hoofs ploughed through wet, yellow sands, and he saw black rocks rising up at each side of a little bay, and inland were fields green or brown, and white cottages thatched with reeds, and men and women, toil-worn and clad in earth-coloured garments, went to and fro about their tasks or stopped gazing at the rider in his crimson cloak and at the golden trappings of his horse.  But among the cottages was a small house of stone such as Oisin had never seen in the land of Erinn; stone was its roof as well as the walls, very steep and high, and near-by from a rude frame of timber there hung a bell of bronze.  Into this house there passed one whom from his shaven crown Oisin guessed to be a druid, and behind him two lads in white apparel.  The druid having seen the horseman turned his eyes again to the ground and passed on, regarding him not, and the lads did likewise.  And Oisin rode on, eager to reach the Dun upon the Hill of Allen and to see the faces of his kin and his friends.

[Illustration:  “The white steed had vanished from their eyes like a wreath of mist”]

At length, coming from the forest path into the great clearing where the Hill of Allen was wont to rise broad and green, with its rampart enclosing many white-walled dwellings, and the great hall towering high in the midst, he saw but grassy mounds overgrown with rank weeds and whin bushes, and among them pastured a peasant’s kine.

Then a strange horror fell upon him, and he thought some enchantment from the land of Faery held his eyes and mocked him with false visions.  He threw his arms abroad and shouted the names of Finn and Oscar, but none replied, and he thought that perchance the hounds might hear him, and he cried upon Bran and Sceolaun, and strained his ears if they might catch the faintest rustle or whisper of the world from the sight of which his eyes were holden, but he heard only the sigh of the wind in the whins.  Then he rode in terror from that place, setting his face towards the eastern sea, for he meant to traverse Ireland from side to side and end to end in the search of some escape from his enchantment.  But when he came near to the eastern sea and was now in the place which is called the Valley of the Thrushes,[24] he saw in a field upon the hillside a crowd of men striving to roll aside a great boulder from their tilled land, and an overseer directing them.  Towards them he rode, meaning to ask them concerning Finn and the Fianna.  As he came near, they all stopped their work to gaze upon him, for to them he appeared like a messenger of the Fairy Folk or an angel from heaven.  Taller and mightier he was than the men-folk they knew, with sword-blue eyes and brown ruddy cheeks; in his mouth, as it were, a shower of pearls, and bright hair clustered beneath the rim of his helmet.  And as Oisin looked upon their puny forms, marred by toil and care, and at the stone which they feebly strove to heave from its bed, he was filled with pity, and