|
The robbers made their supper, each
disposing of his share of the goat as he thought proper.
One of the men, studying the shoulder bone of the goat
said:. "Before we have finished the goat, one of us
will be a dead man."
The rest, hearing this, remembered that they had frequently
heard of the tradition that there were some men, in
every age, who were so favoured as to be able to tell
destinies or future events, by their supernatural knowledge.
Thereby, they were all agitated.
"Well," saith the foreteller, "Should I myself be the
person destined to die ere each can eat his own share
of the goat, the events will certainly verify what I
said for I have never been wrong since I got the first
insight of my supernatural knowledge. And so sure as
I have this shoulder bone in my hand, the death of one
of our number will happen within the time specified."
There was one of those men, who, after eating his supper
had left a remainder which he had hung upon the branches
of a deer horn. He got up and said: "I'll make sure
to eat my own share and thereby avert the sudden death
so certainly said to take place before all the shares
of the goat are eaten."
He stepped forward to the wall towards where he had
hung his meat. Something caught his feet and he fell
towards the wall. A point of the deer antlers struck
his face as he fell, piercing through his eye to his
brain.
He fell dead on the spot, when all the surviving robbers
were astonished at the sure and sudden fulfillment of
the prophecy; and some of those men, averred Murdo Dubh,
discontinued their former way of life owing to the impression
made upon them by the sudden death of their fellow robber.
|
