into the
old garden, North Wind, and run into mother's room, and into old
Diamond's stall. I wonder if the hole is at the back of my bed
still--your window, you know. Oh, I should like to stay here all the
rest of the night! It won't take you long to get home from here, will
it, North Wind?"

"No," she answered; "you shall stay as long as you like."

"Oh, how jolly!" cried Diamond.

North Wind sailed over the house with him and set him down on the lawn
at the back. Diamond ran about the lawn for a little while in the
moonlight. He found part of it cut up into flower beds and the small
summer house and great elm tree were gone. It was so changed! He didn't
like it and ran into the stable. There were no horses there at all. He
ran upstairs but the rooms were all empty. The only thing left that he
cared about was the hole in the wall where his little bed had stood. All
besides was desolate. He turned and ran down the stairs again and out
upon the lawn. There he threw himself down and began to cry. It was all
so dreary and lost!

"I liked the place so much!" he thought to himself. "But now--there is
nothing left to like. I suppose it is only the people in a place that
make you like it and when they are gone there is nothing left to like.
It's as if it were dead! North Wind told me I might stop as long as I
wanted to, but I have stopped too long already! Oh, North Wind!" he
cried aloud turning his face up toward the sky.

The moon was under a cloud and all was looking dull and dismal. A star
shot from the sky. It fell in the grass beside him. The moment it
lighted, there stood North Wind!

"Oh!" cried Diamond joyfully. "Were you the shooting star?"

"Yes," said North Wind.

"And did you hear me call?"

"Yes."

"As high up as that?"

"Yes, I heard you quite well."

"Take me home, North Wind. Take me home!"

"Have you had enough of your old home already?"

"Yes. It is not home here any more."

"Why is that, do you think?" asked North Wind.

"Is it because its soul is gone? Yes, that must be it, is it not, North
Wind?"

"Yes, Diamond, that is it. Its soul is gone," said North Wind.

She lifted him into her arms to bear him away. How long they floated
about he did not know. But presently all was changed. He was in his own
room again. And there was North Wind in the doorway of the long narrow
room that opened out of his room, and in which the night before he was
dancing when he looked up to find his lifte