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: 

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

Flax climbed for dear life.  Red and green and golden rays were already falling thick around her, and at the foot of the pine-tree something was shining wonderfully clear and bright.

At last she reached it, and just at that instant the rainbow became a perfect one, and there at the foot of the wonderful arch of glory was the Pot of Gold.  Flax could see it brighter than all the brightness of the rainbow.  She sank down beside it and put her hand on it, then she closed her eyes and sat still, bathed in red and green and violet light—­that, and the golden light from the Pot, made her blind and dizzy.  As she sat there with her hand on the Pot of Gold at the foot of the rainbow, she could hear the leaves over her singing louder and louder, till the tones fairly rushed like a wind through her ears.  But this time they only sang the last words of the song: