FullReads

He did not feel any fear of the dark calm night, lit now and then by silvery gleams of moon and stars. The mountain was his old familiar friend, and the ways of it had no more terror for him than these hills here used to have for the bold heart of Kaiser Max. Indeed, all he thought of was Katte,–Katte and the lambs. He knew the way that the sheep-tracks ran; the sheep could not climb so high as the goats; and he knew, too, that little Stefan could not climb so high as he. So he began his search low down upon Martinswand.

After midnight the cold increased; there were snow-clouds hanging near, and they opened over his head, and the soft snow came flying along. For himself he did not mind it, but alas for the lambs!–if it covered them, how would he find them? And if they slept in it, they were dead.

It was bleak and bare on the mountain-side, though there were still patches of grass such as the flocks liked, that had grown since the hay was cut. The frost of the night made the stone slippery, and even the irons gripped it with difficulty; and there was a strong wind rising like a giant’s breath, and blowing his small horn lantern to and fro.

Now and then he quaked a little with fear,–not fear of the night or the mountains, but of strange spirits and dwarfs and goblins of ill repute, said to haunt Martinswand after nightfall. Old women had told him of such things, though the priest always said that they were only foolish tales, there being nothing on God’s earth wicked save men and women who had not clean hearts and hands. Findelkind believed the priest; still, all alone on the side of the mountain with the snowflakes flying around him, he felt a nervous thrill that made him tremble and almost turn backward. Almost, but not quite; for he thought of Katte and the poor little lambs lost–and perhaps dead–through his fault.

The path went zigzag and was very steep; the Arolla pines swayed their boughs in his face; stones that lay in his path unseen in the gloom made him stumble. Now and then a large bird of the night flew by with a rushing sound; the air grew so cold that all Martinswand might have been turning to one huge glacier. All at once he heard through the stillness–for there is nothing so still as a mountainside in snow–a little pitiful bleat. All his terrors vanished; all his memories of ghost-tales passed away; his heart gave a leap of joy; he was sure it was the cry of the lambs. He stopped to listen more surely. He was now many score of feet above the level of his home and of Zirl; he was, as nearly as he could judge, half-way as high as where the cross in the cavern marks the spot of the Kaiser’s peril. The little bleat sounded above him, very feeble and faint.

Findelkind set his lantern down, braced himself up by drawing tighter his old leathern girdle, set his sheepskin cap firm on his forehead, and went toward the sound as far as he could judge that it might be. He was out of the woods now; there were only a few straggling pines rooted here and there in a mass of loose-lying rock and slate; so much he could tell by the light of the lantern, and the lambs by the bleating, seemed still above him.

It does not, perhaps, seem very hard labour to hunt about by a dusky light upon a desolate mountainside; but when the snow is falling fast,–when the light is only a small circle, wavering, yellowish on the white,–when around is a wilderness of loose stones and yawning clefts,–when the air is ice and the hour is past midnight,–the task is not a light one for a man; and Findelkind was a child, like that Findelkind that was in heaven.