ongan's Frenzy.'"

"I never heard of it before," cried the abbot joyfully.

"I am the only man that knows it," Cairide' replied.

"But how does that come about?" the abbot inquired.

"Because it belongs to my family," the story-teller answered. "There
was a Cairide' of my nation with Mongan when he went into Faery. This
Cairide' listened to the story when it was first told. Then he told
it to his son, and his son told it to his son, and that son's
great-great-grandson's son told it to his son's son, and he told it to
my father, and my father told it to me."

"And you shall tell it to me," cried the abbot triumphantly.

"I will indeed," said Cairide'. Vellum was then brought and quills. The
copyists sat at their tables. Ale was placed beside the story-teller,
and he told this tale to the abbot.

CHAPTER II

Said Cairide':

Mongan's wife at that time was Bro'tiarna, the Flame Lady. She was
passionate and fierce, and because the blood would flood suddenly to her
cheek, so that she who had seemed a lily became, while you looked upon
her, a rose, she was called Flame Lady. She loved Mongan with ecstasy
and abandon, and for that also he called her Flame Lady.

But there may have been something of calculation even in her wildest
moment, for if she was delighted in her affection she was tormented in
it also, as are all those who love the great ones of life and strive to
equal themselves where equality is not possible.

For her husband was at once more than himself and less than himself.
He was less than himself because he was now Mongan. He was more than
himself because he was one who had long disappeared from the world of
men. His lament had been sung and his funeral games played many,
many years before, and Bro'tiarna sensed in him secrets, experiences,
knowledges in which she could have no part, and for which she was
greedily envious.

So she was continually asking him little, simple questions a' propos of
every kind of thing.

She weighed all that he said on whatever subject, and when he talked in
his sleep she listened to his dream.

The knowledge that she gleaned from those listenings tormented her
far more than it satisfied her, for the names of other women were
continually on his lips, sometimes in terms of dear affection, sometimes
in accents of anger or despair, and in his sleep he spoke familiarly
of people whom the story-tellers told of, but who had been dead for
centuries. Therefore she was pe