great boulder from their tilled land, and an overseer directing
them. Towards them he rode, meaning to ask them concerning Finn and
the F