ority in this land."

"What man has authority over himself?" said Saeve.

"Do you mean that I am the man you seek?" said Fionn.

"It is to yourself I gave my love," she replied. "This is good news,"
Fionn cried joyfully, "for the moment you came through the door I loved
and desired you, and the thought that you wished for another man went
into my heart like a sword." Indeed, Fionn loved Saeve as he had not
loved a woman before and would never love one again. He loved her as he
had never loved anything before. He could not bear to be away from her.
When he saw her he did not see the world, and when he saw the world
without her it was as though he saw nothing, or as if he looked on a
prospect that was bleak and depressing. The belling of a stag had been
music to Fionn, but when Saeve spoke that was sound enough for him. He
had loved to hear the cuckoo calling in the spring from the tree that
is highest in the hedge, or the blackbird's jolly whistle in an autumn
bush, or the thin, sweet enchantment that comes to the mind when a lark
thrills out of sight in the air and the hushed fields listen to the
song. But his wife's voice was sweeter to Fionn than the singing of a
lark. She filled him with wonder and surmise. There was magic in the
tips of her fingers. Her thin palm ravished him. Her slender foot set
his heart beating; and whatever way her head moved there came a new
shape of beauty to her face.

"She is always new," said Fionn. "She is always better than any other
woman; she is always better than herself."

He attended no more to the Fianna. He ceased to hunt. He did not listen
to the songs of poets or the curious sayings of magicians, for all of
these were in his wife, and something that was beyond these was in her
also.

"She is this world and the next one; she is completion," said Fionn.

CHAPTER III

It happened that the men of Lochlann came on an expedition against
Ireland. A monstrous fleet rounded the bluffs of Ben Edair, and the
Danes landed there, to prepare an attack which would render them masters
of the country. Fionn and the Fianna-Finn marched against them. He did
not like the men of Lochlann at any time, but this time he moved against
them in wrath, for not only were they attacking Ireland, but they had
come between him and the deepest joy his life had known.

It was a hard fight, but a short one. The Lochlannachs were driven back
to their ships, and within a week the only Danes remaining