"Give me an ear of corn from your last harvest," answered the old knife-grinder, "and let me put it on my wheel."
An ear of corn was brought to him, and once more his wheel went whirring, and again that strange light shot out from it, and spread far past the houses over the fields beyond; and, lo! to the astonished sad eyes of the weary farmers, they appeared waving with golden grain, waiting for the scythe.
And again, as the wheel stopped whirring, the old man who had remembered Crazy Sal as a young girl spoke to the knife-grinder; again he asked:
"What and who are you? Are you a wizard that you change a child's tears into laughter, and turn an old half-witted woman back to a young girl, and make of a barren glebe a waving corn-field?"
And the man with the strange wheel answered:
"I am the maker of rainbows. I am the alchemist of hope. To me November is always May, tears are always laughter that is going to be, and darkness is light misunderstood. The sad heart makes its own sorrow, the happy heart makes its own joy. The harvest is made by the harvestman—and there is nothing hard or black or weary that is not waiting for the magic touch of hope to become soft as a spring flower, bright as the morning star, and valiant as a young runner in the dawn."
But the village of Twelve-trees was not to be convinced by such words made out of moonshine. Only the children believed in the laughing old man with the strange wheel.
"Rainbows!" mocked their fathers and mothers—"rainbows! Much good are rainbows to a starving village."
The old maker of rainbows took their taunts in silence, and made ready to go his way; but as he started once more along the road he said, with a cynical smile: