“To give you advice is the thing I would gladly refuse,” answered Oscar. “Since you ask it, I must tell you that your honor binds you to do as she asks.”
So Dermot and Grainne went out through the little gate in the palace wall and fled into the forest, accompanied only by Dermot’s faithful hound.
II.
When the men awoke from their drugged sleep, and Oscar told Finn and Cormack what had happened, both men were exceedingly angry. They immediately ordered a pursuit of the fugitives. For days Finn and his men followed the trail of the two. While they often came upon campfires that still smouldered, showing where the pursued pair had stopped, they never were able to catch up with them. Dermot was caring for Grainne with what food he could procure in the forest. He was kind to her, but steadily resisted all her efforts to get him to marry her. At each camping place he left a sign that Finn would recognize as a pledge that he was not fleeing of his own free will, but because the maiden had put him under bonds.
This treatment, however, did not please Grainne. All her pleading for his love met with no response. At last she appealed to a Druid for help. These Druids had great magical power, if they could be prevailed upon to use them. Grainne did not tell him who she was. She played a part calculated to excite the pity of the magician.
“I am in deep trouble,” she told him. “I fear that only you can be of assistance to me. I can tell by the kindness of your face that you are always willing to help a maiden in distress.”
The Druid was flattered by this artful speech.
“What can I do for you, O maiden?” he asked.
“I have just been married, and my husband is falling in love with another maiden,” lied Grainne. “I would have you do something to make me more beautiful, so that my husband will love me again.”
“I could not make you more beautiful than you are already,” said the Druid. He was something of a flatterer himself.