'What is this?' said he.
Then he smiled, for he understood his daughter, and knew that she had not only chosen her lover, but had won her choice.
'My son,' he added, without waiting for an answer, 'you and yours will reign after me. Look to it! Now let us go to supper.'
THE QUEEN OF THE MANY-COLOURED BEDCHAMBER
AN IRISH FAIRY TALE
One day in the long ago, the sun shone down upon a green wood whose mightiest trees have since rotted at the bottom of the ocean, where the best masts find a grave. While the sunlight slept on the bosom of the foliage, a horseman galloped in the shade beneath. The great chief Fion, son of Cumhail, was looking for his knights, whom he had outstripped in the hunt.
He reined in his steed in a broad glade, and blew his bugle loud and clear. Beside the echoes repeated among the hillsides, there was no answering call. He rode on, pausing now and again to blow another and another bugle-blast, but always with the same result.
At length the wood grew more scattered, and presently he came out upon a stretch of plain where the grass was so green that it looked like emerald; and beyond it in the distance, at the end of the sloping plain, he could see the seashore, and the ocean rising like a wall of sapphire up to the farthest horizon.