IDE THE RUINS, IN THE MOONLIGHT, WILLIE
TOLD HIS FATHER ALL ABOUT IT."]

CHAPTER XI.

SOME OF THE SIGHTS WILLIE SAW.

I fancy some of my readers would like to hear what were some of the
scenes Willie saw on such occasions. The little mill went on night after
night--almost everynight in the summer, and those nights in the
winter when the frost wasn't so hard that it would have frozen up the
machinery. But to attempt to describe the variety of the pictures Willie
saw would be an endless labour.

Sometimes, when he looked out, it was a simple, quiet, thoughtful night
that met his gaze, without any moon, but as full of stars as it could
hold, all flashing and trembling through the dew that was slowly sinking
down the air to settle upon the earth and its thousand living things
below. On such a night Willie never went to bed again without wishing to
be pure in heart, that he might one day see the God whose thought had
taken the shape of such a lovely night. For although he could not have
expressed himself thus at that time, he felt that it must be God's
thinking that put it all there.

Other times, the stars would be half blotted out--all over the
heavens--not with mist, but with the light of the moon. Oh, how lovely
she was!--so calm! so all alone in the midst of the great blue ocean!
the sun of the night! She seemed to hold up the tent of the heavens in a
great silver knot. And, like the stars above, all the flowers below had
lost their colour and looked pale and wan, sweet and sad. It was just
like what the schoolmaster had been telling him about the Elysium of the
Greek and Latin poets, to which they fancied the good people went when
they died--not half so glad and bright and busy as the daylight world
which they had left behind them, and to which they always wanted to go
back that they might eat and drink and be merry again--but oh, so tender
and lovely in its mournfulness!

Several times in winter, looking out, he saw a strange sight--the air so
full of great snowflakes that he could not see the moon through them,
although her light was visible all about them. They came floating slowly
down through the dusky light, just as if they had been a precipitate
from that solution of moonbeams. He could hardly persuade himself to go
to bed, so fascinating was the sight; but the cold would drive him to
his nest again.

Once the wheel-watchman pulled him up in the midst of a terrible
thunder-storm--when the East a