"Bron! bron! mo bron!" he answered; "mo bron, mo bron, ochone, arone! Doil-ghios orm'sa, tha mo chridhe briste!"[10]
Almost every afternoon he went out alone upon the heights, though never again by the cairn where Marsail lay. Sometimes he would sit on a boulder, brooding dark; at times Sorcha or Oona would descry him kneeling in the heather, often with fierce gestures, as he prayed wild prayers—fragments of which the wind sometimes bore to the listener, who no more durst approach.
Ever since that day by the cairn Nial had kept out of his way. Not without reason; for once, as the dwarf lay sleeping in the noon-heat, under the shadow of a rock, he was suddenly seized in an iron grip.
It was in vain for him to struggle. What he saw in the face of his captor gave him the courage of desperation.
"Let me go, Màm-Gorm!" he muttered in a voice hoarse with passion. "Let me go. I am Nial of the woods."
"Ay, Nial of the woods! Spawn of the Evil One! Think you I don't know you to be the child of the Cailliach? You talk of your lost soul, poor fool! Your lost soul, you that never had and never will have a soul!"
"Let me go, Màm-Gorm!"
"Let you go! and where will I be letting you go to, you that are no man, but only an elfish creature of the woods? Was it you that came out of the grave that day—that day by the cairn?"
"And what will you do, Màm-Gorm?"
"What will I do? What will I do? By the blood on my soul, I will drive a stake through your body, so that no more shall you haunt the living!"