“That's quite another thing,” said North Wind; and as she spoke she gave

one spring from the roof of the hay-loft, and rushed up into the clouds,

with Diamond on her left arm close to her heart. And as if the clouds

knew she had come, they burst into a fresh jubilation of thunderous

light. For a few moments, Diamond seemed to be borne up through the

depths of an ocean of dazzling flame; the next, the winds were writhing

around him like a storm of serpents. For they were in the midst of

the clouds and mists, and they of course took the shapes of the wind,

eddying and wreathing and whirling and shooting and dashing about like

grey and black water, so that it was as if the wind itself had taken

shape, and he saw the grey and black wind tossing and raving most madly

all about him. Now it blinded him by smiting him upon the eyes; now it

deafened him by bellowing in his ears; for even when the thunder came he

knew now that it was the billows of the great ocean of the air dashing

against each other in their haste to fill the hollow scooped out by the

lightning; now it took his breath quite away by sucking it from his body

with the speed of its rush. But he did not mind it. He only gasped first

and then laughed, for the arm of North Wind was about him, and he was

leaning against her bosom. It is quite impossible for me to describe

what he saw. Did you ever watch a great wave shoot into a winding

passage amongst rocks? If you ever did, you would see that the water

rushed every way at once, some of it even turning back and opposing

the rest; greater confusion you might see nowhere except in a crowd of

frightened people. Well, the wind was like that, except that it went

much faster, and therefore was much wilder, and twisted and shot and

curled and dodged and clashed and raved ten times more madly than

anything else in creation except human passions. Diamond saw the threads

of the lady's hair streaking it all. In parts indeed he could not tell

which was hair and which was black storm and vapour. It seemed sometimes

that all the great billows of mist-muddy wind were woven out of the

crossing lines of North Wind's infinite hair, sweeping in endless

intertwistings. And Diamond felt as the wind seized on his hair, which

his mother kept rather long, as if he too was a part of the storm, and

some of its life went out from him. But so sheltered was he by North

Wind's arm and bosom that only at times, in the fiercer onslaught of

some curl-billowed eddy, did he recognise for a moment how wild was the

storm in which he was carried, nestling in its very core and formative

centre.

It seemed to Diamond likewise that they were motionless in this centre,

and that all the confusion and fighting went on around them. Flash after

flash illuminated the fierce chaos, revealing in varied yellow and blue

and grey and dusky red the vapourous contention; peal after peal of

thunder tore the infinite waste; but it seemed to Diamond that North

Wind and he were motionless, all but the hair. It was not so. They were

sweeping with the speed of the wind itself towards the sea.

I MUST not go on describing what cannot be described, for nothing is

more wearisome.

Before they reached the sea, Diamond felt North Wind's hair just

beginning to fall about him.

“Is the storm over, North Wind?” he called out.

“No, Diamond. I am only waiting a moment to set you down. You would not

like to see the ship sunk, and I am going to give you a place to stop in

till I come back for you.”

“Oh! thank you,” said Diamond. “I shall be sorry to leave you, North

Wind, but I would rather not see the ship go down. And I'm afraid the

poor people will cry, and I should hear them. Oh, dear!”

“There are a good many passengers on board; and to tell the truth,

Diamond, I don't care about your hearing the cry you speak of. I am

afraid you would not get it out of your little head again for a long

time.”

“But how can you bear it then, North Wind? For I am sure you are kind. I

shall never doubt that again.”

“I will tell you how I am able to bear it, Diamond: I am always hearing,

through every noise, through all the noise I am making myself even, the

sound of a far-off song. I do not exactly know where it is, or what it

means; and I don't hear much of it, only the odour of its music, as it

were, flitting across the great billows of the ocean outside this air in

which I make such a storm; but what I do hear is quite enough to make

me able to bear the cry from the drowning ship. So it would you if you

could hear it.”

“No, it wouldn't,” returned Diamond, stoutly. “For they wouldn't hear

the music of the far-away song; and if they did, it wouldn't do them

any good. You see you and I are not going to be drowned, and so we might

enjoy it.”

“But you have never heard the psalm, and you don't know what it is like.

Somehow, I can't say how, it tells me that all is right; that it is

coming to swallow up all cries.”

“But that won't do them any good--the people, I mean,” persisted

Diamond.

“It must. It must,” said North Wind, hurriedly. “It wouldn't be the song

it seems to be if it did not swallow up all their fear and pain too, and

set them singing it themselves with the rest. I am sure it will. And do

you know, ever since I knew I had hair, that is, ever since it began

to go out and away, that song has been coming nearer and nearer. Only I

must say it was some thousand years before I heard it.”

“But how can you say it was coming nearer when you did not hear it?”

 asked doubting little Diamond.

“Since I began to hear it, I know it is growing louder, therefore I

judge it was coming nearer and nearer until I did hear it first. I'm not

so very old, you know--a few thousand years only--and I was quite a baby

when I heard the noise first, but I knew it must come from the voices

of people ever so much older and wiser than I was. I can't sing at all,

except now and then, and I can never tell what my song is going to be; I

only know what it is after I have sung it.--But this will never do. Will

you stop here?”

“I can't see anywhere to stop,” said Diamond. “Your hair is all down

like a darkness, and I can't see through it if I knock my eyes into it

ever so much.”

“Look, then,” said North Wind; and, with one sweep of her great white

arm, she swept yards deep of darkness like a great curtain from before

the face of the boy.

And lo! it was a blue night, lit up with stars. Where it did not shine

with stars it shimmered with the milk of the stars, except where, just

opposite to Diamond's face, the grey towers of a cathedral blotted out

each its own shape of sky and stars.

“Oh! what's that?” cried Diamond, struck with a kind of terror, for he

had never seen a cathedral, and it rose before him with an awful reality

in the midst of the wide spaces, conquering emptiness with grandeur.

“A very good place for you to wait in,” said North Wind. “But we shall

go in, and you shall judge for yourself.”

There was an open door in the middle of one of the towers, leading out

upon the roof, and through it they passed. Then North Wind set Diamond

on his feet, and he found himself at the top of a stone stair, which

went twisting away down into the darkness for only a little light came