It was not long till a hound of the three hounds was loosed after Diarmuid, and Muadhan said to him to follow Grania, and he himself would check the hound.  Then Muadhan turned back, and he took a whelp out of his belt, and put it on the flat of his hand.  And when the whelp saw the hound rushing towards him, and its jaws open, he rose up and made a leap from Muadhan’s hand into the throat of the hound, and came out of its side, bringing the heart with it, and he leaped back again to Muadhan’s hand, and left the hound dead after him.

Muadhan went on then after Diarmuid and Grania, and he took up Grania again and carried her a bit of the way into the mountain.  Then another hound was loosened after them, and Diarmuid said to Muadhan:  “I often heard there is nothing can stand against weapons of Druid wounding, and the throat of no beast can be made safe from them.  And will you stand now,” he said, “till I put the Gae Dearg, the Red Spear, through that hound.”

Then Muadhan and Grania stopped to see the cast.  And Diarmuid made a cast at the hound, and the spear went through its body and brought out its bowels; and he took up the spear again, and they went forward.

It was not long after that the third hound was loosed.  And Grania said then:  “This is the one is fiercest of them, and there is great fear on me, and mind yourself now, Diarmuid.”

It was not long till the hound overtook them, and the place he overtook them was Lic Dhubhain, the flag-stone of Dubhan, on Slieve Luachra.  He rose with a light leap over Diarmuid, as if he had a mind to seize on Grania, but Diarmuid took him by the two hind legs, and struck a blow of his carcase against the side of the rock was nearest, till he had let out his brains through the openings of his head and of his ears.  And then Diarmuid took up his arms and his battle clothes, and put his narrow-topped finger into the silken string of the Gae Dearg, and he made a good cast at the young man of the green cloak that was at the head of the troop that killed him.  Then he made another cast at the second man and killed him, and the third man in the same way.  And as it is not the custom to stand after leaders are fallen, the strangers when they saw what had happened took to flight.

And Diarmuid followed after them, killing and scattering, so that unless any man of them got away over the forests, or into the green earth, or under the waters, there was not a man or messenger of them left to tell the news, but only the Woman-messenger of the Black Mountain, that kept moving around about when Diarmuid was putting down the strangers.

And it was not long till Finn saw her coming towards him where he was, her legs failing, and her tongue muttering, and her eyes drooping, and he asked news of her.  “It is very bad news I have to tell you,” she said; “and it is what I think, that it is a person without a lord I am.”  Then she told Finn the whole story from beginning to end, of the destruction Diarmuid had done, and how the three deadly hounds had fallen by him.  “And it is hardly I myself got away,” she said.  “What place did the grandson of Duibhne go to?” said Finn.  “I do not know that,” she said.