ebb or of sudden flow. Sometimes the whole space of the loft,
with the little panes in the roof for the stars to look in, would lie
open before his open eyes as he lay in bed; sometimes a yellow
wall of sweet-smelling fibres closed up his view at the distance
of half a yard. Sometimes, when his mother had undressed him
in her room, and told him to trot to bed by himself, he would creep
into the heart of the hay, and lie there thinking how cold it was
outside in the wind, and how warm it was inside there in his bed,
and how he could go to it when he pleased, only he wouldn't just yet;
he would get a little colder first. And ever as he grew colder,
his bed would grow warmer, till at last he would scramble out
of the hay, shoot like an arrow into his bed, cover himself up,
and snuggle down, thinking what a happy boy he was. He had not
the least idea that the wind got in at a chink in the wall, and blew
about him all night. For the back of his bed was only of boards
an inch thick, and on the other side of them was the north wind.

Now, as I have already said, these boards were soft and crumbly.
To be sure, they were tarred on the outside, yet in many places they
were more like tinder than timber. Hence it happened that the soft
part having worn away from about it, little Diamond found one night,
after he lay down, that a knot had come out of one of them, and that the
wind was blowing in upon him in a cold and rather imperious fashion.
Now he had no fancy for leaving things wrong that might be set right;
so he jumped out of bed again, got a little strike of hay, twisted it up,
folded it in the middle, and, having thus made it into a cork,
stuck it into the hole in the wall. But the wind began to blow loud
and angrily, and, as Diamond was falling asleep, out blew his cork
and hit him on the nose, just hard enough to wake him up quite,
and let him hear the wind whistling shrill in the hole. He searched