SAINT GUIDO. 13 



'* Do you know," said the Wheat, " we have thought 

 so much more, and felt so much more, since your 

 people took us, and ploughed for us, and sowed us, 

 and reaped us. We are not like the same wheat we 

 used to be before your people touched us, when we 

 grew wild, and there were huge great things in the 

 woods and marshes which I will not tell you about 

 lest you should be frightened. Since we have felt 

 your hands, and you have touched us, we have felt so 

 much more. Perhaps that was why I was not very 

 happy till you came, for I was thinking quite as much 

 about your people as about us, and how all the flowers 

 of all those thousand years, and all the songs, and the 

 sunny days were gone, and all the people were gone 

 too, who had heard the blackbirds whistle in the oak 

 the lightning struck. And those that are alive now — 

 there will be cuckoos calling, and the eggs in the 

 thrush's nests, and blackbirds whistling, and blue corn- 

 flowers, a thousand years after every one of them is 

 gone. 



'* So that is why it is so sweet this minute, and 

 why I want you, and your people, dear, to be happy 

 now and to have all these things, and to agree so as 

 not to be so anxious and careworn, but to come out 

 with us, or sit by us, and listen to the blackbirds, and 

 hear the wind rustle us, and be happy. Oh, I wish I 

 could make them happy, and do away with all their 

 care and anxiety, and give you all heaps and heaps 

 of flowers ! Don't go away, darling, do you lie still, 

 and I will talk and sing to you, and you can pick 

 some more flowers when you get up. There is a 

 beautiful shadow there, and I heard the streamlet say 



