mur as
of many dim half-articulate voices filling the solitude around Diamond's
nest.

CHAPTER XXXVI. DIAMOND QUESTIONS NORTH WIND

MY READERS will not wonder that, after this, I did my very best to gain
the friendship of Diamond. Nor did I find this at all difficult, the
child was so ready to trust. Upon one subject alone was he reticent--the
story of his relations with North Wind. I fancy he could not quite make
up his mind what to think of them. At all events it was some little time
before he trusted me with this, only then he told me everything. If
I could not regard it all in exactly the same light as he did, I was,
while guiltless of the least pretence, fully sympathetic, and he
was satisfied without demanding of me any theory of difficult points
involved. I let him see plainly enough, that whatever might be the
explanation of the marvellous experience, I would have given much for a
similar one myself.

On an evening soon after the thunderstorm, in a late twilight, with
a half-moon high in the heavens, I came upon Diamond in the act of
climbing by his little ladder into the beech-tree.

"What are you always going up there for, Diamond?" I heard Nanny ask,
rather rudely, I thought.

"Sometimes for one thing, sometimes for another, Nanny," answered
Diamond, looking skywards as he climbed.

"You'll break your neck some day," she said.

"I'm going up to look at the moon to-night," he added, without heeding
her remark.

"You'll see the moon just as well down here," she returned.

"I don't think so."

"You'll be no nearer to her up there."

"Oh, yes! I shall. I must be nearer her, you know. I wish I could dream
as pretty dreams about her as you can, Nanny."

"You silly! you never have done about that dream. I never dreamed but
that one, and it was nonsense enough, I'm sure."

"It wasn't nonsense. It was a beautiful dream--and a funny one too, both
in one."

"But what's the good of talking about it that way, when you know it was
only a dream? Dreams ain't true."

"That one was true, Nanny. You know it was. Didn't you come to grief for
doing what you were told not to do? And isn't that true?"

"I can't get any sense into him," exclaimed Nanny, with an expression of
mild despair. "Do you really believe, Diamond, that there's a house in
the moon, with a beautiful lady and a crooked old man and dusters in
it?"

"If there isn't, there's something better," he answered, and vanished in
the leaves