When I came out again to return home, the clouds were gone, and the evening sky glimmered through the trees, blue, and pale-green towards the west, I turned my steps a little aside to look at the stricken beech. I saw the bough torn from the stem, and that was all the twilight would allow me to see. While I stood gazing, down from the sky came a sound of singing, but the voice was neither of lark nor of nightingale: it was sweeter than either: it was the voice of Diamond, up in his airy nest:-- The lightning and thunder, They go and they come; But the stars and the stillness Are always at home. And then the voice ceased. “Good-night, Diamond,” I said. “Good-night, sir,” answered Diamond. As I walked away pondering, I saw the great black top of the beech swaying about against the sky in an upper wind, and heard the murmur as of many dim half-articulate voices filling the solitude around Diamond's nest. CHAPTER XXXVI. DIAMOND QUESTIONS NORTH WIND MY READERS will not wonder that, after this, I did my very best to gain the friendship of Diamond. Nor did I find this at all difficult, the child was so ready to trust. Upon one subject alone was he reticent--the story of his relations with North Wind. I fancy he could not quite make up his mind what to think of them. At all events it was some little time before he trusted me with this, only then he told me everything. If I could not regard it all in exactly the same light as he did, I was, while guiltless of the least pretence, fully sympathetic, and he was satisfied without demanding of me any theory of difficult points involved. I let him see plainly enough, that whatever might be the explanation of the marvellous experience, I would have given much for a similar one myself. On an evening soon after the thunderstorm, in a late twilight, with a half-moon high in the heavens, I came upon Diamond in the act of climbing by his little ladder into the beech-tree. “What are you always going up there for, Diamond?” I heard Nanny ask, rather rudely, I thought. “Sometimes for one thing, sometimes for another, Nanny,” answered Diamond, looking skywards as he climbed. “You'll break your neck some day,” she said. “I'm going up to look at the moon to-night,” he added, without heeding her remark. “You'll see the moon just as well down here,” she returned. “I don't think so.” “You'll be no nearer to her up there.” “Oh, yes! I shall. I must be nearer her, you know. I wish I could dream as pretty dreams about her as you can, Nanny.” “You silly! you never have done about that dream. I never dreamed but that one, and it was nonsense enough, I'm sure.” “It wasn't nonsense. It was a beautiful dream--and a funny one too, both in one.” “But what's the good of talking about it that way, when you know it was only a dream? Dreams ain't true.”