growing, he cleared the former from his face that he might see the
worlds over him, and putting his knapsack under his head, fell fast
asleep.

When he woke not even the shadow of a dream lingered to let him know
what he had been dreaming. He woke with such a clear mind, such an
immediate uplifting of the soul, that it seemed to him no less than
to Jacob that he must have slept at the foot of the heavenly stair.
The wind came round him like the stuff of thought unshaped, and
every breath he drew seemed like God breathing afresh into his
nostrils the breath of life. Who knows what the thing we call air
is? We know about it, but it we do not know. The sun shone as if
smiling at the self-importance of the sulky darkness he had driven
away, and the world seemed content with a heavenly content. So
fresh was Donal's sense that he felt as if his sleep within and the
wind without had been washing him all the night. So peaceful, so
blissful was his heart that it longed to share its bliss; but there
was no one within sight, and he set out again on his journey.

He had not gone far when he came to a dip in the moorland--a round
hollow, with a cottage of turf in the middle of it, from whose
chimney came a little smoke: there too the day was begun! He was
glad he had not seen it before, for then he might have missed the
repose of the open night. At the door stood a little girl in a blue
frock. She saw him, and ran in. He went down and drew near to the
door. It stood wide open, and he could not help seeing in.

A man sat at the table in the middle of the floor, his forehead on
his hand. Donal did not see his face. He seemed waiting, like his
father for the Book, while his mother got it from the top of the