looked like yellow butterflies too tired to move their wings, the Archer
would think of fires on hearths only half remembered, and he wished he
could stable his golden horse while he joined some group about the
dancing flames.

Winter was hardest of all to him, for all the world went in-doors and
left him lonely. The frost-fairies, that glided down the blue rays of the
winter-moon with their little lanterns that gave much color but no heat,
these little creatures could not comfort him, because though he rode so
high and was so straight, still he had the heart of a man. Sometimes the
wild snows came and blinded his steady, sorrowful eyes; and in blackest
midnight, when the sleet rattled against the golden sides of his horse,
then, indeed, he felt alone and forgotten.

For the people on the plain, though they looked to his guiding arrow did
not love him because they thought him only a weather vane.

So the years drove on and the Golden Archer grew lonelier and lonelier.
Came at last a spring when the scent of peach-blossom was like the hurt
of too great joy, and far-away the peach-orchards splashed the land with
pink. High up in the air the Archer looked wistfully southward and
pointed his bow towards clouds of sweetness and rose-color. How he longed
to leave the great white stones of the tower and go wandering through
those creamy orchards and down the green aisles of the forests by bright
refreshing streams.

As he was gazing one day over the fertile plain he saw moving upon it
what looked to him from that height like a very little girl. But he knew
that she must be really a tall, slender maiden. That she had golden hair
he also knew because it gleamed in the sun.