ueen--at
last came to a pause, and, with most
radiant grace in her countenance, she
put her hand up to her crown, and took
out the diamond. There was a little
pet of a crimson cloud that happened
to be floating past at the moment.
She laid the lustrous gem on this
roseate pillow; and then, slowly and
gradually, she and all her retainers,
in ghostly shape, vanished clean from
sight.

* * * * *

But what, you will say, has all this
to do with our friend the Lark? His
quick little eye had discerned what your
dull sight and mine could not. He had
watched everything I have now described.
How indeed could he miss
seeing that flashing speck of light lying
so daintily on its cushion of state? No
wonder he circles and zigzags, and does
bird-homage to the brightest gem of
the Regalia. Up, down--hither, thither--just
as I have already told, doing
obeisance in every possible and conceivable
way; till at last, poising
himself immediately above, fluttering
with all his might, and settling himself
in the fixed attitude in which the lark
family are such adepts, he mustered up
courage and said--

"Pretty sparkling thing! I know what
you are. You are a rare diamond just
taken from the crown of the Queen of
the Morning. But, I confess, you look,
too, very like the Dewdrop I spied at a
distance, a few hours ago, on the tip of
a rose-leaf."

"What a capital guesser you are,
tiny minstrel," was the reply; "but you
had better leave me with my diamond
name, at all events for the present. I
shall not say whether some scientific
bird-winged philosophers are right or
wrong when they aver that, though the
Queen of the Morning borrowed me, I
am really and truly a jewel from the
crown of the Sun; that when he took
off his royal robes last evening, to lay
his head on his nightly pillow, I
dropped out of his crown, and tumbled
down to the earth. I may tell you, however,
confidentially (just in a whisper,
you know)," added the brilliant speaker,
"that though they call me Diamond, I
like quite as well the name with which
God's beautiful mist baptized me, that
of _Dewdrop_. But I have brief time
(indeed no time) to converse further
with you now. You have seen, a
short while ago, how the Queen of
the Morning vanished. Will you be
astonished when I tell you that I am
about to do the very same myself? I
am going," it continued, "to my Palace
yonder" (an extra gleam, in the absence
of a finger,