under plum-boughs white with bloom, meaning to gather field-sorrel for her
midday meal; and as she stooped with all her hair blowing over her face, and
her skirts knotting and billowing round her pretty brown ankles, she felt as
if some one had kissed her from behind.

"That cannot be," thought Katipah, with her fingers fast upon a stalk of
field-sorrel; "it is too soon for anything so good to happen." So she picked
the sorrel quietly, and put it into her basket. But now, not to be mistaken,
arms came round her, and she was kissed.

She stood up and put her hands into her breast, quite afraid lest her little
heart, which had grown so light, should be caught by a puff of wind and blown
right away out of her bosom, and over the hill and into the sea, and be
drowned.

And now her eyes would not let her doubt; there by her side stood a handsome
youth, with quick-fluttering, posy-embroidered raiment. His long dark hair was
full of white plum-blossoms, as though he had just pushed his head through the
branches above. His hands also were loaded with the same, and they kept
sifting out of his long sleeves whenever he moved his arms. Under the hem of
his robe Katipah could see that he had heron's wings bound about his ankles.

"He must be very good," thought Katipah, "to be so beautiful! and indeed he
must be very good to kiss poor me!"

"Katipah," said the wonderful youth, "though you do not know me, I know you.
It is I who so often helped you to fly your green kite by the shore. I have
been up there, and have looked into its blue eyes, and kissed its little red
mouth which held the peach-blossom. It was I who made songs in its strings for
your heart to hear. I am the West Wind, Katipah--the wind that brings fine