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CHAPTER II
He had not gone a great distance from Ben Edair when he came to an intricate, gloomy wood, where the trees grew so thickly and the undergrowth was such a sprout and tangle that one could scarcely pass through it. He remembered that a path had once been hacked through the wood, and he sought for this. It was a deeply scooped, hollow way, and it ran or wriggled through the entire length of the wood.
Into this gloomy drain Fionn descended and made progress, but when he had penetrated deeply in the dank forest he heard a sound of thumping and squelching footsteps, and he saw coming towards him a horrible, evil-visaged being; a wild, monstrous, yellow-skinned, big-boned giant, dressed in nothing but an ill-made, mud-plastered, drab-coloured coat, which swaggled and clapped against the calves of his big bare legs. On his stamping feet there were great brogues of boots that were shaped like, but were bigger than, a boat, and each time he put a foot down it squashed and squirted a barrelful of mud from the sunk road.
Fionn had never seen the like of this vast person, and he stood gazing on him, lost in a stare of astonishment.
The great man saluted him.
"All alone, Fionn?' he cried. "How does it happen that not one Fenian of the Fianna is at the side of his captain?" At this inquiry Fionn got back his wits.
"That is too long a story and it is too intricate and pressing to be told, also I have no time to spare now."
"Yet tell it now," the monstrous man insisted.
Fionn, thus pressed, told of the coming of Cael of the Iron, of the challenge the latter had issued, and that he, Fionn, was off to Tara of the Kings to find Caelte mac Rona'n.
"I know that foreigner well," the big man commented.
"Is he the champion he makes himself out to be?" Fionn inquired.
"He can do twice as much as he said he would do," the monster replied.
"He won't outrun Caelte mac Rona'n," Fionn asserted. The big man jeered.
"Say that he won't outrun a hedgehog, dear heart. This Cael will end the course by the time your Caelte begins to think of starting."
"Then," said Fionn, "I no longer know where to turn, or how to protect the honour of Ireland."
"I know how to do these things," the other man commented with a slow nod of the head.
"If you do," Fionn pleaded, "tell it to me upon your honour."
"I will do that," the man replied.
"Do not look any further for the rusty-kneed, slow-trotting son of Rona'n," he continued, "but ask me to run your race, and, by this hand, I will be first at the post."
At this the Chief began to laugh.
"My good friend, you have work enough to carry the two tons of mud that are plastered on each of your coat-tails, to say nothing of your weighty boots."
"By my hand," the man cried, "there is no person in Ireland but myself can win that race. I claim a chance."
Fionn agreed then. "Be it so," said he. "And now, tell me your name?"
"I am known as the Carl of the Drab Coat."
"All names are names," Fionn responded, "and that also is a name."
They returned then to Ben Edair.
