“Now, indeed,” he said, “my luck is gone.”
And he inquired of all the servants, and then of the lord’s daughter, and she laughed, by which he knew she had it; but no coaxing would get it from her, so when all was useless he went away, and set out again to reach his old home.
And he was very mournful and threw himself down on the ferns near an old fort, waiting till night came on, for he feared to go home in the daylight lest the people should laugh at him for his folly. And about dusk three cats came out of the fort talking to each other.
“How long our cook is away,” said one.
“What can have happened to him?” said another.
And as they were grumbling a fourth cat came up.
“What delayed you?” they all asked angrily.
Then he told his story—how he had met Towtas and given him the ring. “And I just went,” he said, “to the lord’s palace to see how the young man behaved; and I was leaping over the dinner-table when the lord’s knife struck my tail and three drops of blood fell upon his plate, but he never saw it and swallowed them with his meat. So now he has three kittens inside him and is dying of agony, and can never be cured until he drinks three draughts of the water of the well of Ballytowtas.”
So when young Towtas heard the cats talk he sprang up and went and told his mother to give him three bottles full of the water of the Towtas well, and he would go to the lord disguised as a doctor and cure him.
So off he went to Dublin. And all the doctors in Ireland were round the lord, but none of them could tell what ailed him, or how to cure him. Then Towtas came in and said, “I will cure him.” So they gave him entertainment and lodging, and when he was refreshed he gave of the well water three draughts to his lordship, when out jumped the three kittens. And there was great rejoicing, and they treated Towtas like a prince. But all the same he could not get the ring from the lord’s daughter, so he set off home again quite disheartened, and thought to himself, “If I could only meet the man again that gave me the ring who knows what luck I might have?” And he sat down to rest in a wood, and saw there not far off three boys fighting under an oak-tree.