Chapter M: E. K (2)

In Gottes Namen aufstehen
Gegen Gott gehen,
Gegen Gott treten,
Zum Himmlischen Vater beten,
Dass er uns verleih
Lieb Engelein drei:

Der erste, der uns weist,
Der Zweite, der uns speist,
Der dritt' der uns behüt' und bewahrt,
Dass uns an Leib und Seel' nichts widerfahrt.[4]

After these devotions I received my morning soup, and then came grandmother with a tub full of turnips which we were to peel together. I sat close beside it on my stool. But in the matter of peeling turnips I could never quite satisfy grandmother: I constantly cut the rind too thick, or here and there even left it whole upon the turnip. When, moreover, I cut my finger and instantly began to cry, my grandmother said, very crossly, "You're a regular nuisance, it would be a good thing to pitch you right out into the snow!" All the while she was binding up my wound with unspeakable love and care.

So passed the Advent season, and grandmother and I talked more and more often about Christmas Eve and of the Christchild who would so soon be coming among men.

The nearer we came to the festival the greater the stir in the house. The men turned the cattle out of the stall and put fresh straw there and set the mangers and barriers in good order; the cowman rubbed the oxen till they looked quite smooth; the stockman mixed more hay than usual in the straw and prepared a great heap of it in the hayloft. The milkmaid did the same. Threshing had already ceased some days ago, because, according to our belief, the noise would have profaned the approaching Holy Day.

Through all the house there was washing and scrubbing; even into the living-room itself came the maids with their water-pails and straw wisps and brooms. I always looked forward to the cleaning, because I loved the turning topsy-turvy of everything, and because the glazed pictures in the corner where the table was, the brown clock from the Black Forest with its metal bell, and the various things which, at other times, I saw only at a distance high above me, were taken down and brought nearer to me, and I could observe them all much more closely and from all sides. To be sure, I was not allowed to handle such things, because I was still too clumsy and careless for that and might easily damage them. But there were moments in that eager scrubbing and rubbing when people did not notice me.

In one such moment I climbed from the stool to the bench, and from the bench to the table, which was pushed out of its place and on which lay the Black Forest clock. I made for the clock, whose weights hung over the edge of the table, looked through an open side-door into the very dusty brass works, tapped several times on the little cogs of the winding-wheel, and at last even laid my finger on the wheel itself to see if it would go; but it didn't. Eventually I gently pushed a small stick of wood, and as I did so the works began to rattle frightfully. Some of the wheels went slowly, others quicker, and the winding-wheel flew round so fast that one could hardly see it at all. I was indescribably frightened, and rolled from the table over bench and stool down on to the wet, dirty floor; then my mother gripped me by my little coat--and there, sure enough, was the birch-rod![5] The whirring inside the clock would not leave off, and finally my mother laid hold of me with both hands, carried me into the entrance, pushed me through the door and out into the snow, and shut the door behind me. There I stood like one undone; I could hear my mother--whom I must have offended badly--still scolding within doors, and the laughing and scrubbing of the maids, and through it all the whirring of the clock.

When I had stood there sobbing for a while and still nobody came to call me back into the house, I set off for the path that was trodden in the snow, and I went through the home meadow and across the open land towards the forest. I did not know whither I would go, I only conceived that a great wrong had been done me and that I could never go home again.

But I had not reached the forest when I heard a shrill whistle behind me. That was the whistle my grandmother made when she put two fingers in her mouth, pointed her tongue, and blew. "Where are you going, you stupid child?" she cried. "Take care; if you run about in the forest like that, Moss-Maggie will catch you! Look out!"

At this word I instantly turned round, for I feared Moss-Maggie unspeakably. But I did not go home yet. I hung about in the farmyard, where my father and two of our men had just killed a pig. Watching them I forgot what had happened to myself, and when my father set about skinning it in the outhouse I stood by holding the ends of the skin, which with his big knife he gradually detached from the carcase. When later on the intestines had been taken out and my mother was pouring water into the basin, she said to me, "Run away or you'll get splashed."

From the way in which she spoke I could tell that my mother was once more reconciled with me and all was right again; and when I went into the dwelling-room to warm myself a bit, everything was back in its own place. Floor and walls were still moist, but scrubbed clean, and the Black Forest clock was once more hanging on the wall and ticking. And it ticked much louder and clearer than before through the freshly ordered room.

At last the washing and scrubbing and polishing came to an end, the house grew peacefuller, almost silent, and the Sacred Vigil was upon us. On Christmas Eve we used not to have our dinner in the living-room, but in the kitchen, where we made the large pastry-board our table, and sat round it and ate the simple fasting fare silently, but with uplifted hearts.

The table in the dwelling-room was covered with a snow-white cloth, and beside it stood my stool, upon which, when the twilight fell, my grandmother knelt and prayed silently.

