be born." So Achta, with one maid, fled in
her chariot before the host of mac Con and sought to go to the Dun of
Luna. On her way thither, however, the hour came when her child should
be born, and the maid turned the chariot aside into the wild wood at
the place called Creevagh (the Place of the Twigs), and there, on a
couch of twigs and leaves, she gave birth to a noble son.

Then Achta, when she had cherished her boy and rejoiced over him, bade
her handmaid keep watch over both of them, and they fell asleep. But
the maid's eyes were heavy with weariness and long travelling, and ere
long she, too, was overpowered by slumber, and all three slept a deep
sleep while the horses wandered away grazing through the wood.

By and by there came a she-wolf roaming through the wood in search of
prey for her whelps, and it came upon the sleeping woman and the
little child. It did not wake the woman, but very softly it picked up
the infant and bore it off to the stony cave that is hard by to
Creevagh in the hill that was afterwards called Mount Cormac.

After a while the mother waked up and found her child gone. Then she
uttered a lamentable cry, and woke her handmaid, and both the women
searched hither and thither, but no trace of the child could they
find; and thus Luna found them; for he had heard news of the battle
and the death of his King, and he had come to succour Achta as he had
pledged his word to do. Luna and his men also made search for the
infant, but in vain; and at last he conveyed the two sorrowing women
to his palace; but Achta was somewhat comforted by her prophetic
dream. Luna then proclaimed that whoever should discover the King's
son, if he were yet alive, might claim of him what reward he would.

And so the time passed, till one day a man named Grec, a clansman of
Luna the lord of Corann, as he ranged the woods hunting, came on a
stony cavern in the side of a hill, and before it he saw wolf-cubs at
play, and among them a naked child on all fours gambolling with them,
and a great she-wolf that mothered them all. "Right," cried Grec, and
off he goes to Luna his lord. "What wilt thou give me for the King's
son?" said he. "What wilt thou have?" said Luna. So Grec asked for
certain lands, and Luna bound himself to give them to him and to his
posterity, and there lived and flourished the Clan Gregor for many a
generation to come. So Luna, guided by Grec, went to the cave on Mount
Cormac, and took the child and th