"Yes, I will help you," cried the cloud once more. "Take me to yourselves! I die for you!" A mighty purpose filled the cloud's heart, and a holy light shone from her face. She sank nearer to the earth. The next moment a blessed shower of rain refreshed the hills and valleys. The rain was the cloud's deed; the rain was the cloud's death; but through her death she was glorified. After the shower was over, a lovely rainbow, made of the purest rays of heavenly light, arched across the sky. It was the last greeting of a love so great that it could serve. Soon the rainbow, too, disappeared, but the memory of the blessing which the shower had brought to the earth was kept in the hearts of men for many years to come. UNDINE EDWARD ABBOTT PARRY Once upon a time there was a child wave named Undine. "Undine the Beautiful," they called her, because, when she was quite a little ripple, she sparkled more brilliantly than any of her thousand brothers and sisters, and not one of them was so crystal clear or dressed in such wonderful shades of sapphire blue and emerald green. She was born at the mouth of a white limestone rock cave on the coast of Devonshire. The fourteenth of August was her birthday. Never had there been such a lovely little ripple as Undine. The old Tide let her run up and down on his back when he came into the bay where she lived. She kept close by the cave for a time, and grew big and strong, and became first a billow and then a wavelet; but when a month had passed she was a full-grown wave—only a small one, of course, but still a wave. Her father was a well known Devonshire coast wave, a jolly compact old sea salt roller, with a great thatch of creamy foam on his head. He ran up and down the coast and out to sea in a lazy, aimless kind of way, playing with the fishing smacks and rolling over the porpoises. He had a kindly look and was a friendly fellow as a rule, but could be as cruel and fierce as the worst of them, when he was roused. Old Lobster-Pot they called him, because he loved, when he could, to dive down and wash the lobsters out of their baskets, and then come and dance round the fishermen's boats in the morning when they pulled them up, and laugh at them when they found all their hard work had been for nothing. Undine's mother was a tall, graceful wave with a beautiful green breast, on which she rested her white surge head proudly like a royal swan. Her name was Mora. She thought it vulgar to play with the lobster-pots, and when her children were old enough she took them across the sea to stay at the French seaside towns for the bathing season. She liked to hear the people on the pier cry out, "Oh! look at that lovely wave!" as she held back her glorious head and rushed through the girders of the pier, splashing and sparkling in the sun, and followed by her merry family tumbling headlong after her.