e wolf-cubs all together and brought
them home. And the child they called Cormac, or the Chariot-Child. Now
the lad grew up very comely and strong, and he abode with Luna in
Connacht, and no one told him of his descent.

II

THE JUDGMENT OF CORMAC

Once upon a time it happened that Cormac was at play with the two sons
of Luna, and the lads grew angry in their play and came to blows, and
Cormac struck one of them to the ground. "Sorrow on it," cried the
lad, "here I have been beaten by one that knows not his clan or
kindred, save that he is a fellow without a father." When Cormac heard
that he was troubled and ashamed, and he went to Luna and told him
what had been said.

And Luna seeing the trouble of the youth, and also that he was strong
and noble to look on, and wise and eloquent in speech, held that the
time was now come to reveal to him his descent. "Thou hadst indeed a
clan and kindred," he said, "and a father of the noblest, for thou art
the son of Art, the High King of Ireland, who was slain and
dispossessed by mac Con. But it is foretold that thou shalt yet come
to thy father's place, and the land pines for thee even now, for there
is no good yield from earth or sea under the unlawful rule of him who
now sits on the throne of Art."

"If that be so," said Cormac, "let us go to Tara, and bide our time
there in my father's house."

So the two of them set out for Tara on the morrow morn. And this was
the retinue they had with them: a body-guard of outlawed men that had
revolted against mac Con and other lords and had gathered themselves
together at Corann under Luna, and four wolves that had been cubs with
Cormac when the she-wolf suckled him.

When they came to Tara, the folk there wondered at the fierce-eyed
warriors and the grey beasts that played like dogs around Cormac, and
the lad was adopted as a pupil by the King, to be taught arms and
poetry and law. Much talk there was of his coming, and of his strange
companions that are not wont to be the friends of man, and as the lad
grew in comeliness and in knowledge the eyes of all were turned to him
more and more, because the rule of mac Con was not good.

So the time wore on, till one day a case came for judgment before the
King, in which the Queen sued a certain wealthy woman and an owner of
herds named Benna, for that the sheep of Benna had strayed into the
Queen's fields and had eaten to the ground a crop of woad[26] that was
growing there. The