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"So you have again broken my rede, Brian Buidh, for this man knows you not as his master, but names you his friend. I bade you take, not give." "It was your own advice," retorted Brian, laughing. "Aye, since you asked it, I found the way out. But you have not conquered him." "He conquered me by not telling a lie," said Cathbarr simply. "I serve him."

Here they made a brief stand; then Cathbarr leaped over into the midst and his ax crushed down two men at once; Brian followed him, and for an instant it seemed that they would sweep all before them. Just then, however, Lame Art toppled from the bulwarks with a bullet through him from above, and the Dark Master's disappearance was explained by a rain of grenades that whirled among the O'Malleys.

Brian ordered his men to give quarter to all the Scots who would accept it, if they got inside the castle, and as they marched forward through the darkness he found to his delight that O'Donnell seemed to have no sentries out. "We have caught the black fox this time," muttered Cathbarr, after they had passed the camp-fires without discovery and the black mass of the castle loomed up ahead.

It seemed that no sooner had Turlough learned from Cathbarr of what had taken place in the castle, and that Brian was safe on shipboard, than he drove his men down pell-mell on the camp, just before dawn. Any other man would have been exhausted by the events of that night, but Cathbarr had led them in the assault.

Cathbarr took a single step forward, his curly beard writhing and standing out, and his whole face so terrible to look on that all laughter was stricken dead in the hall. "You lied to me!" he cried hoarsely. "You lied to me!" O'Donnell laughed. "Aye, Cathbarr. Your master goes back to Galway to be hung he is out of my hands, but you are in them.

There was no doubt that Cathbarr had reached home safely, since the night had been fair enough for the winter season. An hour passed, and then another, still without a lessening of the eery storm; and the nerve of the seamen was beginning to give way under the strain, when the helmsman let out a wild yell: "A light ahead! A beacon!"

She had known nothing of Cathbarr's deeds at the castle until Brian had told her of them, and on seeing that the giant was among those coming off, she smiled at Brian. "Now you shall see how a girl can conquer a giant, Yellow Brian!" Brian laughed and waved a hand to Turlough, who was beside Cathbarr in the boat.

"I found these men riffraff of the wars, and while they have no such love for me as Cathbarr here, I think they had liefer follow me than any other leader." After that Nuala said little concerning Brian's discipline.

As he afterward found, it was done by Turlough's cunning word; but up over the din of battle rose the great shout that struck dismay to the pirates and heartened Brian himself to new efforts. "Tyr-owen! Tyr-owen!" With a bellow of "Tyr-owen!" Cathbarr went at the foe, and Brian joined him with his own battle-cry on his lips for the first time in his life.

The mere fact that she had recognized him there in the moonlight was proof of her true speaking, however. Brian could no longer hide from himself that her words had some strange prophecy in them. She had foretold his meeting with Cathbarr and with the Bird Daughter, though, indeed, she might have been attempting only to guide him on the path which he had afterward followed.