"There are some who see and cannot hear, and some who hear and do not see, and some who neither see nor hear, and you are one of these last, Dermod, son of Carroll." The speaker was a man of about forty years, a little above the medium height, of well-knit frame, of a sanguine complexion. His bushy brows, shaded pensive eyes, that one would look for in a poet or a dreamer rather than in a soldier, yet a soldier, Cathal, son of Rory, was, and one of the guards of Cobhthach Cael, the usurper, who reigned over Leinster; it was in the guard-room in the outer wall of the Fortress of Dun Righ that he addressed these words to one of his companions, a stripling of twenty, but of gallant bearing.