o see. As the men were captured they were carried by
the hags into dark mysterious holes and black perplexing labyrinths.

"Here is another one," cried Caevo'g as she bundled a trussed champion
along.

"This one is fat," said Cuillen, and she rolled a bulky Fenian along
like a wheel.

"Here," said Iaran, "is a love of a man. One could eat this kind of
man," she murmured, and she licked a lip that had whiskers growing
inside as well as out.

And the corded champion whimpered in her arms, for he did not know
but eating might indeed be his fate, and he would have preferred to be
coffined anywhere in the world rather than to be coffined inside of that
face. So far for them.

CHAPTER V

Within the cave there was silence except for the voices of the hags and
the scarcely audible moaning of the Fianna-Finn, but without there was
a dreadful uproar, for as each man returned from the chase his dogs came
with him, and although the men went into the cave the dogs did not.

They were too wise.

They stood outside, filled with savagery and terror, for they could
scent their masters and their masters' danger, and perhaps they could
get from the cave smells till then unknown and full of alarm.

From the troop of dogs there arose a baying and barking, a snarling and
howling and growling, a yelping and squealing and bawling for which no
words can be found. Now and again a dog nosed among a thousand smells
and scented his master; the ruff of his neck stood up like a hog's
bristles and a netty ridge prickled along his spine. Then with red eyes,
with bared fangs, with a hoarse, deep snort and growl he rushed at the
cave, and then he halted and sneaked back again with all his ruffles
smoothed, his tail between his legs, his eyes screwed sideways in
miserable apology and alarm, and a long thin whine of woe dribbling out
of his nose.

The three sisters took their wide-channelled, hard-tempered swords in
their hands, and prepared to slay the Fianna, but before doing so they
gave one more look from the door of the cave to see if there might be a
straggler of the Fianna who was escaping death by straggling, and they
saw one coming towards them with Bran and Sceo'lan leaping beside him,
while all the other dogs began to burst their throats with barks and
split their noses with snorts and wag their tails off at sight of the
tall, valiant, white-toothed champion, Goll mor mac Morna. "We will kill
that one first," said Caevo'g.

"T