Next day, at the first light of dawn, they were on foot; and soon
again the forest rang to the baying of hounds and the music of the
hunting-horn. Oisin's steed bore him all day, tireless and swift as
before, and again the quarry fell at night's approach, and again a
palace rose in the wilderness for their night's entertainment, and all
things in it even more abundant and more sumptuous than before. And so
for seven days they fared in that forest, and seven stags were slain.
Then Oisin grew wearied of hunting, and as he plunged his sharp black
hunting-knife into the throat of the last stag, he thought of the
sword of magic temper that hung idle by his side in the City of Youth,
or rested from its golden nail in his bed-chamber, and he said to
Niam, "Has thy father never a foe to tame, never a wrong to avenge?
Surely the peasant is no man whose hand forgets the plough, nor the
warrior whose hand forgets the sword hilt." Niam looked on him
strangely for a while and as if she did not understand his words, or
sought some meaning in them which yet she feared to find. But at last
she said, "If deeds of arms be thy desire, Oisin, thou shalt have thy
sufficiency ere long." And so they rode home, and slept that night in
the palace of the City of Youth.
At daybreak on the following morn Niam roused Oisin, and she buckled
on him his golden-hilted sword and his corselet of blue steel inlaid
with gold.
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