to the cold, bare country which they were about to leave.

Thus looking down, the cranes saw a beautiful maiden standing alone at
the edge of the village.

"How lovely she is!" said the crane leader. "And how lonely she seems!"

"How thin her dress is!" said another crane.

"See, she is weeping!" cried a third. Just at that moment the maiden
looked up and saw the flock of cranes above her.

"Oh," she cried, "you are going to the summer-land. I wish I had
wings. I would fly away with you!

"Alas! in this cold, cheerless Northland I shall starve and freeze. I
have no home. I have no friends.

"There is no oil in my stone stove! There is no meat in my kettle.
What shall I do when the thick snow flies and the winter winds cut like
knives?"

The crane leader looked down at the beautiful maiden in pity. The
whole flock, young and old, were filled with a wish to help the girl.
It was very sad, they said, that one so young and lovely should ever be
cold or hungry or unhappy.

"Let us carry the maiden with us to the summer-land!" whispered a young
crane.

"Yes, let us take her to the land of ever-lasting summer," begged an
old crane.

"There she might gather food from the grain-fields. She might pick
berries by the roadside. She might drink from the clear, cool brooks
that run to the sea," said the leader.

Following their leader, the whole flock swept down to the earth. They
gathered about the lovely, lonely maiden.

They lifted her on their widespread wings and bore her up into the air.

The maiden's long dark hair floated out like a cloud. She smiled
happily as the cranes with one voice told her of the summer-land to
which they would carry her.

With wings outspread, that she might not fall, the cranes bore the
maiden away. Day and night, night and day, they carried her and never
seemed to tire.

And the maiden had no fear. She laughed in sheer happiness when they
told her again and again of the beautiful country to which they
journeyed.

For into that land, the cranes told her, neither cold nor hunger came.
They would show her the richest grain-fields. They would tell her
where the sweetest berries grew. They would show her wondrous blossoms
which grew for her in the distant summer-land.

The beautiful maiden was never again seen in the cold, dreary
Northland, for to this day she wanders beside the sweet-voiced streams
in the far-off summer-land.

But season by season the cranes, wi