ng; and if they did, it wouldn't do them
any good. You see you and I are not going to be drowned, and so we might
enjoy it."

"But you have never heard the psalm, and you don't know what it is like.
Somehow, I can't say how, it tells me that all is right; that it is
coming to swallow up all cries."

"But that won't do them any good--the people, I mean," persisted
Diamond.

"It must. It must," said North Wind, hurriedly. "It wouldn't be the song
it seems to be if it did not swallow up all their fear and pain too, and
set them singing it themselves with the rest. I am sure it will. And do
you know, ever since I knew I had hair, that is, ever since it began
to go out and away, that song has been coming nearer and nearer. Only I
must say it was some thousand years before I heard it."

"But how can you say it was coming nearer when you did not hear it?"
asked doubting little Diamond.

"Since I began to hear it, I know it is growing louder, therefore I
judge it was coming nearer and nearer until I did hear it first. I'm not
so very old, you know--a few thousand years only--and I was quite a baby
when I heard the noise first, but I knew it must come from the voices
of people ever so much older and wiser than I was. I can't sing at all,
except now and then, and I can never tell what my song is going to be; I
only know what it is after I have sung it.--But this will never do. Will
you stop here?"

"I can't see anywhere to stop," said Diamond. "Your hair is all down
like a darkness, and I can't see through it if I knock my eyes into it
ever so much."

"Look, then," said North Wind; and, with one sweep of her great white
arm, she swept yards deep of darkness like a great curtain from before
the face of the boy.

And lo! it was a blue night, lit up with stars. Where it did not shine
with stars it shimmered with the milk of the stars, except where, just
opposite to Diamond's face, the grey towers of a cathedral blotted out
each its own shape of sky and stars.

"Oh! what's that?" cried Diamond, struck with a kind of terror, for he
had never seen a cathedral, and it rose before him with an awful reality
in the midst of the wide spaces, conquering emptiness with grandeur.

"A very good place for you to wait in," said North Wind. "But we shall
go in, and you shall judge for yourself."

There was an open door in the middle of one of the towers, leading out
upon the roof, and through it they passed. Then North Wind set Diamo