This story began in the All-Story Weekly for December 30.
CHAPTER XIII.
BRIAN RIDES TO VENGEANCE.
"Then you are intent on this vengeance, master?" asked Turlough thoughtfully.
"Yes," answered Brian. "I here take oath that I will never cut hair nor beard again until I have seen the Dark Master dead."
"You are not like to have a chance at your hair very soon," laughed out Lame Art O'Malley. "But that is a good oath, Yellow Brian."
"Then I think this is a better plan," spoke up Turlough Wolf. "Give me ten men, Brian, and I will go to Galway. I will soon get traces of O'Donnell; and if he goes into the north to get men of his own sept" (tribe or family), "as I think most likely, I will send back word, and we can follow him."
"Do it," said Brian, and Turlough was gone that night.
This discussion took place in the hollow, where the fight was soon over after the flight of the Dark Master. Out of the six hundred who had left the castle, two hundred had been O'Donnell's men. Half of these remained and took service with Brian at once. Of the four hundred pikemen, three hundred had gone down fighting like the stubborn south-country men they were, and the rest took service with Nuala O'Malley. They were most of them Kerry men, and well disposed toward ships and piracy.
Brian had lost in all fifty men in that battle, while the Dark Master had given Cathbarr a goodly thrust through the shoulder, which had let out most of the giant's vanity and promised to give the huge ax some time to rest and rust. So, then, Brian found himself heading two hundred and fifty men of his own, with Nuala's hundred O'Malleys, when they rode down again to Bertragh Castle.