"Never!" cried Eileen.
"Then you have sealed your fate!" exclaimed the knight fiercely; and suddenly he rose and extended his arms, and said some strange words that Eileen did not understand; and all at once it appeared to her as if some thick white pall were spreading over
her, and her eyelids began to close, and involuntarily she sank back.
Once more, but as if in a dream, she heard the knight's voice.
"If you do not become my wife," he said, "you shall never be the wife of any living man. The black cat can hold his own. Sleep here till another lover comes to woo you."
A mocking laugh rang through the room—and then Eileen heard no more. It seemed to her that her life was passing away. A strange feeling came to her, as if she were sinking through the air; there was a sound in her ears of rushing water; and then all recollection and all consciousness ceased.
Some travelers passing that evening by the lough gazed at the spot on which the castle had stood, and rubbed their eyes in wild surprise, for there was no castle there, but only a bare tract of desolate, waste ground. The prophecy had been fulfilled; the castle had been lifted up from its foundation and sunk in the waters of the lough.
This was the story that Dermot used to listen to as he sat in his father's hall on winter nights—a wild old story, very strange, and sweet too, as well as strange. For they were living still, the legend always said—the chief and his household, and beautiful Eileen; not dead at all, but only sleeping an enchanted sleep, till some one of the M'Swynes should come and kill the black cat who guarded them, and set them free. Under those dark, deep waters, asleep for three hundred years, lay Eileen, with all her massive ornaments on her neck and arms, and red-gold Irish hair. How often did the boy think of her, and picture to himself the motionless face, with its closed, waiting eyes, and yearn to see it. Asleep there for three hundred years! His heart used to burn at the imagination. In all these centuries had no M'Swyne been found bold enough to find the black cat and kill him? Could it be so hard a thing to kill a black cat? the little fellow thought.
"I'd kill him myself if only I had the
chance," he said one day; and when he said that his father laughed.