she could not but follow after him. She girded up her raiment and went
after the men that went past the base of the knoll, leaving her women
attendants there. Allen and Arden had heard of the woman that
Connachar, King of Ulster, had with him, and they thought that, if
Naois, their brother, saw her, he would have her himself, more
especially as she was not married to the King. They perceived the woman
coming, and called on one another to hasten their step as they had a
long distance to travel, and the dusk of night was coming on. They did
so. She cried: "Naois, son of Uisnech, will you leave me?" "What
piercing, shrill cry is that--the most melodious my ear ever heard, and
the shrillest that ever struck my heart of all the cries I ever heard?"
"It is anything else but the wail of the wave-swans of Connachar," said
his brothers. "No! yonder is a woman's cry of distress," said Naois,
and he swore he would not go further until he saw from whom the cry
came, and Naois turned back. Naois and Deirdre met, and Deirdre kissed
Naois three times, and a kiss each to his brothers. With the confusion
that she was in, Deirdre went into a crimson blaze of fire, and her
colour came and went as rapidly as the movement of the aspen by the
stream side. Naois thought he never saw a fairer creature, and Naois
gave Deirdre the love that he never gave to thing, to vision, or to
creature but to herself.

Then Naois placed Deirdre on the topmost height of his shoulder, and
told his brothers to keep up their pace, and they kept up their pace.
Naois thought that it would not be well for him to remain in Erin on
account of the way in which Connachar, King of Ulster, his uncle's son,
had gone against him because of the woman, though he had not married
her; and he turned back to Alba, that is, Scotland. He reached the side
of Loch-Ness and made his habitation there. He could kill the salmon of
the torrent from out his own door, and the deer of the grey gorge from
out his window. Naois and Deirdre and Allen and Arden dwelt in a tower,
and they were happy so long a time as they were there.

By this time the end of the period came at which Deirdre had to marry
Connachar, King of Ulster. Connachar made up his mind to take Deirdre
away by the sword whether she was married to Naois or not. So he
prepared a great and gleeful feast. He sent word far and wide through
Erin all to his kinspeople to come to the feast. Connachar thought to
himself that Naois wo