From that hour they had peace. Thenceforth they suffered no more from cold or hunger. When the savage frosts of winter, or the wild rains of autumn, came over the western sea, the four swans alighted on Innis Glora, and sang their wild, sweet, beautiful music, and then fell asleep, nestling side by side, till they awoke to warmth and joy. So was it till the end of the three hundred years. Three hundred years on the lough of Darvra; three hundred on the sea-stream of the Moyle; three hundred on the sea of Glora, to the west of Erin. All these ages had they endured, and now their exile was at an end. “On the morrow, dear brothers,” Fionula sang rejoicingly, “on the morrow we shall wing our way inland; for our hearts ache to see again our own country and our kindred, and the faces of Lir our father, and Bove Derg the king, and all whom we love. Great shall be the joy at Shee Finnaha when they behold us once more; but not more joyous shall their delight be than it will be for us to see the smoke rising from the fires of our people, and to see the greatness and beauty of Shee Finnaha.” They could not sleep that night for eagerness. At dawn they rose on white wings, circling through the wide blue spaces of the air. When the yellow stream of the sun poured westward out of the mountain-ridges of Achill, they chanted a farewell song, and then stretched their wide pinions and flew homeward with beating hearts. Sweet it was to see below them the green grass instead of the cold, running wave; and the hollows of the meadows, how much dearer were they than the troughs of the drowning billows! When they came to the great hill above Shee Finnaha, their wings were seized with so great a trembling that scarcely could they reach into view of Lir’s high shining house. Descending, therefore, they alit on a rock and rested awhile. A deep sadness oppressed Fionula. There was so great a silence on every rock, on every tree. Moreover, she had seen a stag stand staring inland with idle eyes, and had seen the hill-fox and the wolf prowling in the glen where as a child she had often played. “What is the fear that is in your eyes, Fionula?” asked one of her brothers with sudden dread. “Alas! Aed, if Lir and the Dedannans were still here, would a stag stand staring inland, where Shee Finnaha is, with heedless eyes and no hoof lifted, and nostrils idly sniffing the unfrequented wind?” “Of a surety no, Fionula.” “Yet that have I seen, Aed. And if in Shee Finnaha still dwelled our Dedannan folk, would the hill-fox and the wolf prowl in the Glen of the White Water, there where we were wont to play and bathe, we and all the little children?” “Of a surety no, Fionula.” “Yet that have I seen, O Aed and Fiachra and Conn. Come! we are rested now. Let us hasten homeward to Shee Finnaha, that we have longed for all these years, and to our father Lir, who awaiteth us.” Onward they flew.