The five troopers remounted, and set their horses at the ford, but all to no purpose.  They tried again and again, and went plunging hither and thither, the horses foaming and rearing.  ‘Let us,’ said the old trooper, ’ride back a little into the wood, and strike the river higher up.’  They rode in under the boughs, the ground-ivy crackling under the hoofs, and the branches striking against their steel caps.  After about twenty minutes’ riding they came out again upon the river, and after another ten minutes found a place where it was possible to cross without sinking below the stirrups.  The wood upon the other side was very thin, and broke the moonlight into long streams.  The wind had arisen, and had begun to drive the clouds rapidly across the face of the moon, so that thin streams of light seemed to be dancing a grotesque dance among the scattered bushes and small fir-trees.  The tops of the trees began also to moan, and the sound of it was like the voice of the dead in the wind; and the troopers remembered the belief that tells how the dead in purgatory are spitted upon the points of the trees and upon the points of the rocks.  They turned a little to the south, in the hope that they might strike the beaten path again, but they could find no trace of it.

Meanwhile, the moaning grew louder and louder, and the dance of the white moon-fires more and more rapid.  Gradually they began to be aware of a sound of distant music.  It was the sound of a bagpipe, and they rode towards it with great joy.  It came from the bottom of a deep, cup-like hollow.  In the midst of the hollow was an old man with a red cap and withered face.  He sat beside a fire of sticks, and had a burning torch thrust into the earth at his feet, and played an old bagpipe furiously.  His red hair dripped over his face like the iron rust upon a rock.  ‘Did you see my wife?’ he cried, looking up a moment; ‘she was washing! she was washing!’ ‘I am afraid of him,’ said the young trooper, ‘I fear he is one of the Sidhe.’  ‘No,’ said the old trooper, ’he is a man, for I can see the sun-freckles upon his face.  We will compel him to be our guide’; and at that he drew his sword, and the others did the same.  They stood in a ring round the piper, and pointed their swords at him, and the old trooper then told him that they must kill two rebels, who had taken the road between Ben Bulben and the great mountain spur that is called Cashel-na-Gael, and that he must get up before one of them and be their guide, for they had lost their way.  The piper turned, and pointed to a neighbouring tree, and they saw an old white horse ready bitted, bridled, and saddled.  He slung the pipe across his back, and, taking the torch in his hand, got upon the horse, and started off before them, as hard as he could go.