“Go on and eat thy food, for indeed thou art in need of it,” said Deirdre.
“Well, I was in truth needful of food and of drink and of warmth when I came to the door of this home,” said the hunter, “but these are all gone from me now that I behold thee, maiden.” Then Levarcam was angry with the man, and spoke sharply to him: “It is too ready on thy tongue the talk is, O man, with thy food and with thy drink. It would be better for thee to keep thy mouth shut and thy tongue dumb in return for the shelter we are giving thee on a cold winter’s night.”
“Well,” said the hunter, “I may keep my mouth shut and my tongue dumb if it suits thee, but by thy father’s two hands and thine own, there are some others of the world’s men who, if they but saw this blood-drop thou art hiding here, it is not long that they would leave her here with thee.”
“What people are those and where are they?” said Deirdre, eagerly. “I will tell thee that, maiden,” said the hunter. “There are three heroes of the Red Branch, Naisi, Ainle, and Arden, sons of Usna, brothers, who, if they saw thee, would bear thee hence to some other place than this.”
“What like are these three brothers of whom you speak?” cried Deirdre, and all her face blushed to a rosy red. “Like the colour of a raven their dusky hair, tossed back from each high, shining brow; their skin white as the plumage of a swan, their cheeks like to a red-deer’s coat, or like your own cheeks, maiden. They swim and leap and run as strong and stately as the salmon of the stream, or as the stag upon the dappled hill, ’twixt sun and shade; but Naisi, when he stands upright, towers a head and shoulders above all the men around him. Such are the sons of Usna, noble maid.”
But Levarcam interfered: “However be those men of whom you speak, off with you now and take another road that comes not past this way. Small is my gratitude for all thy talk, and well for her who let thee in hadst thou died of thy cold and hunger at the door, and never come within for food and drink.”
The hunter went his way; but he bethought himself that if he told the sons of Usna of the lovely blood-drop he had seen, they might free the maiden out of Levarcam’s hands, and do a good deed to him also for telling them that there was such a damsel as Deirdre on the surface of the living dewy world. So he told his tale to Naisi and said to him that there dwelt, far away on the distant moor, shut in between high walls, the loveliest maiden that ever was born in Erin, and that none lived beside her but an aged nurse and an old Druid, so that Deirdre was like a tender flower over-shadowed by two ancient branchy trees, that hid her from the air and sun.
When Naisi heard that, he said, “Who is the maid and where is she, whom no man hath seen but thee, if, indeed, seen her thou hast?” “Truly I have seen her,” said the hunter, “but no one else could find her save I myself should guide him.”
Then Naisi said that he would go; but Arden and Ainle tried to dissuade him, for they said, “What if the girl should be the maid the King hath destined to himself?” But from far-off to the mind of Naisi there came a memory of a young child, scarce seven years old, whom on the playing-fields he once had seen and promised to see again, but who had disappeared that very day, and never from that day to this had he set eyes upon the girl. So all his brothers could devise served not to turn him from his purpose; and at dawn of the next day, amid the early carolling of birds, in the mild morning dawn of fragrant May, when all the bush was white with hawthorn-bloom, and dew-drops glistened from every point of sapling, bush, and plant, they four set out, going in search of the retired place where Deirdre dwelt.
“Yonder it is, down on the floor of the glen,” the hunter said, when at the fall of eve they stood upon the mountain-brow above the house, so well concealed in trees that many times they might have passed it by and never known that any house was near. “I care not for myself to see again the woman who lives therein; sharp is her tongue, unwelcoming her words. I leave you then, good luck go with you, but if you will be advised, go not near the house. At every gate are blood-hounds, and Levarcam’s bite is nigh as fierce as theirs.”