_Queen_: It is business that cannot wait. Here now is a request I have written to the bully of the King of Alban, bidding him to strike the head off whatever man will put the letter in his hand.

Write your name and sign to it, in three royal words.

_King_: I wouldn't sign a letter out of my right hour if it was to make the rivers run gold. There is nothing comes of signing letters but more trouble in the end.

_Queen_: Give me, so, to bind it a drop of your own blood as a token and a seal. You will not refuse, and I telling you the messenger will go with it, and that will lose his head through it, is no less than that troublesome cook!

_King: (With a roar.)_ Anyone to say that word again I will not leave a head on any neck in the kingdom! I declare on my oath it would be best for me to take the world for my pillow and put that lad upon the throne!

_(Queen goes back frightened to door.)_

_Gateman: (Coming in.)_ There is a man coming in that will take no denial. It is Fintan the Astrologer.

_(Fintan enters with Dall Glic, Nurse, Princess, Taig, Ma.n.u.s and Prince of the Marshes crowding after him.)_

_King_: Another disturbance! The whole world would seem to be on the move!

_Queen_: Fintan! What brings him here again?

_Fintan_: A great deceit? A terrible deception!

_King_: What at all is it?

_Fintan_: Long and all as I'm in the world, such a thing never happened in my lifetime!

_Queen_: What is it has happened?

_Fintan_: It is not any fault of myself or any miscounting of my own! I am certain sure of that much. Is it that the stars of heaven are gone astray, they that are all one with a clock--unless it might be on a stormy night when they are wild-looking around the moon.

_King_: Go on with your story and stop your raving.

_Fintan_: The first time ever I came to this place I made a prophecy.

_Dall Glic_: You did, about the child was in the cradle.

_Fintan_: And that was but new in the world.

It is what I said, that she was born under a certain star, and that in a score of years all but two, whatever acting was going on in that star at the time she was born, she would get her crosses in the same way.

_Dall Glic_: The cross you foretold to her was to be ate by a Dragon. You laid down it would come upon a twelvemonth from this very day.

_Fintan_: That's it. That was according to my reckoning. There was no mistake in that.

And I thought better of the Seven Stars than they to make a fool of me, after all the respect I had showed them, giving my life to watching themselves and the plans they have laid down for men and for mortals.

_King_: It seems as if I myself was the best prophet and that there is no Dragon at all.

_Fintan_: What a bad opinion you have of me that I would be so far out as that! It would be a deception and a disappointment out of measure, there to come no Dragon, and I after foretelling and prophesying him.

_King_: Troth, it would be no disappointment at all to ourselves.

_Fintan_: It would be better, I tell you, a score of king's daughters to be ate and devoured, than the high stars in their courses to be proved wrong.

But it must be right, it surely must be right. I gave the prophecy according to her birth hour, that was one hour before the falling back of the sun.

_Dall Glic_: It was not, but an hour before the rising of the sun.

_Fintan_: Not at all! It was the Nurse herself told me it was at evening she was born.

_Queen_: There is the Nurse now. Let you ask her account.

_Fintan: (To Nurse.)_ It was yourself laid down it was evening!

_Nurse_: Sure I wasn't in the place at all till Samhuin time, when she was near three months in the world.

_Fintan_: Then it was some other hag the very spit of you! I wish she didn't tell a lie.

_Nurse_: Sure that one was banished out of this on the head of telling lies. An hour ere sunrise, and before the crowing of the c.o.c.ks. The Dall Glic will tell you that much.

_Dall Glic_: That is so. I have it marked upon the genealogies in the chest.

_Fintan_: That is great news! It was a heavy wrong was done me! It had me greatly upset.

Twelve hours out in laying down the birth-time!

That clears the character of myself and of the carwheel of the stars. I knew I could make no mistake in my office and in my billet!

_King_: Will you stop praising yourself and give out some sense?

_Fintan_: Knowledge is surely the greatest thing in the world! And truth! Twelve hours with the planets is equal to twelve months on earth.

I am well satisfied now.

_Queen_: So the Dragon is not coming, and the girl is in no danger at all?

_Fintan_: Not coming! Heaven help your poor head! Didn't I get word within the last half-hour he is after leaving his den in the Kingdoms of the Cold, and is at this minute ploughing his way to Ireland, the same as I foretold him, but that I made a miscount of a year?

_Nurse: (Putting her arm round Princess.)_ Och!

do not listen or give heed to him at all!

_Queen_: When is he coming so?

_Fintan_: Amn't I tired telling you this day in the place of this day twelvemonth. But as to the minute, there's too much lies in this place for me to be rightly sure.

_King_: The curse of the seven elements upon him!

_Fintan_: Little he'll care for your cursing. The whole world wouldn't stop him coming to your own grand gate.

_Princess: (Coming forward.)_ Then I am to die to-night?

_Fintan_: You are, without he will be turned back by someone having a stronger star than your own, and I know of no star is better, unless it might be the sun.

_Queen_: If you had minded me, and given in to ring the wedding bells, you would be safe out of this before now.

_Fintan_: That Dragon not to find her before him, he will ravage and destroy the whole district with the poisonous spittle of his jaw, till the want will be so great the father will disown his son and will not let him in the door. Well, good-bye to ye!

Ye'll maybe believe me to have foreknowledge another time, and I proved to be right. I have knocked great comfort out of that!