The moon was at that moment just on the edge of the horizon. And lo! with the moon, lovely figures began to dawn in the windows. He lay and looked at them backward over his head, wondering if they would come down. He heard a low, soft murmuring as if they were talking to themselves about him. But his eyes grew tired, and more and more tired. His eyelids grew so heavy that they would keep tumbling down over his eyes. He kept lifting them and lifting them. But every time, they were heavier than the last. It was no use! They were too much for him. Sometimes before he got them half way up, down they went again. At length, he gave it up quite, and the moment he gave it up, he was fast asleep!
When his eyes came wide open again, there were no lovely figures—or even windows—but a dark heap of hay all about him. The small panes in the roof of his loft were glimmering blue in the light of the morning. Old Diamond was coming awake down below in the stable. In a moment more he was on his feet and shaking himself so that young Diamond's bed trembled under him.
"He is grand at shaking himself!" said Diamond. "I wish I could shake myself like that. But then I can wash myself and he can't. What fun it would be to see old Diamond washing his face with his hoofs and iron shoes! Wouldn't it be a picture!"
He dressed himself quickly and ran out. Down the stairs he went and through the little door out upon the lawn of Mr. Coleman's house next door. He wanted to see how things looked since last night. There was the little summer-house with the tulip bed before it where he had been sitting the evening before, crushed to the ground! Over it lay the great elm tree which the wind had broken across! As he stood looking at it, a gentleman who was staying at the Coleman house came out upon the lawn.
"Dear me!" said the gentleman. "There has been terrible work here! This is the North Wind's doing! What a pity! I wish we lived at the back of it, I am sure!"
"Where is that, sir?" asked Diamond.
"Away in the Hyperborean regions," answered the gentleman. He smiled for he knew well enough that Diamond would not understand that big word which means the country away in the far, far north.
"I never heard of that place," returned Diamond.
"No," said the gentleman. "I suppose not. But if this tree had been there, it would not have been blown down. There is no wind in that country."
"That must be the place," said Diamond to himself, "where North Wind said she would take the people whom she sunk with the ship. Next time I see her, I am going to ask her to take me to see that land, too."