curved yellow fangs. They had
long scraggy necks that could turn all the way round like the neck of
a hen. Their arms were long and skinny and muscular, and at the end of
each finger they had a spiked nail that was as hard as horn and as sharp
as a briar. Their bodies were covered with a bristle of hair and fur
and fluff, so that they looked like dogs in some parts and like cats
in others, and in other parts again they looked like chickens. They had
moustaches poking under their noses and woolly wads growing out of their
ears, so that when you looked at them the first time you never wanted
to look at them again, and if you had to look at them a second time you
were likely to die of the sight.

They were called Caevo'g, Cuillen, and Iaran. The fourth daughter,
Iarnach, was not present at that moment, so nothing need be said of her
yet.

Conaran called these three to him.

"Fionn is alone," said he. "Fionn is alone, my treasures."

"Ah!" said Caevo'g, and her jaw crunched upwards and stuck outwards, as
was usual with her when she was satisfied.

"When the chance comes take it," Conaran continued, and he smiled a
black, beetle-browed, unbenevolent smile.

"It's a good word," quoth Cuillen, and she swung her jaw loose and made
it waggle up and down, for that was the way she smiled.

"And here is the chance," her father added.

"The chance is here," Iaran echoed, with a smile that was very like
her sister's, only that it was worse, and the wen that grew on her nose
joggled to and fro and did not get its balance again for a long time.

Then they smiled a smile that was agreeable to their own eyes, but which
would have been a deadly thing for anybody else to see.

"But Fionn cannot see us," Caevo'g objected, and her brow set downwards
and her chin set upwards and her mouth squeezed sidewards, so that her
face looked like a badly disappointed nut.

"And we are worth seeing," Cuillen continued, and the disappointment
that was set in her sister's face got carved and twisted into hers, but
it was worse in her case.

"That is the truth," said Iaran in a voice of lamentation, and her face
took on a gnarl and a writhe and a solidity of ugly woe that beat the
other two and made even her father marvel.

"He cannot see us now," Conaran replied, "but he will see us in a
minute."

"Won't Fionn be glad when he sees us!" said the three sisters.

And then they joined hands and danced joyfully around their father, and
they