When Finn heard that, he said no word at all, but he struck his breast over and over again with his shut hands.  And he went then to his own inside room, and his people saw him no more for that day, or till the sun rose over Magh Life on the morrow.

And through the length of seven years from that time, whenever he was not out fighting against the enemies of Ireland, he went searching and ever searching in every far corner for beautiful Sadbh.  And there was great trouble on him all the time, unless he might throw it off for a while in hunting or in battle.  And through all that time he never brought out to any hunting but the five hounds he had most trust in, Bran and Sceolan and Lomaire and Brod and Lomluath, the way there would be no danger for Sadbh if ever he came on her track.

But after the end of seven years, Finn and some of his chief men were hunting on the sides of Beinn Gulbain, and they heard a great outcry among the hounds, that were gone into some narrow place.  And when they followed them there, they saw the five hounds of Finn in a ring, and they keeping back the other hounds, and in the middle of the ring was a young boy, with high looks, and he naked and having long hair.  And he was no way daunted by the noise of the hounds, and did not look at them at all, but at the men that were coming up.  And as soon as the fight was stopped Bran and Sceolan went up to the little lad, and whined and licked him, that any one would think they had forgotten their master.  Finn and the others came up to him then, and put their hands on his head, and made much of him.  And they brought him to their own hunting cabin, and he ate and drank with them, and before long he lost his wildness and was the same as themselves.  And as to Bran and Sceolan, they were never tired playing about him.

And it is what Finn thought, there was some look of Sadbh in his face, and that it might be he was her son, and he kept him always beside him.  And little by little when the boy had learned their talk, he told them all he could remember.  He used to be with a deer he loved very much, he said, and that cared and sheltered him, and it was in a wide place they used to be, having hills and valleys and streams and woods in it, but that was shut in with high cliffs on every side, that there was no way of escape from it.  And he used to be eating fruits and roots in the summer, and in the winter there was food left for him in the shelter of a cave.  And a dark-looking man used to be coming to the place, and sometimes he would speak to the deer softly and gently, and sometimes with a loud angry voice.  But whatever way he spoke, she would always draw away from him with the appearance of great dread on her, and the man would go away in great anger.  And the last time he saw the deer, his mother, the dark man was speaking to her for a long time, from softness to anger.  And at the end he struck her with a hazel rod, and with that she was forced to follow him, and she looking back