them at their work
too.--When do you go to sleep?" he asked the captain.

"When we grow sleepy," answered the captain. "They do say--but mind I
say they say--that it is when those others--what do you call them? I
don't know if that is their name; I am only guessing that may be the
sort you mean--when they are on their rounds and come near any troop of
us we fall asleep. They live on the west side of the hill. None of us
have ever been to the top of it yet."

Even as he spoke, he dropped his spade. He tumbled down beside it,
and lay fast asleep. One after the other each of the troop dropped his
pickaxe or shovel from his listless hands, and lay fast asleep by his
work.

"Ah!" thought Diamond to himself, with delight, "now the girl-angels are
coming, and I, not being an angel, shall not fall asleep like the rest,
and I shall see the girl-angels."

But the same moment he felt himself growing sleepy. He struggled hard
with the invading power. He put up his fingers to his eyelids and pulled
them open. But it was of no use. He thought he saw a glimmer of pale
rosy light far up the green hill, and ceased to know.

When he awoke, all the angels were starting up wide awake too. He
expected to see them lift their tools, but no, the time for play had
come. They looked happier than ever, and each began to sing where he
stood. He had not heard them sing before.

"Now," he thought, "I shall know what kind of nonsense the angels sing
when they are merry. They don't drive cabs, I see, but they dig for
stars, and they work hard enough to be merry after it."

And he did hear some of the angels' nonsense; for if it was all sense to
them, it had only just as much sense to Diamond as made good nonsense of
it. He tried hard to set it down in his mind, listening as closely as
he could, now to one, now to another, and now to all together. But
while they were yet singing he began, to his dismay, to find that he was
coming awake--faster and faster. And as he came awake, he found that,
for all the goodness of his memory, verse after verse of the angels'
nonsense vanished from it. He always thought he could keep the last,
but as the next began he lost the one before it, and at length awoke,
struggling to keep hold of the last verse of all. He felt as if the
effort to keep from forgetting that one verse of the vanishing song
nearly killed him. And yet by the time he was wide awake he could not be
sure of that even. It was something like th