“O Culain, forbear to hurl, and restrain thy people, and you the Ultonians, my kinsmen, delay to shoot.  To thee, O chief smith, and thy great-hearted artificers I will myself pay no unworthy eric for the death of thy brave and faithful hound.  For verily I will myself take thy dog’s place, and nightly guard thy property, sleepless as he was, and I will continue to do so till a hound as trusty and valiant as the hound whom I slew is procured for thee to take his place, and to relieve me of that duty.  Truly I slew not thy hound in any wantonness of superior strength, but only in the defence of my own life, which is not mine but my King’s.  Three times he leaped upon me with white fangs bared and eyes red with murder, and three times I cast him off, but when the fourth time he rushed upon me like a storm, and when with great difficulty I had balked him on that occasion also, then I took him by the throat and by his legs and flung him against one of the brazen pillars withal to make him stupid.  And truly it was not my intention to kill him and I am sorry that he is dead, seeing that he was so faithful and so brave, and so dear to thee whom I have always honoured, even when I was a child at Dun Dalgan, and whom, with thy marvel-working craftsman, I have for a long time eagerly desired to see.  And I thought that our meeting, whensoever it might be, would be other than this and more friendly.”

As he went on speaking the fierce brows of the smith relaxed, and first he regarded the lad with pity, being so young and fair, and then with admiration for his bravery.  Also he thought of his own boyish days, and as he did so a torrent of kindly affection and love poured from his breast towards the boy, yea, though he saw him standing before him with the blood of his faithful hound gilding his linen lena and his white limbs.  Yet, indeed, it was not the hound’s blood which was on the boy, but his own, so cruelly had the beast torn him with his long and strong and sharp claws.

“That proposal is pleasing to me,” he said, “and I will accept the eric, which is distinguished and conspicuous and worthy of my greatness and of my name and reputation amongst the Gael.  Why should a man be angry for ever when he who did the wrong offers due reparation?” Therewith over his left shoulder he flung the mighty anvil into the dark end of the vast chamber among the furnaces, at the sound of whose falling the solid earth shook.  On the other hand Concobar rejoiced at this happy termination of the quarrel, for well he knew the might of those huge children of the gloomy Orchil.  He perceived, too, that he could with safety entrust the keeping of the lad to those people, for he saw the smith’s countenance when it changed, and he knew that among those artificers there was no guile.

“It is pleasing to me, too,” he said, “and I will be myself the lad’s security for the performance of his promise.”

“Nay, I want no security,” answered the smith.  “The word of a scion of the Red Branch is security enough for me.”