Page:The Boy Who Knew What The Birds Said.djvu/181

 still left with Labraid Lorc. Yet he thought he would let the keys go out of his possession so that the Fair Islands would sink back into the sea. But that they might not stay at the bottom of the sea for ever he took the keys and he put them in a pit at the sea-shore and he covered the pit with a round stone, and knowing that it would be only a lucky person who would come to that stone, he wrote in Ogham writing on it

As he left the silver keys there the Fair Islands began to sink in the water. So slow were they in sinking that the cattle and sheep that pastured on the islands were taken off in boats and the people who lived in villages on the Islands came away with all they owned. But at last the Islands sank altogether out of sight. And after they went down into the sea King Labraid Lorc was seen no more.

And you, O Boy, are the lucky one that the King hid the silver keys for. When you take them