"Well, then," answered his mother, "if you must go, before you leave me, you and your brothers must hunt in the forest for a month, and bring in as much food as will do me and Rory here for a year and a day."
"But," said Rory, the youngest, or Roreen Shouragh, or the Lively, as he was called, in consequence of the 'cute and merry temperament of his mind—"but, Diarmid, you know I am now beyant fifteen years of age, an' so, if you go, I'll folly you to the worldt's end!"
"You presumptious little atomy of a barebones," answered his eldest brother, "if I only see the size of a thrush's ankle of you follyin' us on the road, I'll turn back an' bate that wiry an' freckled little carkiss o' yours into frog's jelly! So stay at home in pace an' quietness, an' perhaps when I come back I might give you a good purse o' goold to begin your forthin with."
"That for your mane an' ludiacrous purse o' goold!" exclaimed Roreen Shouragh, at the same time snapping his fingers in the face of his brother. "Arrah! do you hear him, mother? But never mind. Let us be off into the forest to-morrow, an' we'll see who'll bring home the most food before night!"
"Well," said his mother, "whether he stays at home or goes away, I fear he'll come to some bad end with that sharp tongue of his, and his wild capers."
"With all jonteel respect, mother," answered Shouragh again, "I mane to do no such thing. I think myself as good a hairo this minnit—because I have the sowl an' heart o' one as King Dathi, who was killed in some furrin place that I don't recklect the jography of, or as Con o' the Hundhert Battles, or as the best man amongst them, Fion himself—an' I'll do as great actions as any o' them yet!"
This grandiloquent boast of Roreen Shouragh's set his mother and brothers into a fit of laughter, from which they only recovered when it was time to retire to rest. In the morning the three brothers betook themselves to the forest, and at the fall of night returned with a great spoil of game. From morning till night they hunted thus every day for a month, at the end of which time Diarmid said that they had as much food stored in as would last his mother and Rory for a year and a day.
On a hot summer noon the two brothers left the little hut, with their mother's blessing on their heads, and set off on their adventures. After crossing a few valleys, they came at length to the shore of the Blackwater, and sat down in the shade of a huge oak-tree on the bank to rest themselves. Beneath them, in a clear, shady pool, a huge pike, with his voracious jaws ready for a plunge, was watching a merry little speckled trout, which in its turn was regarding with most affectionate eyes a bright blue fly, that was disporting overhead on the surface of the water. Suddenly the trout darted upward into the air, catching the ill-starred fly, but, in its return to the element beneath, unfortunately plumped itself into the Charybdis-like jaws of the villanous [{228}] pike, and was from that in one moment quietly deposited in his stomach.
"Look at that!" said Diarmid to his brother. "That's the way with a man that works an' watches everything with a keen eye. He'll have all in the end, just as the pike has both fly and throut—an' just as I have both fly, an' throut, an' pike!" continued he, giving his spear a quick dart into the deep pool, and then landing the luckless pike, transfixed through and through, upon the green bank. "That's the way to manage, and the divvle a betther sign o' good luck we could have in the beginning of our journey, than to get a good male so aisy!"
"Hooray!" exclaimed a voice behind them. "That's the way to manage most galliantly. What a nate dinner the thurminjous monsther will make for the three of us!" and on turning round, the two brothers beheld Roreen Shouragh, accoutred like themselves, and dancing with most exuberant delight at the feat beside them on the grass.