no human shelter, but went out into his Father's house--out
under his Father's heaven! The small and narrow were not to him the
safe, but the wide and open. Thick walls cover men from the enemies
they fear; the Lord sought space. There the angels come and go more
freely than where roofs gather distrust. If ever we hear a far-off
rumour of angel-visit, it is not from some solitary plain with lonely
children?

Donal walked along the high table-land till he was weary, and rest
looked blissful. Then he turned aside from the rough track into the
heather and bracken. When he came to a little dry hollow, with a yet
thicker growth of heather, its tops almost close as those of his bed at
his father's cottage, he sought no further. Taking his knife, he cut a
quantity of heather and ferns, and heaped it on the top of the thickest
bush; then creeping in between the cut and the 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