"Then a stake for your belly, and nails through your hands, thirst on your tongue, and the corbies at your eyne!"
And, with that, Black Angus louped into the green water, and the hoarse wild laugh of him sprang into the air and fell dead upon the shore like a wind-spent mew.
Colum went slowly back to the brethren, brooding deep. "God is good," he said in a low voice, again and again; and each time that he spoke there came a daisy into the grass, or a bird rose, with song to it for the first time, wonderful and sweet to hear.
As he drew near to the House of God he met Murtagh, an old monk of the ancient race of the isles.
"Who is Kirsteen M'Vurich, Murtagh?" he asked.
"She was a good servant of Christ, she was, in the south isles, O Colum, till Black Angus won her to the sea."
"And when was that?"
"Nigh upon a thousand years ago."
"But can mortal sin live as long as that?"
"Ay, it endureth. Long, long ago, before Oisìn sang, before Fionn, before Cuchullin, was a glorious great prince, and in the days when the Tuatha-de-Danann were sole lords in all green Banba, Black Angus made the woman Kirsteen M'Vurich leave the place of prayer and go down to the sea-shore, and there he leaped upon her and made her his prey, and she followed him into the sea."