Free The High Deeds of Finn MacCool by Rosemary Sutcliff Page A

looked up for an instant and growled softly, as though warning the stranger to take no liberties, while Bran never turned for an instant from his desperate questing around the margin of the water. So even his own hounds did not know him.
    Finn put his Thumb of Knowledge between his teeth, wondering if even that power was lost to him. But the power remained, and instantly he knew that Milucra the daughter of Cullen had been both the hind and the woman by the lough shore, he knew that all this was her doing, and he knew why she had done it.
    Meanwhile, in Almu of the White Walls, the day wore on to supper time, and Finn had not returned, though there were guests at the hearth and all men knew that he would never be so lacking in courtesy as to leave them to sup without their host. Then Keelta Mac Ronan, he who could outrun the west wind, called for the swiftest runners among Finn’s household, and with a couple of their best trail-hounds in leash, they set out to find him.
    The hounds picked up his scent easily enough, and followed it without a check, and so just as the moon was getting up, they came to the little lonely lough on the crest of Slieve Gallion. And there on the lough shore they found a wretched, doddering old man, so weak that he could scarcely stand, and Bran and Skolawn questing to and fro among the grey rocks of the mountain top, who came to them whining in desperate trouble when they drew near.
    â€˜Old man,’ said Keelta, ‘has Finn Mac Cool passed this way?’
    The old man stood wavering on his feet, and gazing from one to another strangely and terribly. They thought that he did not understand, perhaps age had made him wander in his wits. ‘Finn Mac Cool,’ they said, ‘the Captain of the Fianna of Erin: have you seen him? You could not be mistaking him, a giant of a man with hair as pale as bleached barley.’
    The old man seemed to be trying to answer, but his voice was no more than a wheezing mumble and they could not understand what he said.
    At last he beckoned to Keelta, and when the swift-footed one stepped near, whispered to him with a great effort, ‘I am Finn Mac Cool.’
    Keelta started back, and stared wildly round at the others. ‘The grandfather says – he says that
he
is Finn Mac Cool.’
    The rest cried out in angry unbelief. ‘The old man has taken leave of his wits! Or he seeks to play a trick on us! Throw him in the lough to learn better manners!’ But Keelta saw something in the old man’s face that made him bend close again.
    And gathering himself for a mighty effort, for his remaining strength seemed ebbing moment by moment, Finn wheezed and gasped out the story of what had happened to him at the hands of Milucra, the daughter of Cullen the Smith.
    Then the Fianna believed that the old man was indeed Finn, bound by Danann enchantment, and wrath seized them.
    Keelta and another scrambled down the mountainside to where the trees began, and cut branches ofbirch and quicken, and bringing them back, bound them into the framework of a litter; they spread their cloaks over the framework and lifted Finn into it. Then, carrying him in their midst, they set out for the Fairy mound where Cullen the Smith had his hall.
    There they set down the litter, and with their broad iron-bladed daggers, began to dig.
    For three days and three nights they dug into the Fairy mound, tunnelling deeper and deeper. And on the third day they reached the innermost heart of it. To their mortal eyes, their senses protected from the Fairy glamour by the cold iron of the daggers with which they dug, there was no splendid palace there, no forecourt full of prancing horses, no banquet hall brilliant with rich hangings and vessels of gold and silver; only a dark earthen cavern, held up by rough slabs of stone, but in the entrance to the cavern stood Ainé, holding a great drinking cup of the reddest gold.
    She smiled and said, ‘That was good