the old man, "and snow covers the earth."

"I shake my curls," said the young man, "and the air sparkles with
sunshine. In a moment the snow is gone."

"I say to the birds, 'Sing no more. Leave me,' and they spread their
wings and fly far away."

"I say, 'Little birds, come back,' and in a moment they are back again
and singing their sweetest songs to me."

"No one can count the leaves," said the old man, "but whether I shake
the trees with my icy touch, or whether I turn my cold breath upon them,
they fall to the ground with fear and trembling. Are there any rumors of
my deeds as great as that?"

The young man answered gravely, but with a laugh in his voice, "I never
saw any leaves falling to the ground, for when I appear, they are all
fair and green and trembling with the gladness of my coming."

So the two talked all night long. As morning came near, the old man
appeared weary, but the youth grew merrier. The sunlight brightened, and
the youth turned to the open door. The trees were full of birds, and
when they saw him, they sang, "O beautiful spring! glad are we to look
again upon your face."

"My own dear birds!" cried spring. He turned to say good-by, but the old
man was gone, and where he had stood were only snowflakes. But were they
snowflakes? He looked again. They were little white snowdrops, the first
flowers of spring, the only flowers that can remember the winter.

WHY THE FACE OF THE MOON IS WHITE.

An Indian chief had a fair young daughter. One day the wind came to him
and said, "Great chief, I love your daughter, and she loves me. Will you
give her to me to be my wife?"

"No," answered the chief.

The next day the maiden herself went to the chief and said, "Father, I
love the wind. Will you let me go with him to his lodge and be his
wife?"

"No," declared the chief, "I will not. When the wind was a child, he
often came into my wigwam through some tiny hole, and try as I would to
make my fire, he always put it out. He knows neither how to fight nor
how to hunt, and you shall not be his wife."

Then the chief hid his daughter in a thick grove of dark spruces. "The
wind might see her in a pine," he thought, "but he will never catch
sight of her in a grove of spruces."

Now the wind could make himself invisible if he chose, and all the time
that the chief was talking, the wind was close beside him listening to
every word. When the next night came, the wind ran round and round the
gr