Then Achta, when she had cherished her boy and rejoiced over him, bade her handmaid keep watch over both of them, and they fell asleep. But the maid's eyes were heavy with weariness and long travelling, and ere long she, too, was overpowered by slumber, and all three slept a deep sleep while the horses wandered away grazing through the wood.
By and by there came a she-wolf roaming through the wood in search of prey for her whelps, and it came upon the sleeping woman and the little child. It did not wake the woman, but very softly it picked up the infant and bore it off to the stony cave that is hard by to Creevagh in the hill that was afterwards called Mount Cormac.
After a while the mother waked up and found her child gone. Then she uttered a lamentable cry, and woke her handmaid, and both the women searched hither and thither, but no trace of the child could they find; and thus Luna found them; for he had heard news of the battle and the death of his King, and he had come to succour Achta as he had pledged his word to do. Luna and his men also made search for the infant, but in vain; and at last he conveyed the two sorrowing women to his palace; but Achta was somewhat comforted by her prophetic dream. Luna then proclaimed that whoever should discover the King's son, if he were yet alive, might claim of him what reward he would.
And so the time passed, till one day a man named Grec, a clansman of Luna the lord of Corann, as he ranged the woods hunting, came on a stony cavern in the side of a hill, and before it he saw wolf-cubs at play, and among them a naked child on all fours gambolling with them, and a great she-wolf that mothered them all. "Right," cried Grec, and off he goes to Luna his lord. "What wilt thou give me for the King's son?" said he. "What wilt thou have?" said Luna. So Grec asked for certain lands, and Luna bound himself to give them to him and to his posterity, and there lived and flourished the Clan Gregor for many a generation to come. So Luna, guided by Grec, went to the cave on Mount Cormac, and took the child and the wolf-cubs all together and brought them home. And the child they called Cormac, or the Chariot-Child. Now the lad grew up very comely and strong, and he abode with Luna in Connacht, and no one told him of his descent.
II
THE JUDGEMENT OF CORMAC
Once upon a time it happened that Cormac was at play with the two sons of Luna, and the lads grew angry in their play and came to blows, and Cormac struck one of them to the ground. "Sorrow on it," cried the lad, "here I have been beaten by one that knows not his clan or kindred, save that he is a fellow without a father." When Cormac heard that he was troubled and ashamed, and he went to Luna and told him what had been said.
And Luna seeing the trouble of the youth, and also that he was strong and noble to look on, and wise and eloquent in speech, held that the time was now come to reveal to him his descent. "Thou hadst indeed a clan and kindred," he said, "and a father of the noblest, for thou art the son of Art, the High King of Ireland, who was slain and dispossessed by mac Con. But it is foretold that thou shalt yet come to thy father's place, and the land pines for thee even now, for there is no good yield from earth or sea under the unlawful rule of him who now sits on the throne of Art."
"If that be so," said Cormac, "let us go to Tara, and bide our time there in my father's house."