at
his heart was troubled and fluttered painfully. A second peal of thunder
burst over his head, and almost choked him with fear. Nor did he recover
until the great blast that followed, having torn some tiles off the
roof, sent a spout of wind down into his bed and over his face, which
brought him wide awake, and gave him back his courage. The same moment
he heard a mighty yet musical voice calling him.

"Come up, Diamond," it said. "It's all ready. I'm waiting for you."

He looked out of the bed, and saw a gigantic, powerful, but most lovely
arm--with a hand whose fingers were nothing the less ladylike that they
could have strangled a boa-constrictor, or choked a tigress off its
prey--stretched down through a big hole in the roof. Without a moment's
hesitation he reached out his tiny one, and laid it in the grand palm
before him.

CHAPTER VI. OUT IN THE STORM

THE hand felt its way up his arm, and, grasping it gently and strongly
above the elbow, lifted Diamond from the bed. The moment he was through
the hole in the roof, all the winds of heaven seemed to lay hold upon
him, and buffet him hither and thither. His hair blew one way, his
night-gown another, his legs threatened to float from under him, and
his head to grow dizzy with the swiftness of the invisible assailant.
Cowering, he clung with the other hand to the huge hand which held his
arm, and fear invaded his heart.

"Oh, North Wind!" he murmured, but the words vanished from his lips as
he had seen the soap-bubbles that burst too soon vanish from the mouth
of his pipe. The wind caught them, and they were nowhere. They couldn't
get out at all, but were torn away and strangled. And yet North Wind
heard them, and in her answer it seemed to Diamond that just because she
was so big and could not help it, and just because her ear and her mouth
must seem to him so dreadfully far away, she spoke to him more tenderly
and graciously than ever before. Her voice was like the bass of a deep
organ, without the groan in it; like the most delicate of violin tones
without the wail in it; like the most glorious of trumpet-ejaculations
without the defiance in it; like the sound of falling water without
the clatter and clash in it: it was like all of them and neither
of them--all of them without their faults, each of them without its
peculiarity: after all, it was more like his mother's voice than
anything else in the world.

"Diamond, dear," she said, "be a man. Wha