But the little Princess knew better than that. On the fifth night she dreamed that she was a tiny white egg lying in a nest that a humming bird had hung to a spray of fern by a rope of twisted spider’s web. The nest was softly and warmly lined with silky down, and above her was the soft warmth of the mother bird’s breast. [Illustration] On the sixth night she was a snowflake. It was Christmas night, and the towns and villages were gay. Rosy light poured from every window, blurred by the falling snow, and the air was full of the sound of bells. High up on the mountain was a lonely wayside shrine with carved and painted wooden figures of the Mother and Her Child whose Birthday it was. There were no bells there, nor yellow candle light, but only snow and dark evergreen trees. The snowflake, whirling and dancing down from the sky, a tiny frosty star, gave its life as a birthday gift to the Holy Child, lying for its little moment in His outstretched hand. [Illustration] The angel was distressed to find, on the seventh night, that the seventh dream had slipped through a hole in the moonbeam basket and was lost. Careless little angel! But it really did not matter, for instead of a dream, he showed himself to the Princess. And she liked that the best of all, for she had never had any one to play with before, and there is no playmate equal to an angel. But the seventh dream is still drifting about the world—I wonder where? Perhaps it will be upon my pillow to-night—perhaps upon yours. Who knows? [Illustration] [Illustration] Goran’s Dream Crack! went the Driver’s whip, but it did not hurt the galloping misty horses, for it was only a ribbon of rainbow that he liked to use because both he and his horses thought it so pretty. And away went the great Coach, over the forests and over the seas, over the cities and plains, to a country where the sea thrusts long silver fingers into the land, where mountains are white with snow at the same time that the meadows are bright with wild flowers, and where in summer the sun never sets, and in winter it never rises. And here the Dream Coach drew up beside a cottage where a lonely little Norwegian boy was falling asleep. “Come, Goran!” called the Driver. “Come, climb into the Coach and find the dream I have brought for you!” Who was Goran? What dream did he find? That you shall hear. [Illustration] Little Goran and his grandmother lived in a tiny house in Norway, high above the deep waters of a fjord. When Goran was a baby they used to tie one end of a rope around his waist and the other to the door, so that if he toddled over the edge he could be hauled back like a fish on a line. But now he was no longer a baby, but a big boy, six years old, and he tried to take care of his grandmother as a big boy should.