Some of the glory seemed to have clung to it,
and remained shining.

"You're not frightened--are you, Diamond?" I said.

"No. Why should I be?" he answered with his usual question, looking up
in my face with calm shining eyes.

"He ain't got sense to be frightened," said Nanny, going up to him and
giving him a pitying hug.

"Perhaps there's more sense in not being frightened, Nanny," I returned.
"Do you think the lightning can do as it likes?"

"It might kill you," said Jim.

"Oh, no, it mightn't!" said Diamond.

As he spoke there came another great flash, and a tearing crack.

"There's a tree struck!" I said; and when we looked round, after the
blinding of the flash had left our eyes, we saw a huge bough of the
beech-tree in which was Diamond's nest hanging to the ground like the
broken wing of a bird.

"There!" cried Nanny; "I told you so. If you had been up there you see
what would have happened, you little silly!"

"No, I don't," said Diamond, and began to sing to Dulcimer. All I
could hear of the song, for the other children were going on with their
chatter, was--

The clock struck one,
And the mouse came down.
Dickery, dickery, dock!

Then there came a blast of wind, and the rain followed in
straight-pouring lines, as if out of a watering-pot. Diamond jumped up
with his little Dulcimer in his arms, and Nanny caught up the little
boy, and they ran for the cottage. Jim vanished with a double shuffle,
and I went into the house.

When I came out again to return home, the clouds were gone, and the
evening sky glimmered through the trees, blue, and pale-green towards
the west, I turned my steps a little aside to look at the stricken
beech. I saw the bough torn from the stem, and that was all the twilight
would allow me to see. While I stood gazing, down from the sky came a
sound of singing, but the voice was neither of lark nor of nightingale:
it was sweeter than either: it was the voice of Diamond, up in his airy
nest:--

The lightning and thunder,
They go and they come;
But the stars and the stillness
Are always at home.

And then the voice ceased.

"Good-night, Diamond," I said.

"Good-night, sir," answered Diamond.

As I walked away pondering, I saw the great black top of the beech
swaying about against the sky in an upper wind, and heard the mur