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88 When supper was over, and the cushions placed for slumber, Fiachtna drew the girl closer to him. “Hast dried thy tears, little one?” he asked.

Maidoch laid her head upon his breast, looking up with full sad tenderness in her deep blue eyes. “I have grieved thee, my father, in my longing for our own land. I will strive to grieve thee no more. If only I am at thy side what matter how stern the land, how strange the faces.”

Fiachtna drew her closer in his arms. “My little one! My only one! Chord of the heart that must break without thee. Only say thou wilt look up and smile.”

“Aye, my father.” And in the starlight the old man saw the brave smile struggling on the trembling lips.

Thorgills, standing a space apart, hearing not their words, but marking how the old man held the girl, and her brave smile into his loving eyes, said, softly, touching his harp strings as if his whispered thought were sweet enough for music, “If the feeble arms of her father so hold this snow-white blossom, how safe might she not rest in the arms of her lord.”