was with the summer and the sunshine, out here in Mother's
garden.

It was good he had stolen forth into the ardent glory of the
noon-time, for if he had not he never would have learned about
the place where the world stops. Only a few of us have found out
about that place. You don't think about it at all, and then,
pretty soon, you _do_ think about it. The way David learned of
it was a new way. He laid him down upon the petunia bed--dear,
old-fashioned flowers, lavender and pink and white, that peeped
between the palings of the white fence--he laid him down and
smelled deep the good, queer smell of them, and like the flowers
themselves, he, too, peeped between the bars into the vast world
which lay beyond. And that is how he learned of the place where
the world stops.

Down a long, long lane--down there, a little way past the
cottonwood tree, where the lane quits going on, that is where the
world stops. You know that is the place because of the awesomeness
that comes to you. The old cottonwood stands sentinel over that
region of the Great Beyond. So tall and big and still he is that
if you look at him awhile you will get the strange feeling of
things. High up in the glossy leaves one can sometimes hear a
little pattery sound, finer than the crinkle of tissue paper--a
pretty little sound like a quiet sprinkle of cooling rain. When he
does that he is whispering to the clouds that bring the freshness
of the summer shower.

Beyond him, down there where the world stops, is the place where
the clouds go to sleep after their long, slow journeyings across