grasses, and I stared and mourned as I looked on
men. For Nemed and four couples had been saved from that fierce storm,
and I saw them increase and multiply until four thousand couples lived
and laughed and were riotous in the sun, for the people of Nemed had
small minds but great activity. They were savage fighters and hunters.

"But one time I came, drawn by that intolerable anguish of memory, and
all of these people were gone: the place that knew them was silent: in
the land where they had moved there was nothing of them but their bones
that glinted in the sun.

"Old age came on me there. Among these bones weariness crept into my
limbs. My head grew heavy, my eyes dim, my knees jerked and trembled,
and there the wolves dared chase me.

"I went again to the cave that had been my home when I was an old man.

"One day I stole from the cave to snatch a mouthful of grass, for I was
closely besieged by wolves. They made their rush, and I barely escaped
from them. They sat beyond the cave staring at me.

"I knew their tongue. I knew all that they said to each other, and all
that they said to me. But there was yet a thud left in my forehead, a
deadly trample in my hoof. They did not dare come into the cave.

"'To-morrow,' they said, 'we will tear out your throat, and gnaw on your
living haunch'."

CHAPTER VII

"Then my soul rose to the height of Doom, and I intended all that might
happen to me, and agreed to it.

"'To-morrow,' I said, 'I will go out among ye, and I will die,' and at
that the wolves howled joyfully, hungrily, impatiently.

"I slept, and I saw myself changing into a boar in dream, and I felt in
dream the beating of a new heart within me, and in dream I stretched my
powerful neck and braced my eager limbs. I awoke from my dream, and I
was that which I had dreamed.

"The night wore away, the darkness lifted, the day came; and from
without the cave the wolves called to me: "'Come out, O Skinny Stag.
Come out and die.'

"And I, with joyful heart, thrust a black bristle through the hole of
the cave, and when they saw that wriggling snout, those curving tusks,
that red fierce eye, the wolves fled yelping, tumbling over each other,
frantic with terror; and I behind them, a wild cat for leaping, a giant
for strength, a devil for ferocity; a madness and gladness of lusty,
unsparing life; a killer, a champion, a boar who could not be defied.

"I took the lordship of the boars of Ireland.

"Wherever