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In all these centuries had no M'Swyne been found bold enough to find the black cat and kill him? Could it be so hard a thing to kill a black cat? the little fellow thought. "I'd kill him myself if only I had the chance," he said one day; and when he said that his father laughed. "Ay, my lad, you might kill him if you had the chance but how would you get the chance?" he asked him.
However, Brian M'Swyne loved his fair-haired boy, and would have given up most other pleasures in the world for the pleasure of having the little fellow by his side and listening to his prattling voice.
He had killed the cat, he had broken the enchantment, he had awakened the castle from its sleep, but what was to come next? Did the prophecy, which said that a M'Swyne should do this, say also that, for doing it, he should be given a reward? Nay, it said nothing more. The rest was all a blank. But was there, then, to be no reward for him?
He was like his mother, those said who remembered the blue-eyed stranger whom Brian M'Swyne had brought home ten years before as his wife to Doe Castle, in Donegal, and who had pined there for a few years and then died; and perhaps it was for her sake that the child was so dear to the rough old chief.
He was the only son of Brian, the chief of the M'Swynes, and people used sometimes to say scornfully that he was a poor puny son to come of such a father, for he was not big and burly, as a M'Swyne ought to be, but slim and fair, and like a girl.
She was happy, very happy in the thought of her kind new friends; but there were tears for the one she felt she had said farewell to, even though he was only a cuckoo in a clock. "Father," little Dermot would say, "tell me something more about the castle in the lough." Dermot M'Swyne was a little lad, with blue soft eyes and bright fair hair.
It was a wonder of wonders; the child was never tired of thinking of it, and dreaming of the time in which the enchantment should be broken, and of the person who should break it; for, strangest of all, the story said that they must sleep until a M'Swyne should come and wake them. But what M'Swyne would do it? And how was it to be done?
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