p close to that stench; nobody could," Fiacuil
replied decidedly.

He continued: "Aillen mac Midna will be off his guard when he stops
playing and begins to blow his fire; he will think everybody is asleep;
then you can deliver the attack you were speaking of, and all good luck
go with it."

"I will give him back his spear," said Fionn.

"Here it is," said Fiacuil, taking the Birgha from under his cloak. "But
be as careful of it, my pulse, be as frightened of it as you are of the
man of Dana."

"I will be frightened of nothing," said Fionn, "and the only person I
will be sorry for is that Aillen mac Midna, who is going to get his own
spear back."

"I will go away now," his companion whispered, "for it is growing darker
where you would have thought there was no more room for darkness, and
there is an eerie feeling abroad which I do not like. That man from the
Shi' may come any minute, and if I catch one sound of his music I am
done for."

The robber went away and again Fionn was alone.

CHAPTER XIV

He listened to the retreating footsteps until they could be heard no
more, and the one sound that came to his tense ears was the beating of
his own heart.

Even the wind had ceased, and there seemed to be nothing in the world
but the darkness and himself. In that gigantic blackness, in that unseen
quietude and vacancy, the mind could cease to be personal to itself. It
could be overwhelmed and merged in space, so that consciousness would
be transferred or dissipated, and one might sleep standing; for the mind
fears loneliness more than all else, and will escape to the moon rather
than be driven inwards on its own being.

But Fionn was not lonely, and he was not afraid when the son of Midna
came.

A long stretch of the silent night had gone by, minute following minute
in a slow sequence, wherein as there was no change there was no time;
wherein there was no past and no future, but a stupefying, endless
present which is almost the annihilation of consciousness. A change
came then, for the clouds had also been moving and the moon at last was
sensed behind them--not as a radiance, but as a percolation of light,
a gleam that was strained through matter after matter and was less than
the very wraith or remembrance of itself; a thing seen so narrowly,
so sparsely, that the eye could doubt if it was or was not seeing, and
might conceive that its own memory was re-creating that which was still
absent.

But Fionn's