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A few days after that it was very hot and sultry, and at noon the thunder heads were piled high all around the horizon.

“I don’t doubt but we shall have showers this afternoon,” said Father Flower, when he came in from the garden for his dinner.

After the dinner-dishes were washed up, and the baby rocked to sleep, Flax came to her mother with a petition.

“Mother,” said she, “won’t you give me a holiday this afternoon?”

“Why, where do you want to go, Flax?” said her mother.

“I want to go over on the mountain and hunt for wild flowers,” replied Flax.

“But I think it is going to rain, child, and you will get wet.”

“That won’t hurt me any, mother,” said Flax, laughing.

“Well, I don’t know as I care,” said her mother, hesitatingly. “You have been a very good industrious girl, and deserve a little holiday. Only don’t go so far that you cannot soon run home if a shower should come up.”

So Flax curled her flaxen hair and tied it up with a blue ribbon, and put on her blue and white checked dress. By the time she was ready to go the clouds over in the northwest were piled up very high and black, and it was quite late in the afternoon. Very likely her mother would not have let her gone if she had been at home, but she had taken the baby, who had waked from his nap, and gone to call on her nearest neighbor, half a mile away. As for her father, he was busy in the garden, and all the other children were with him, and they did not notice Flax when she stole out of the front door. She crossed the river on a pretty arched stone bridge nearly opposite the house, and went directly into the woods on the side of the mountain.

Everything was very still and dark and solemn in the woods. They knew about the storm that was coming. Now and then Flax heard the leaves talking in queer little rustling voices. She inherited the ability to understand what they said from her father. They were talking to each other now in the words of her father’s song. Very likely he had heard them saying it sometime, and that was how he happened to know it,

“O what is it shineth so golden-clear
At the rainbow’s foot on the dark green hill?”

Flax heard the maple leaves inquire. And the pine-leaves answered back:

“‘Tis the Pot of Gold, that for many a year
Has shone, and is shining and dazzling still.”

Then the maple-leaves asked:

“And whom is it for, O Pilgrim, pray?”

And the pine-leaves answered:

“For thee, Sweetheart, should’st thou go that way.”

Flax did not exactly understand the sense of the last question and answer between maple and pine-leaves. But they kept on saying it over and over as she ran along. She was going straight to the tall pine-tree. She knew just where it was, for she had often been there. Now the rain-drops began to splash through the green boughs, and the thunder rolled along the sky. The leaves all tossed about in a strong wind and their soft rustles grew into a roar, and the branches and the whole tree caught it up and called out so loud as they writhed and twisted about that Flax was almost deafened, the words of the song:

“O what is it shineth so golden-clear?”

Flax sped along through the wind and the rain and the thunder. She was very much afraid that she should not reach the tall pine which was quite a way distant before the sun shone out, and the rainbow came.

The sun was already breaking through the clouds when she came in sight of it, way up above her on a rock. The rain-drops on the trees began to shine like diamonds, and the words of the song rushed out from their midst, louder and sweeter: