AT THE BACK OF THE
NORTH WIND




CHAPTER I

DIAMOND MAKES THE ACQUAINTANCE OF NORTH WIND


There was once a little boy named Diamond and he slept in a low room
over a coach house. In fact, his room was just a loft where they kept
hay and straw and oats for the horses. Little Diamond's father was a
coachman and he had named his boy after a favorite horse.

Diamond's father had built him a bed in the loft with boards all around
it, because there was so little room in their own end of the coach
house. So when little Diamond lay there in bed, he could hear the horses
under him munching away in the dark or moving sleepily in their dreams.
His father put old Diamond, the horse after whom he was named, in the
stall under the bed because he was quiet and did not go to sleep
standing, but lay down like a reasonable creature.

Little Diamond sometimes woke in the middle of the night and felt his
bed shaking in the blasts of the north wind. Then he could not help
wondering if the wind should blow the house down and he should fall down