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.