e while in the moonlight. He found
part of it cut up into flower-beds, and the little summer-house with the
coloured glass and the great elm-tree gone. He did not like this, and
ran into the stable. There were no horses there at all. He ran upstairs.
The rooms were empty. The only thing left that he cared about was the
hole in the wall where his little bed had stood; and that was not enough
to make him wish to stop. He ran down the stair again, and out upon the
lawn. There he threw himself down and began to cry. It was all so dreary
and lost!

"I thought I liked the place so much," said Diamond to himself, "but I
find I don't care about it. I suppose it's only the people in it that
make you like a place, and when they're gone, it's dead, and you don't
care a bit about it. North Wind told me I might stop as long as I liked,
and I've stopped longer already. North Wind!" he cried aloud, turning
his face towards the sky.

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

"Oh!" cried Diamond, joyfully, "were you the shooting star?"

"Yes, my child."

"Did you hear me call you then?"

"Yes."

"So high up as that?"

"Yes; I heard you quite well."

"Do take me home."

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

"Yes, more than enough. It isn't a home at all now."

"I thought that would be it," said North Wind. "Everything, dreaming and
all, has got a soul in it, or else it's worth nothing, and we don't care
a bit about it. Some of our thoughts are worth nothing, because they've
got no soul in them. The brain puts them into the mind, not the mind
into the brain."

"But how can you know about that, North Wind? You haven't got a body."

"If I hadn't you wouldn't know anything about me. No creature can know
another without the help of a body. But I don't care to talk about that.
It is time for you to go home."

So saying, North Wind lifted Diamond and bore him away.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. AT THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND

I DID not see Diamond for a week or so after this, and then he told me
what I have now told you. I should have been astonished at his being
able even to report such conversations as he said he had had with
North Wind, had I not known already that some children are profound in
metaphysics. But a fear crosses me, lest, by telling so much about
my friend, I should lead