in the world."

He loved "what happened," and would not evade it by the swerve of
a hair; so on this occasion what was occurring he would have occur,
although a king was his rival and his master. It may be that his mother
was watching the match and that he could not but exhibit his skill
before her. He committed the enormity of winning seven games in
succession from the king himself!!!

It is seldom indeed that a subject can beat a king at chess, and this
monarch was properly amazed.

"Who are you at all?" he cried, starting back from the chessboard and
staring on Fionn.

"I am the son of a countryman of the Luigne of Tara," said Fionn.

He may have blushed as he said it, for the king, possibly for the first
time, was really looking at him, and was looking back through twenty
years of time as he did so. The observation of a king is faultless--it
is proved a thousand times over in the tales, and this king's equipment
was as royal as the next.

"You are no such son," said the indignant monarch, "but you are the son
that Muirne my wife bore to Uall mac Balscne."

And at that Fionn had no more to say; but his eyes may have flown to his
mother and stayed there.

"You cannot remain here," his step-father continued. "I do not want you
killed under my protection," he explained, or complained.

Perhaps it was on Fionn's account he dreaded the sons of Morna, but no
one knows what Fionn thought of him for he never thereafter spoke of his
step-father. As for Muirne she must have loved her lord; or she may have
been terrified in truth of the sons of Morna and for Fionn; but it is so
also, that if a woman loves her second husband she can dislike all that
reminds her of the first one. Fionn went on his travels again.

CHAPTER IX

All desires save one are fleeting, but that one lasts for ever. Fionn,
with all desires, had the lasting one, for he would go anywhere and
forsake anything for wisdom; and it was in search of this that he went
to the place where Finegas lived on a bank of the Boyne Water. But
for dread of the clann-Morna he did not go as Fionn. He called himself
Deimne on that journey.

We get wise by asking questions, and even if these are not answered we
get wise, for a well-packed question carries its answer on its back as
a snail carries its shell. Fionn asked every question he could think of,
and his master, who was a poet, and so an honourable man, answered them
all, not to the limit of his patience,