er put old Diamond
in the stall under the bed, because he was a quiet horse, and did not
go to sleep standing, but lay down like a reasonable creature. But,
although he was a surprisingly reasonable creature, yet, when young
Diamond woke in the middle of the night, and felt the bed shaking in the
blasts of the north wind, he could not help wondering whether, if the
wind should blow the house down, and he were to fall through into
the manger, old Diamond mightn't eat him up before he knew him in his
night-gown. And although old Diamond was very quiet all night long, yet
when he woke he got up like an earthquake, and then young Diamond knew
what o'clock it was, or at least what was to be done next, which was--to
go to sleep again as fast as he could.

There was hay at his feet and hay at his head, piled up in great trusses
to the very roof. Indeed it was sometimes only through a little lane
with several turnings, which looked as if it had been sawn out for him,
that he could reach his bed at all. For the stock of hay was, of course,
always in a state either of slow ebb or of sudden flow. Sometimes the
whole space of the loft, with the little panes in the roof for the
stars to look in, would lie open before his open eyes as he lay in bed;
sometimes a yellow wall of sweet-smelling fibres closed up his view at
the distance of half a yard. Sometimes, when his mother had undressed
him in her room, and told him to trot to bed by himself, he would
creep into the heart of the hay, and lie there thinking how cold it was
outside in the wind, and how warm it was inside there in his bed, and
how he could go to it when he pleased, only he wouldn't just yet; he
would get a little colder first. And ever as he grew colder, his bed
would grow warmer, till at last he would scramble out of the hay, shoot
like an arrow into his bed, cover himself up, and snuggle down, thinking
what a happy boy he was. He had not the least idea that the wind got in
at a chink in the wall, and blew about him all night. For the back of
his bed was only of boards an inch thick, and on the other side of them
was the north wind.

Now, as I have already said, these boards were soft and crumbly. To be
sure, they were tarred on the outside, yet in many places they were more
like tinder than timber. Hence it happened that the soft part having
worn away from about it, little Diamond found one night, after he lay
down, that a knot had come out of one of them, and that