Johannes had scarcely taken it when he felt that he had become as light and fleet as one of the doves. He stretched himself out, up flew the flock of doves, and Johannes soared in their midst, through the free, open air and the clear sunshine. Nothing was around him but the pure blue, and the bright gleaming of the white dove-wings. They flew over the garden toward the woods, whose tree-tops were waving in the distance like the swell of a green sea. Johannes looked down below, and saw his father sitting at the open window of the living-room. Simon sat on the window-sill, his forepaws folded, basking in the sunshine. "Can they see me?" he thought; but he did not dare call to them. Presto was tearing through the garden paths, sniffing about every shrub, behind every wall, and scratching against the door of every hot-house or out-building, trying to find his master. "Presto! Presto!" cried Johannes. The dog looked up, and began to wag his tail and whimper, plaintively. "I am coming back, Presto. Watch!" cried Johannes, but he was too far away. They swept over the woods, and the crows flew croaking out of the high tree-tops where their nests were. It was midsummer, and the odor of the blossoming lindens streamed up from the green woods below them. In an empty nest at the top of a tall linden tree sat Windekind with the wreath of wind-flowers upon his head. He nodded to Johannes. "Is that you? That is good," said he. "I sent for you. Now we can stay together a long while--if you would like to." "Indeed, I would like to," said Johannes. Then he thanked the kind doves who had brought him thither, and dropped down with Windekind into the woods. It was cool and shady there. The golden thrush was fluting his strain--nearly always the very same, but yet a little different. "Poor bird!" said Windekind. "He was once a bird-of-paradise. That you can still see by his strange, yellow feathers; but he was given another covering and expelled from Paradise. There is a word which can bring back again his former glorious covering, and restore him to Paradise, but he has forgotten it. Day after day he tries to find that word. He sings something like it, but it is not the right word." Countless flies were glistening like floating crystals in the sunbeams that fell through the dark foliage. Listening acutely, one could hear their buzzing like a great, monotonous concert, filling the entire forest. It was as if the sunbeams sang. Thick, dark-green moss covered the ground, and Johannes had become so small again that it appeared to him like a new-grown woods at the bottom of the great forest. What elegant little stems and how closely they grew! It was difficult to pass between them, and the moss-woods seemed dreadfully large.