them too well, for he made a curious
stipulation before consenting to the marriage. He bound Iollan to return
the lady if there should be occasion to think her unhappy, and Iollan
agreed to do so. The sureties to this bargain were Caelte mac Ronan,
Goll mac Morna, and Lugaidh. Lugaidh himself gave the bride away, but
it was not a pleasant ceremony for him, because he also was in love with
the lady, and he would have preferred keeping her to giving her away.
When she had gone he made a poem about her, beginning:

"There is no more light in the sky--"

And hundreds of sad people learned the poem by heart.

CHAPTER II

When Iollan and Tuiren were married they went to Ulster, and they lived
together very happily. But the law of life is change; nothing
continues in the same way for any length of time; happiness must become
unhappiness, and will be succeeded again by the joy it had displaced.
The past also must be reckoned with; it is seldom as far behind us as we
could wish: it is more often in front, blocking the way, and the future
trips over it just when we think that the road is clear and joy our own.

Iollan had a past. He was not ashamed of it; he merely thought it
was finished, although in truth it was only beginning, for it is that
perpetual beginning of the past that we call the future.

Before he joined the Fianna he had been in love with a lady of the Shi',
named Uct Dealv (Fair Breast), and they had been sweethearts for years.
How often he had visited his sweetheart in Faery! With what eagerness
and anticipation he had gone there; the lover's whistle that he used to
give was known to every person in that Shi', and he had been discussed
by more than one of the delicate sweet ladies of Faery. "That is your
whistle, Fair Breast," her sister of the Shi' would say.

And Uct Dealv would reply: "Yes, that is my mortal, my lover, my pulse,
and my one treasure."

She laid her spinning aside, or her embroidery if she was at that, or if
she were baking a cake of fine wheaten bread mixed with honey she would
leave the cake to bake itself and fly to Iollan. Then they went hand in
hand in the country that smells of apple-blossom and honey, looking on
heavy-boughed trees and on dancing and beaming clouds. Or they stood
dreaming together, locked in a clasping of arms and eyes, gazing up
and down on each other, Iollan staring down into sweet grey wells that
peeped and flickered under thin brows, and Uct Dealv l