'
"When the crow heard that, she came to the eagle herself. 'King Eagle,'
says she, 'why do you want to kill me, who live ten miles from you, and
never flew across your path in my life? Better kill that little rogue of a
sparhawk who lives between us, and is always ready to poach on your
marches whenever your back is turned. So you will have her wood as well as
your own.'
"'You are a wise crow,' said the eagle; and he went out and killed the
sparhawk, and took his wood."
Loud laughed King Ranald and his Vikings all. "Well spoken, young man! We
will take the sparhawk, and let the crow bide."
"Nay, but," quoth Hereward, "hear the end of the story. After a while the
eagle finds the crow beating about the edge of the sparhawk's wood.
"'Oho!' says he, 'so you can poach as well as that little hooknosed
rogue?' and he killed her too.
"'Ah!' says the crow, when she lay a-dying, 'my blood is on my own head.
If I had but left the sparhawk between me and this great tyrant!'
"And so the eagle got all three woods to himself."
At which the Vikings laughed more loudly than ever; and King Ranald,
chuckling at the notion of eating up the hapless Irish princes one by one,
sent back the priest (not without a present for his church, for Ranald was
a pious man) to tell the great O'Brodar, that unless he sent into
Waterford by that day week two hundred head of cattle, a hundred pigs, a
hundredweight of clear honey, and as much of wax, Ranald would not leave
so much as a sucking-pig alive in Ivark.
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