remembered that a path had once been hacked through the
wood, and he sought for this. It was a deeply scooped, hollow way, and
it ran or wriggled through the entire length of the wood.

Into this gloomy drain Fionn descended and made progress, but when he
had penetrated deeply in the dank forest he heard a sound of thumping
and squelching footsteps, and he saw coming towards him a horrible,
evil-visaged being; a wild, monstrous, yellow-skinned, big-boned giant,
dressed in nothing but an ill-made, mud-plastered, drab-coloured coat,
which swaggled and clapped against the calves of his big bare legs. On
his stamping feet there were great brogues of boots that were shaped
like, but were bigger than, a boat, and each time he put a foot down it
squashed and squirted a barrelful of mud from the sunk road.

Fionn had never seen the like of this vast person, and he stood gazing
on him, lost in a stare of astonishment.

The great man saluted him.

"All alone, Fionn?" he cried. "How does it happen that not one Fenian
of the Fianna is at the side of his captain?" At this inquiry Fionn got
back his wits.

"That is too long a story and it is too intricate and pressing to be
told, also I have no time to spare now."

"Yet tell it now," the monstrous man insisted.

Fionn, thus pressed, told of the coming of Cael of the Iron, of the
challenge the latter had issued, and that he, Fionn, was off to Tara of
the Kings to find Caelte mac Rona'n.

"I know that foreigner well," the big man commented.

"Is he the champion he makes himself out to be?" Fionn inquired.

"He can do twice as much as he said he would do," the monster replied.

"He won't outrun Caelte mac Rona'n," Fionn asserted. The big man jeered.

"Say that he won't outrun a hedgehog, dear heart. This Cael will end the
course by the time your Caelte begins to think of starting."

"Then," said Fionn, "I no longer know where to turn, or how to protect
the honour of Ireland."

"I know how to do these things," the other man commented with a slow nod
of the head.

"If you do," Fionn pleaded, "tell it to me upon your honour."

"I will do that," the man replied.

"Do not look any further for the rusty-kneed, slow-trotting son of
Rona'n," he continued, "but ask me to run your race, and, by this hand,
I will be first at the post."

At this the Chief began to laugh.

"My good friend, you have work enough to carry the two tons of mud that
are plastered on each of your co