eat many of his feelings to Flax Flower; she
was more like him than any of the other children, and could understand
him even better than his wife, he thought.

One day, when there had been a heavy shower and a beautiful rainbow, he
and Flax were out in the garden tying up some rose-bushes, which the
rain had beaten down, and he said to her how he wished he could find the
Pot of Gold at the end of the rainbow. Flax, if you will believe me,
had never heard of it; so he had to tell her all about it, and also say
a little poem he had made about it to her.

The poem ran something in this way:

O what is it shineth so golden-clear
At the rainbow's foot on the dark green hill?
'Tis the Pot of Gold, that for many a year
Has shone, and is shining and dazzling still.
And whom is it for, O Pilgrim, pray?
For thee, Sweetheart, shouldst thou go that way.

Flax listened with her soft blue eyes very wide open. "I suppose if we
should find that pot of gold it would make us very rich, wouldn't it,
father?" said she.

"Yes," replied her father; "we could then have a grand house, and keep a
gardener, and a maid to take care of the children, and we should no
longer have to work so hard." He sighed as he spoke, and tears stood in
his gentle blue eyes, which were very much like Flax's. "However, we
shall never find it," he added.

"Why couldn't we run ever so fast when we saw the rainbow," inquired
Flax, "and get the Pot of Gold?"

"Don't be foolish, child!" said her father; "you could not possibly
reach it before the rainbow was quite faded away!"

"True," said Flax, but she fell to thinking as she tied up the dripping
roses.

The next rainbow they had she eyed very closely, standing out on the
front doorstep in the rain, and she saw that one end of it seemed to
touch the ground at the foot of a pine-tree on the side of the mountain,
which was quite conspicuous amongst its fellows, it was so tall. The
other end had nothing especial to mark it.

"I will try the end where the tall pine-tree is first," said Flax to
herself, "because that will be the easiest to find--if the Pot of Gold
isn't there I will try to find the other end."

A few days after that it was very hot and sultry, and at noon the
thunder heads were piled high all around the horizon.

"I don't doubt but we shall have showers this afternoon," said Father
Flower, when he came in from the garden for his dinner.

After the dinner-dishes