she knew had heard that she was at home again, and everybody came
to see her. And they all told her that she had been away for a year.
She could not doubt it any longer, and yet she could not understand
it. What had she been doing all that time? She could remember just
enough to fill up one night and one day, and that was all. Could it be
that she had slept for three hundred and sixty-four days and been
awake for only one? No, she could not believe that. And so, at last,
she came to her grandmother to ask if she could explain it to her.

"No," the old woman said, "I can't do that. It's too wonderful for any
of us to understand. But it's no more wonderful than many things that
are true, and I've heard tales of it before. Often one stays in the
land of the Good People, and in other places, too, and thinks that the
time has been short, when it has been long. Shall I tell you what
happened once to a monk--a holy man--much more wonderful than what
happened to you?

"One day this monk was in the garden of the monastery where he lived,
reading in his book. He was reading in the Psalms, where it says, 'For
a thousand years in thy sight are as yesterday, which is past. And as
a watch in the night, things that are counted nothing, shall their
years be.'

"And he found it hard to believe that even to God Himself a thousand
years could seem no more than a day. As he was thinking of this, a
bird in a tree near him began to sing, and the song was so beautiful
that he forgot the psalm that he had been reading and his thoughts
about it, and only listened to the bird. It seemed to him that in all
his life he had never heard any music so beautiful.

"But soon the bird flew to another tree, farther from the monastery,
and the monk followed, to listen to its song again. Then the bird flew
to a tree farther off, and still the monk followed. Once more the bird
flew to another tree, and once more the monk followed it, for it
seemed to him that as long as that bird sang he could listen to
nothing else and could think of nothing else. But he saw that the sun
had gone down and he knew that it was time for him to go back to the
monastery. As he went back he looked at the colors that the sun had
left behind it in the sky, and he thought that they were as beautiful
to see as the voice of the bird was to hear.

"They were all faded and the darkness had come on when he reached the
monastery and went in. And if he had wondered at the song of the