ning wind, the night sky wind, and
the wind of the dusk between, the wind that asked him questions and
told him to wait.

One day the two of them were gone. On the same day of the week the
White Horse Girl and the Blue Wind Boy went away. And their fathers
and mothers and sisters and brothers and uncles and aunts wondered
about them and talked about them, because they didn't tell anybody
beforehand they were going. Nobody at all knew beforehand or afterward
why they were going away, the real honest why of it.

They left a short letter. It read:

_To All Our Sweethearts, Old Folks and Young Folks:_

_We have started to go where the white horses come from and where
the blue winds begin. Keep a corner in your hearts for us while
we are gone._

_The White Horse Girl._
_The Blue Wind Boy._

That was all they had to guess by in the west Rootabaga Country, to
guess and guess where two darlings had gone.

Many years passed. One day there came riding across the Rootabaga
Country a Gray Man on Horseback. He looked like he had come a long
ways. So they asked him the question they always asked of any rider
who looked like he had come a long ways, "Did you ever see the White
Horse Girl and the Blue Wind Boy?"

"Yes," he answered, "I saw them.

"It was a long, long ways from here I saw them," he went on, "it would
take years and years to ride to where they are. They were sitting
together and talking to each other, sometimes singing, in a place
where the land runs high and tough rocks reach up. And they were
looking out across water, blue water as far as the eye could see. And
away far off the blue waters met the blue sky.

"'Look!' said the Boy, 'that's where the blue winds begin.'

"And far out on the blue waters, just a little this side of where the
blue winds begin, there were white manes, white flanks, white noses,
white galloping feet.

"'Look!' said the Girl, 'that's where the white horses come from.'

"And then nearer to the land came thousands in an hour, millions in a
day, white horses, some white as snow, some like new washed sheep
wool, some white as silver ribbons of the new moon.

"I asked them, 'Whose place is this?' They answered, 'It belongs to
us; this is what we started for; this is where the white horses come
from; this is where the blue winds begin.'"

And that was all the Gray Man on Horseback