in, while we are poor, and
sometimes have little to eat and drink; mother often tells us how fine
it must be to be you."

"But the food that you eat is sweet because you are very hungry," he
answered them, "and no one sorrows in your house. As for the grand
carriage, it is better to have a carriage if your heart is heavy, but
when it is light, then you can run swiftly on your own two legs." Ah,
poor Willie, how lonely he was, and yet the tall aunt loved him dearly.
On hot drowsy days he had many a good sleep with his head resting
against her high thin shoulders, and her arms about him.

One afternoon, clasping his goat as usual, he sat down by the pond. All
the children had gone home, so he was quite alone, but he was glad to
look at the pond and think. There were so many strange things in the
world, it seemed as if he would never have done thinking about them,
not if he lived to be a hundred.

He rested his elbows on his knees and sat staring at the pond. Overhead
the trees were whispering; behind him, in and out of their holes the
rabbits whisked; far off he could hear the twitter of a swallow; the
foxglove was dead, the bracken was turning brown, the cones from the
fir trees were lying on the ground. As he watched, a strange thing
happened. Slowly and slowly the pond lengthened out and out,
stretching away and away until it became a river--a long river that
went on and on, right down the woods, past the great black firs, past
the little cottage that was a ruin and only lived in now and then by a
stray gipsy or a tired tramp, past the setting sun, till it dipped into
space beyond. Then many little boats came sailing towards Willie, and
one stopped quite close to where he sat, just as if it were waiting for
him. He looked at it well; it had a snow-white sail and a little man
with a drawn-sword for a figure-head. A voice that seemed to come from
nowhere asked--

"Are you ready, Willie?" Just as if he understood he answered back--

"Not yet,--not quite, dear Queen, but I shall be soon. I should like to
wait a little longer."

"No, no, come now, dear child; they are all waiting for you." So he got
up and stepped into the boat, and it put out before he had even time to
sit down. He looked at the rushes as the boat cut its way through them;
he saw the hearts of the lilies as they lay spread open on their great
wide leaves; he went on and on beneath the crimson sky towards the
setting sun, until he slipped into space