ing this moat after me."

"Well," said Flann, "tell me how you are able to cross it."

"I will," said the fox, "if you promise never to hunt me nor any of my
little family."

"I promise," said Flann.

"Well," said Rory, "the water poisons every skin. Now the reason that I
pushed the calf's skin across was that it might take the poison out of
the water. The water poisons every skin. But where the skin goes the
poison is taken out of the water for a while, and a living creature can
cross behind it if he is cautious."

"I thank you for showing me the way to cross the moat," said Flann.

"I don't mind showing you," said Rory the Fox, and he went off to his
burrow.

There were deer-skins and calf-skins both sides of the moat. Flann
took a calf's skin. He pushed it into the water with a stick. He swam
cautiously behind it. When he reached the other side of the moat, the
skin, all green and wrinkled, sank in the water.

Flann jumped and laughed and shouted when he found himself in the forest
and clear of Crom Duv's house. He went on. It was grand to see the
woodpecker hammering on the branch, and to see him stop, busy as he
was to say "Pass, friend." Two young deer came out of the depths of the
wood. They were too young and too innocent to have anything to tell him,
but they bounded alongside of him as he raced along the Hunter's Path.
He jumped and he shouted again when he saw the river before him--the
river that was called the Daybreak River on the right bank and the River
of the Morning Star on the left. He said to himself, "This time, in
troth, I will go the whole way with the river. A moving thing is my
delight. The river is the most wonderful of all the things I have seen
on my travels."

Then he thought he would eat some of the cake that Morag had baked for
him. He sat down and broke it. Then as he ate it the thought of Morag
came into his mind. He thought he was looking at her putting the cake on
the griddle. He went a little way along the river and then he began to
feel lonesome. He turned back, "I'll go to Crom Duv's House," said he,
"and show Morag the way to escape. And then she and I will follow the
river, and I won't be lonesome while she's with me."

So back along the Hunter's Path Flann went. He came to the Moat of
Poisoned Water. He found a deer-skin and pushed it into the water and
then swam cautiously across the moat. He climbed the wall then, and when
he put his head above it he saw Morag. She w