At the Back of the North Wind

AT THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND
BY GEORGE MAC DONALD
Author of "Dealings with Fairies," "Ranald Bannerman," etc., etc.
CHAPTER I
THE HAY-LOFT
I HAVE been asked to tell you about the back of the north wind. An
old Greek writer mentions a people who lived there, and were so
comfortable that they could not bear it any longer, and drowned
themselves. My story is not the same as his. I do not think Herodotus
had got the right account of the place. I am going to tell you how it
fared with a boy who went there.
He lived in a low room over a coach-house; and that was not by any
means at the back of the north wind, as his mother very well knew. For
one side of the room was built only of boards, and the boards were so
old that you might run a penknife through into the north wind. And
then let them settle between them which was the sharper! I know that
when you pulled it out again the wind would be after it like a cat after a
mouse, and you would know soon enough you were not at the back of
the north wind. Still, this room was not very cold, except when the
north wind blew stronger than usual: the room I 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 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