A frenzy of insensate wrath shook him, so that he nearly lost his grip. Screaming, he hurled toward Oona the curses that seemed to him most dreadful and mysterious, dark anathemas of old-time learned here and there during his far-wanderings.
"_Droch cheann ort, Oona! Droch bhàs ort! Och, ochan, bas dunach ort! Gu ma h-olc dhuit!--Gu ma h-olc dhuit!_"[5]
[5] "Bad end to you! Bad death to you! Ay, and may a death of woe be on you! Evil to you, evil to you!"
A faint shuddering cry came from somewhere close at hand. In a moment his madness went from him. The dumb animal soul felt the finger of God touch it. All wrath ceased, and a great pity came, and longing, and sorrow. The tears sprang to his eyes, and he lay on the branch sobbing convulsively, so that he was like to fall.
He raised his head at last, and looked eagerly about him. "_Oona!_"
Still there was no response. His gaze lanced hither and thither like a swallow. If a bee crawled from a foxglove bell, he noted it: if a spider swung on a glistening thread, he saw her as, spinning, she sank. If a woodlark stirred, he saw the shadow of its wing flit from frond to frond. But of Oona, no trace.
"Oona, my fairy! Oona, my fawn! I didn't mean it! I didn't mean it! The words were in my throat. I couldn't help it. Not a word was true. Oh, my grief, my grief! Oona mùirnean, Oona mo mùirnean--Ochone, ochone, thràisg mo chridhe--darling, darling, oh, 'tis my heart that is parched!"
But the child was obdurate. She made no sign. Nial lay moaning on the branch. The silence was unbroken, save by the sea-like whisper of the wind among the leaves.
Suddenly a cushat crooned. Then the low croodling sound palpitated upon the warm sunlit air that flooded in among the pine-boughs.
The dwarf listened. The gloom in his eyes lifted. He knew how Oona loved his one utterance that was his own, which he had made in imitation of the crooning of a dove. Raising his head, he half mumbled, half sang:
"_Oona, Oona, mo ghràidh, Oona, Oona, mo ghràidh, Mùirnean, mùirnean, mùirnean, Oona, Oona, mo ghràidh!_"
Surely she would respond: ah, yes, that shrill mocking laugh, elfin sweet in his ears! His gaze leaped along the track of the sound, and then at last he espied her, crouching low in the fork of a rowan, with her bare legs hidden by the bole and only the sparkle of her eyes glinting from behind the screen of leaves.