with a few men to see how things go, and leave our men to follow. The
hills are empty of rovers, for there is naught to plunder; but it were
well to know if the Dark Master has joined with those friends of his."

"That seems good advice," said Brian, and, taking a dozen men, they rode
forward warily, sending out other parties to scout also.

Over them towered the whiteness of the Stone Mountain, for snow lay
thickly on all things. Brian gazed up at the gray-jutted crags, but his
thoughts were not all with the Dark Master. Him he already accounted
slain, and he was thinking of that Millhaven stronghold.

One day his own banner should fly there, he told himself. There must be
a good harbor, else the northern pirates had never settled down to hold
the place; and since all the country roundabout lay bleak and unsettled
of men, the vision came to him of first taking the place, and then
fetching O'Neills from the east and north to settle the lands around.
They would flock to him when his condition was made known, and that
Cromwell's men would shatter the royalists and confederacy Brian saw
clearly, as Owen Ruadh had foretold him.

Already the house of Tyr-owen was scattered and fallen, as the greater
house of Tyr-connall had been before it, for when the last earl had fled
from the land, there had been only the younger branch to hold the sept
together. Owen Ruadh was the final glory of that branch, and now Brian
entertained the vision of transplanting the Red Hand and of making his
rule strong in the west.

But other men had entertained the same vision before him, and it had
remained a vision, and no more; and the high hopes of Brian himself were
fated to be driven upon the rocks of destiny before many days had passed
over.

With the afternoon the little party stood on the lower slopes of the
Stone Mountain itself, and Turlough drew the shape of the place in the
snow with his pike-haft.

"Here are we," he explained, "on the southern slopes. A half-mile ahead
of us is a valley with a small and fast-rushing water, where we shall
make camp this night if the Dark Master be not before us. And if he is
not, then he will be on the northern side, where there are two
well-sheltered valleys with water running, fit for the meeting-place and
camp of men. Here is the easternmost, but, as I remember it, the snow
fills the valley somewhat in winter. The other holds a small lake called
the Dubh Linn, or Black Tarn, and in one of thes