have to do with now was always cold, except in summer, when the sun
took the matter into his own hands. Indeed, I am not sure whether
I ought to call it a room at all; for it was just a loft where they
kept hay and straw and oats for the horses.

And when little Diamond--but stop: I must tell you that his father,
who was a coachman, had named him after a favourite horse,
and his mother had had no objection:--when little Diamond, then,
lay there in bed, he could hear the horses under him munching away
in the dark, or moving sleepily in their dreams. For Diamond's
father had built him a bed in the loft with boards all round it,
because they had so little room in their own end over the coach-house;
and Diamond's father put old Diamond in the stall under the bed,
because he was a quiet horse, and did not go to sleep standing,
but lay down like a reasonable creature. But, although he was
a surprisingly reasonable creature, yet, when young Diamond woke
in the middle of the night, and felt the bed shaking in the blasts
of the north wind, he could not help wondering whether, if the wind
should blow the house down, and he were to fall through into the manger,
old Diamond mightn't eat him up before he knew him in his night-gown.
And although old Diamond was very quiet all night long, yet when he
woke he got up like an earthquake, and then young Diamond knew what
o'clock it was, or at least what was to be done next, which was--
to go to sleep again as fast as he could.

There was hay at his feet and hay at his head, piled up in great
trusses to the very roof. Indeed it was sometimes only through
a little lane with several turnings, which looked as if it
had been sawn out for him, that he could reach his bed at all.
For the stock of hay was, of course, always in a state either of slow