been already asleep. He rose, and looking out of the
window saw something white against his beech-tree. It was North Wind.
She was holding by one hand to a top branch. Her hair and her garments
went floating away behind her over the tree, whose top was swaying about
while the others were still.

"Are you ready, Diamond?" she asked.

"Yes," answered Diamond, "quite ready."

In a moment she was at the window, and her arms came in and took him.
She sailed away so swiftly that he could at first mark nothing but the
speed with which the clouds above and the dim earth below went rushing
past. But soon he began to see that the sky was very lovely, with
mottled clouds all about the moon, on which she threw faint colours like
those of mother-of-pearl, or an opal. The night was warm, and in the
lady's arms he did not feel the wind which down below was making waves
in the ripe corn, and ripples on the rivers and lakes. At length they
descended on the side of an open earthy hill, just where, from beneath a
stone, a spring came bubbling out.

"I am going to take you along this little brook," said North Wind. "I am
not wanted for anything else to-night, so I can give you a treat."

She stooped over the stream and holding Diamond down close to the
surface of it, glided along level with its flow as it ran down the hill.
And the song of the brook came up into Diamond's ears, and grew and
grew and changed with every turn. It seemed to Diamond to be singing the
story of its life to him. And so it was. It began with a musical tinkle
which changed to a babble and then to a gentle rushing. Sometimes its
song would almost cease, and then break out again, tinkle, babble, and
rush, all at once. At the bottom of the hill they came to a small river,
into which the brook flowed with a muffled but merry sound. Along the
surface of the river, darkly clear below them in the moonlight, they
floated; now, where it widened out into a little lake, they would hover
for a moment over a bed of water-lilies, and watch them swing about,
folded in sleep, as the water on which they leaned swayed in the
presence of North Wind; and now they would watch the fishes asleep among
their roots below. Sometimes she would hold Diamond over a deep hollow
curving into the bank, that he might look far into the cool stillness.
Sometimes she would leave the river and sweep across a clover-field. The
bees were all at home, and the clover was asleep. Then she would return