kness that bloated the stomach and purpled the skin, and on
the seventh day all of the race of Partholon were dead, save one man
only." "There always escapes one man," said Finnian thoughtfully.

"And I am that man," his companion affirmed.

Tuan shaded his brow with his hand, and he remembered backwards through
incredible ages to the beginning of the world and the first days of
Eire'. And Finnian, with his blood again running chill and his scalp
crawling uneasily, stared backwards with him.

CHAPTER V

"Tell on, my love," Finnian murmured

"I was alone," said Tuan. "I was so alone that my own shadow frightened
me. I was so alone that the sound of a bird in flight, or the creaking
of a dew-drenched bough, whipped me to cover as a rabbit is scared to
his burrow.

"The creatures of the forest scented me and knew I was alone. They stole
with silken pad behind my back and snarled when I faced them; the long,
grey wolves with hanging tongues and staring eyes chased me to my cleft
rock; there was no creature so weak but it might hunt me, there was no
creature so timid but it might outface me. And so I lived for two tens
of years and two years, until I knew all that a beast surmises and had
forgotten all that a man had known.

"I could pad as gently as any; I could run as tirelessly. I could be
invisible and patient as a wild cat crouching among leaves; I could
smell danger in my sleep and leap at it with wakeful claws; I could bark
and growl and clash with my teeth and tear with them."

"Tell on, my beloved," said Finnian, "you shall rest in God, dear
heart."

"At the end of that time," said Tuan, "Nemed the son of Agnoman came to
Ireland with a fleet of thirty-four barques, and in each barque there
were thirty couples of people."

"I have heard it," said Finnian.

"My heart leaped for joy when I saw the great fleet rounding the land,
and I followed them along scarped cliffs, leaping from rock to rock like
a wild goat, while the ships tacked and swung seeking a harbour. There I
stooped to drink at a pool, and I saw myself in the chill water.

"I saw that I was hairy and tufty and bristled as a savage boar; that I
was lean as a stripped bush; that I was greyer than a badger; withered
and wrinkled like an empty sack; naked as a fish; wretched as a starving
crow in winter; and on my fingers and toes there were great curving
claws, so that I looked like nothing that was known, like nothing that
was animal or di