After a while those that watched upon the bank saw a bubbling and a mighty commotion in the waters, now here, now there, and waves of bloody froth broke at their feet.  At last, as they strained their eyes upon the tossing water, they saw Fergus rise to his middle from it, pale and bloody.  In his right hand he waved aloft his sword, his left was twisted in the coarse hair of the monster’s head, and they saw that his countenance was fair and kingly as of old.  “Ulstermen, I have conquered,” he cried; and as he did so he sank down again, dead with his dead foe, into their red grave in Loch Rury.

And the Ulster lords went back to Emania, sorrowful yet proud, for they knew that a seed of honour had been sown that day in their land from which should spring a breed of high-hearted fighting men for many a generation to come.

CHAPTER V

The Carving of mac Datho’s Boar

Once upon a time there dwelt in the province of Leinster a wealthy hospitable lord named Mesroda, son of Datho.  Two possessions had he; namely, a hound which could outrun every other hound and every wild beast in Erinn, and a boar which was the finest and greatest in size that man had ever beheld.

Now the fame of this hound was noised all about the land, and many were the princes and lords who longed to possess it.  And it came to pass that Conor, King of Ulster, and Maev, Queen of Connacht, sent messengers to mac Datho to ask him to sell them the hound for a price, and both the messengers arrived at the Dun of mac Datho on the same day.  Said the Connacht messenger, “We will give thee in exchange for the hound six hundred milch cows, and a chariot with two horses, the best that are to be found in Connacht, and at the end of a year thou shalt have as much again.”  And the messenger of King Conor said, “We will give no less than Connacht, and the friendship and alliance of Ulster, and that will be better for thee than the friendship of Connacht.”

Then Mesroda mac Datho fell silent, and for three days he would not eat nor drink, nor could he sleep o’ nights, but tossed restlessly on his bed.  His wife observed his condition, and said to him, “Thy fast hath been long, Mesroda, though good food is by thee in plenty; and at night thou turnest thy face to the wall, and well I know thou dost not sleep.  What is the cause of thy trouble?”

“There is a saying,” replied mac Datho, “’Trust not a thrall with money, nor a woman with a secret.’”

“When should a man talk to a woman,” said his wife, “but when something were amiss?  What thy mind cannot solve perchance another’s may.”

Then mac Datho told his wife of the request for his hound both from Ulster and from Connacht at one and the same time, “and whichever of them I deny,” he said, “they will harry my cattle and slay my people.”

“Then hear my counsel,” said the woman.  “Give it to both of them, and bid them come and fetch it; and if there be any harrying to be done, let them even harry each other; but in no way mayest thou keep the hound.”