Page:The Yellow Book - 07.djvu/95

 the boulders, had been peering downward upon the picture of ruin below. They glanced at one another now, with a flash of comprehension. A little wiser than their kine, they knew that the bittern cried only in the breeding spring-time, and this was the tenth month of the year. One of them echoed the sound, and when it was repeated, coming nearer, the three dragged themselves to their feet, and, stealing upward, stood forth on a ledge of rock in plain view. There climbed towards them presently another, a lean and agile man, whose bare legs brushed through the spikes of furze and heather as if they were cased in hide, and whose naked soles missed no footing on the stones as he bounded from boulder to crag.

He stood panting before them, and without speech turned to survey the prospect spread beneath, till his breath could be overtaken. Looking thus, his rover eye caught something the others had already seen—a small barque, with full sails limply hanging on the still air, down in the misty distance where the great sea ends and Dunmanus begins. He pointed to it, and nodded his head.

"It is to Turlogh, son of Fineen, I will be hastening now," he said, with abruptness. "Show me the way."

As the group turned, the foremost of them lifted his head and halted.

"It is Turlogh who comes to you," he said.

A few paces away, on the crown of the cliff, stood a man to whom all four bent their heads. He regarded them with an eye which asked them questions, yet shrank from hearing these if they were to be not to his mind; and they, knowing this well, held their peace, and looked about them at their ease.

The Lord of Dunbeekin was an old man now, tall and slender of frame, with much grey hair flowing upon his rounded shoulders. His apparel of quilted jacket and cloak and tunic falling to the The Yellow Book—Vol. VII.