"My faith," said he, "where are the two tails of my coat?" "I could
smell one of them and it wrapped around a little tree thirty miles
back," said Cael, "and the other one was dishonouring a bush ten miles
behind that."

"It is bad luck to be separated from the tails of your own coat," the
Carl grumbled. "I'll have to go back for them. Wait here, beloved, and
eat blackberries until I come back, and we'll both start fair."

"Not half a second will I wait," Cael replied, and he began to run
towards Ben Edair as a lover runs to his maiden or as a bee flies to his
hive.

"I haven't had half my share of blackberries either," the Carl lamented
as he started to run backwards for his coat-tails.

He ran determinedly on that backward journey, and as the path he had
travelled was beaten out as if it had been trampled by an hundred bulls
yoked neck to neck, he was able to find the two bushes and the two
coat-tails. He sewed them on his coat.

Then he sprang up, and he took to a fit and a vortex and an exasperation
of running for which no description may be found. The thumping of his
big boots grew as con-tinuous as the pattering of hailstones on a
roof, and the wind of his passage blew trees down. The beasts that were
ranging beside his path dropped dead from concussion, and the steam that
snored from his nose blew birds into bits and made great lumps of cloud
fall out of the sky.

He again caught up on Cael, who was running with his head down and his
toes up.

"If you won't try to run, my treasure," said the Carl, "you will never
get your tribute."

And with that he incensed and exploded himself into an eye-blinding,
continuous, waggle and complexity of boots that left Cael behind him in
a flash.

"I will run until I burst," sobbed Cael, and he screwed agitation and
despair into his legs until he hummed and buzzed like a blue-bottle on a
window.

Five miles from Ben Edair the Carl stopped, for he had again come among
blackberries.

He ate of these until he was no more than a sack of juice, and when
he heard the humming and buzzing of Cael of the Iron he mourned and
lamented that he could not wait to eat his fill He took off his coat,
stuffed it full of blackberries, swung it on his shoulders, and went
bounding stoutly and nimbly for Ben Edair.

CHAPTER VI

It would be hard to tell of the terror that was in Fionn's breast and
in the hearts of the Fianna while they attended the conclusion of that
race.

The