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 "A horse!" repeated Conan scornfully. "I wonder you are not ashamed to be seen with it, though indeed you are just as bad-looking yourself. I hope," he said, turning to Fionn, "you are not going to disgrace the Fianna by taking that ill-favoured wretch there into it, and putting his bag of bones—calls it a horse, indeed!—among our horses."

"As a horseman I come to you, Fionn mac Cumall, and a horseman's wages I expect," said the Gilla Decair. "If you can pledge your word that nothing shall happen to my horse, I will turn him out among yours, and not heed what that abusive man there says."

"Turn him out by all means, and let him eat something," said Fionn.

"I take you at your word," said the Gilla Decair, and he took the halter from the horse's head. The animal immediately galloped away as fast as he could, until it came to where the Fians' horses were grazing; then it began to work the most tremendous havoc among them. It bit their eyes out with its long vicious teeth, and snapped off their ears, and broke their legs with its hard kicks, until