Then Diarmuid sat down on the brink of the stream that was flowing
through the heart of the mountain, and Grania was washing her hands, and
she asked his knife from him to cut her nails with.
As to the strangers, as many of them as were alive yet, they came to the
hill where their three leaders were bound, and they thought to loose
them; but it is the way those bonds were, all they did by meddling with
them was to draw them tighter.
And they were not long there till they saw a woman coming towards them
with the quickness of a swallow or a weasel or a blast of wind over bare
mountain-tops. And she asked them who was it had done that great
slaughter on them. "Who are you that is asking that?" said they. "I am
the Woman of the Black Mountain, the woman-messenger of Finn, son of
Cumhal," she said; "and it is looking for you Finn sent me." "Indeed we
do not know who it was did this slaughter," they said, "but we will tell
you his appearance. A young man he was, having dark curling hair and
ruddy cheeks. And it is worse again to us," they said, "our three
leaders to be bound this way, and we not able to loose them." "What way
did that young man go from you?" said the woman. "It was late last
night he left us," they said, "and we do not know where is he gone." "I
give you my word," she said, "it was Diarmuid himself that was in it;
and take your hounds now and lay them on his track, and I will send Finn
and the Fianna of Ireland to you.
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