! Diamond! Where are you, Diamond?" she called out.

Diamond turned his head where he sat like a knight on his steed in
enchanted stall, and cried aloud,--

"Here, mother!"

"Where, Diamond?" she returned.

"Here, mother, on Diamond's back."

She came running to the ladder, and peeping down, saw him aloft on the
great horse.

"Come down, Diamond," she said.

"I can't," answered Diamond.

"How did you get up?" asked his mother.

"Quite easily," answered he; "but when I got up, Diamond would get up
too, and so here I am."

His mother thought he had been walking in his sleep again, and hurried
down the ladder. She did not much like going up to the horse, for she
had not been used to horses; but she would have gone into a lion's den,
not to say a horse's stall, to help her boy. So she went and lifted him
off Diamond's back, and felt braver all her life after. She carried him
in her arms up to her room; but, afraid of frightening him at his own
sleep-walking, as she supposed it, said nothing about last night. Before
the next day was over, Diamond had almost concluded the whole adventure
a dream.

For a week his mother watched him very carefully--going into the loft
several times a night--as often, in fact, as she woke. Every time she
found him fast asleep.

All that week it was hard weather. The grass showed white in the morning
with the hoar-frost which clung like tiny comfits to every blade. And
as Diamond's shoes were not good, and his mother had not quite saved
up enough money to get him the new pair she so much wanted for him,
she would not let him run out. He played all his games over and over
indoors, especially that of driving two chairs harnessed to the baby's
cradle; and if they did not go very fast, they went as fast as could be
expected of the best chairs in the world, although one of them had only
three legs, and the other only half a back.

At length his mother brought home his new shoes, and no sooner did she
find they fitted him than she told him he might run out in the yard and
amuse himself for an hour.

The sun was going down when he flew from the door like a bird from its
cage. All the world was new to him. A great fire of sunset burned on the
top of the gate that led from the stables to the house; above the fire
in the sky lay a large lake of green light, above that a golden cloud,
and over that the blue of the wintry heavens. And Diamond thought that,
next to his own home, he had neve