ard to kiss
Brian's hand in wild delight. "You are well come, master! Is all well
down below?"

"All well, old friend," laughed Brian, swinging down to clasp the old
man in his arms. "Where is the Dark Master?"

"Where we shall catch him in a forked stick presently," chuckled
Turlough, wagging his beard. "Get these wild men of yours out of the
town, and come into the inn with me to talk. I have all the Dark
Master's plans, master, and we have only to strike."

Brian ordered his men to camp a mile outside town and to do no
plundering, so they clattered off, to the great relief of the townfolk.

"Now," said Brian, when they two were sitting across a table, "what has
passed that you are bound up? Have you been fighting?"

"Well, after a fashion," grimaced Turlough disgustedly. "I was here
ahead of the Dark Master, and raised the townpeople against him for a
plunderer. When he came up the road was full of men; but the devil slew
two and wounded two of my own men, cut his way through the rest, and as
I fled north my horse flung me and bruised my head. Has the castle
fallen?"

"Yes," laughed Brian, and related what had happed at Bertragh. "Have I
time to bide here and eat?"

Turlough yeasaid this and sent the inn-master bustling for food and
wine. When this was set before them, Turlough Wolf told his tale,
beginning with the statement that two of O'Donnell's men had been
captured when he cut through the townfolk and rode off.

"Where are they?" asked Brian quickly, his eyes narrowing.

"Hanged," chuckled the old man succinctly. "At Galway I could make out
nothing more than the word I sent you by messenger, so I came north
after O'Donnell Dubh, taking very good care that he saw nothing of me."

"I'll warrant that," laughed Brian. "We met your man at Swineford."

"Then no need to tell what passed there. Well, I said that we caught two
of his men here, and I got back into the town just in time to keep the
folk from hanging them to the church steeple."

"Eh?" Brian stared, with his mouth full. "Why, I thought you said--"

"_Dhar mo lamh_, give me time to finish, master!" Turlough hesitated a
little, evidently in some fear. "We took them into the churchyard and
burned them a little, and so got out of them all the Dark Master's
plans. Then the priest shrived them, and I let the townfolk hang them."

Brian looked across the table, his blue eyes like ice and his nostrils
quivering with anger; the old man slanted up hi