The wind reached the forest before the first lances of the sunlight had thrust themselves through the umbrage at its higher end. Nial heard it lifting the still air of the pine-glooms with its vast wings, and beating it to and fro, sending volleys of fragrant breath from swaying tree-top to tree-top. It wandered nearer and nearer: at first overhead, so that only the summits of the pines swayed southward, but soon it came leaping and blithely laughing through the long aisles of the forest. The indescribable rumour of the sunflood followed. As the old Celtic poets tell us, the noise of the sunfire on the waves at daybreak is audible for those who have ears to hear. So may be heard the sudden rush and sweep of the sunbeams when they first stream upon a wood. The boughs, the branches, the feathery or plume-like summits of the trees do homage at that moment, when the Gates of Wonder open for a few seconds on the unceasing miracle of Creation. The leaves quiver, or curl upward, even though there be no breath of air. It is then that crows, rooks, wood-doves, and, on the heights, the hawks and eagles, lean their breasts against the sunflood and soar far forward and downward on wide-poised motionless wings: a long, unswerving, scythe-sweep, strange in its silent and ordered beauty, to be seen similarly at no other time. The sound was an exultation throughout the forest. Soon the invisible presence dwelt everywhere. Every branch held a note of music: every leaf was a whisper. There was not a frond of bracken, a blade of grass, that did not bend listeningly. The windflowers in the mossiest hollows were tremulous. When the sunbeams came dancing and leaping in the track of the wind, the note of exultation, in deepening, became more indiscriminate. The bleating of the stags, the lowing of the distant kye, the plaintive crying of the ewes and lambs, the calls and songs of the birds, the myriad indeterminate voice of morning, blent in a universal rumour of joy. Nial stood listening intently, now to this sound, now to that. He knew the forest, and the life of the forest, as no other man could do. He, too, was a woodlander, as much as the deer, or the shy cushat, or the very bracken.