p; they added another inch to their long-stretched
easy bodies, and came up on the fawn.

"It is an easy kill," said Fionn regretfully. "They have her," he cried.

But he was again astonished, for the dogs did not kill. They leaped and
played about the fawn, licking its face, and rubbing delighted noses
against its neck.

Fionn came up then. His long spear was lowered in his fist at the
thrust, and his sharp knife was in its sheath, but he did not use them,
for the fawn and the two hounds began to play round him, and the fawn
was as affectionate towards him as the hounds were; so that when a
velvet nose was thrust in his palm, it was as often a fawn's muzzle as a
hound's.

In that joyous company he came to wide Allen of Leinster, where the
people were surprised to see the hounds and the fawn and the Chief and
none other of the hunters that had set out with them.

When the others reached home, the Chief told of his chase, and it was
agreed that such a fawn must not be killed, but that it should be kept
and well treated, and that it should be the pet fawn of the Fianna.
But some of those who remembered Brah's parentage thought that as Bran
herself had come from the Shi so this fawn might have come out of the
Shi also.

CHAPTER II

Late that night, when he was preparing for rest, the door of Fionn's
chamber opened gently and a young woman came into the room. The captain
stared at her, as he well might, for he had never seen or imagined to
see a woman so beautiful as this was. Indeed, she was not a woman, but
a young girl, and her bearing was so gently noble, her look so modestly
high, that the champion dared scarcely look at her, although he could
not by any means have looked away.

As she stood within the doorway, smiling, and shy as a flower,
beautifully timid as a fawn, the Chief communed with his heart.

"She is the Sky-woman of the Dawn," he said. "She is the light on the
foam. She is white and odorous as an apple-blossom. She smells of spice
and honey. She is my beloved beyond the women of the world. She shall
never be taken from me."

And that thought was delight and anguish to him: delight because of such
sweet prospect, anguish because it was not yet realised, and might not
be.

As the dogs had looked at him on the chase with a look that he did not
understand, so she looked at him, and in her regard there was a question
that baffled him and a statement which he could not follow.

He spoke to he