When the men awoke from their drugged sleep, and Oscar told Finn and
Cormack what had happened, both men were exceedingly angry. They
immediately ordered a pursuit of the fugitives. For days Finn and his
men followed the trail of the two. While they often came upon campfires
that still smouldered, showing where the pursued pair had stopped, they
never were able to catch up with them. Dermot was caring for Grainne
with what food he could procure in the forest. He was kind to her, but
steadily resisted all her efforts to get him to marry her. At each
camping place he left a sign that Finn would recognize as a pledge that
he was not fleeing of his own free will, but because the maiden had put
him under bonds.
This treatment, however, did not please Grainne. All her pleading for
his love met with no response. At last she appealed to a Druid for help.
These Druids had great magical power, if they could be prevailed upon to
use them. Grainne did not tell him who she was. She played a part
calculated to excite the pity of the magician.
“I am in deep trouble,” she told him. “I fear that only you can be of
assistance to me. I can tell by the kindness of your face that you are
always willing to help a maiden in distress.”
The Druid was flattered by this artful speech.
“What can I do for you, O maiden?” he asked.
“I have just been married, and my husband is falling in love with
another maiden,” lied Grainne. “I would have you do something to make me
more beautiful, so that my husband will love me again.”
“I could not make you more beautiful than you are already,” said the
Druid. He was something of a flatterer himself.
“Then give me something to kill me,” wailed Grainne. “I cannot live
without my husband’s love.” At this point she burst into a violent
sobbing. The heart of the Druid was touched by her pretended grief.
“But if I cannot make you more beautiful, there is something else I can
do for you,” he said.
“What is that?” asked Grainne, drying her eyes.
“I can give you a liquid to pour into the drink of your husband. As long
as the effect lasts, he will love you better than anything else in the
world.”
“Give it to me at once,” said Grainne. “If I can but win back his love,
I will keep his heart forever.”
So the Druid gave her the love charm, and Grainne administered it to
Dermot in his food. Immediately he became wildly in love with her and
yielded to her pleadings to marry her at once.
Finn’s pursuit had daily become less insistent. He had never been
strongly in favor of marrying Grainne, and his anger against Dermot
became less keen. When he heard that the two were married he abandoned
the pursuit entirely. He sent word to Dermot that if he kept out of his
way he would no longer seek to punish him, but that he had been expelled
from the Fenians for disloyalty to his leader.
And so it happened that Finn lost his best friend and his companion in
his adventures. The Fenians, also, lost their best fighter. This is the
reason why, in the next story, which tells of the greatest battle the
army ever engaged in, Dermot was not there to help.