The maids went quietly about the house and got their holiday clothes ready, and mother put pieces of meat in a big pot and poured water on them and set it on the open fire. I stole softly about the room on tiptoe and heard only the jolly crackling of the kitchen fire. I gazed at my Sunday breeches and coat and the little black felt hat which were ready hanging on a nail in the wall, and then I looked through the window out at the oncoming dusk. If no rough weather set in I was to be allowed to go with the head farm-servant, Sepp, to the midnight Mass. And the weather was quiet, and moreover, according to my father, it was not going to be very cold, because the mist lay upon the hills.

Just before the "censing," in which, following ancient custom, house and farm were blessed with holy water and incense, my father and my mother fell out a little. Maggie the Moss-gatherer had been there to wish us all a blessed Christmastide, and my mother had presented her with a piece of meat for the feast-day. My father was somewhat vexed at this; in other ways, he was a good friend to the poor, and not seldom gave them more than we could well spare; but in his opinion one ought not to give Moss-Maggie any alms whatever. The Moss-gatherer was a woman not belonging to our neighbourhood, who went wandering around in the forests without permission, collecting moss and roots, making fires and sleeping in the half-ruined huts of charcoal-burners. Besides that, she went begging to the farmhouses, offering moss for sale, and if she did but poor business there she wept and railed at her life. Children at whom she looked were sore terrified, and many even became ill; and she could make cows give red milk. Whoever showed her kindness, she would follow for several minutes, saying, "May God reward you a thousand and a thousandfold right up into heaven!" But to anyone who mocked, or in any other way whatsoever offended her, she said, "I pray you down into the nethermost hell!"

Moss-Maggie often came to us, and she loved to sit before the house on the grass, or on the stile over the hedge, in spite of the loud barking and chain-clanking of our house-dog, who showed singular violence towards this woman. She would remain there until my mother took her out a cup of milk or a bit of bread. My mother was glad when Moss-Maggie thereupon gave her a thousandfold-right-up-to-heaven-may-God-reward-you; but my father considered the wish of this person worthless, whether as curse or blessing.

Some years earlier, when they were building the school-house in the village, this woman had come to the place with her husband and helped at the work, until one day the man was killed at stone-blasting. Since then she had worked no more, nor did she go away; but she just idled about, nobody knowing what she did nor what she wanted. She could never again be persuaded to do any work--she seemed to be crazed.

The magistrate had several times sent Moss-Maggie out of the district, but she always returned. "She wouldn't always be coming back," said my father, "if she got nothing by begging in the neighbourhood. As it is she'll just stay about here, and when she's old and ill, we shall have to nurse her as well: it's a cross that we ourselves have tied round our necks."

My mother said nothing in reply to such words, but when Moss-Maggie came she still gave the usual alms, and to-day in honour of the great feast a little more.

Hence then arose the little dispute between my father and mother, which however was at once silenced when two farm-hands bearing the incense and holy water entered the house. After the censing my father placed a lighted candle on the table; to-day pine-splinters might only be burned in the kitchen. Supper was once again eaten in the living-room. During supper the head farm-servant told us all manner of wonderful stories.

When we had finished my mother sang a shepherd's song. Rapturously as I listened to these songs at other times, to-day I could think of nothing but the churchgoing, and longed above everything to get at once into my Sunday clothes. They assured me there would be time enough for that later on; but at last my grandmother yielded to my urgent appeal and dressed me. The cowman dressed himself very carefully in his festal finery, because he was not going home after the midnight mass, but would stay in the village till morning. About nine o'clock the other farm-servants and the maids were also ready, and they kindled a torch at the candle flame. I held on to Sepp, the head servant; and my parents and grandmother, who stayed at home to take care of the house, sprinkled me with holy water that I might neither fall nor freeze to death. Then we started off.

It was very dark, and the torch, borne before us by the cowman, threw its red light in a great disk on the snow, and the hedge, the stone-heaps and the trees past which we went. This red illumination, which was broken too by the great shadows of our bodies, seemed very awful to me, and I clung fearfully to Sepp, until he remarked, "Look here, leave me my coat; what should I do if you tore it off my back?"

For a time the path was very narrow, so that we had to go one behind the other, and I was only thankful that I was not the last, for I imagined that he for certain must be exposed to endless dangers from ghosts.

There was a cutting wind and the glowing splinters of the torch flew far afield, and even when they fell on the hard snow-crust they still glowed for a while.

So far we had gone across open ground and down through thickets and forest; now we came to a brook which I knew well--it flowed through the meadow where we made hay in summer. Then the brook had been noisy enough; to-day one could only hear it murmur and gurgle, for it was frozen over. We passed along by a mill where I was badly scared because some sparks flew on to the roof; but there was snow lying upon it and the sparks were quenched. When we had gone some way along the valley, we left the brook and the way led upwards through a dark wood where the snow lay very shallow but had no such firm surface as out in the open.

At last we came to a wide road, where we could walk side by side, and now and again we heard sleigh-bells. The torch had already burned right down to the cowman's hand, and he kindled another that he had with him. On the road were visible several other lights--great red torches that came flaring towards us as if they were swimming in the black air, behind which first one and then several more faces of the churchgoers gradually emerged, who now joined company with us. And we saw lights on other hills and heights, that were still so far off we could not be sure whether they were still or moving.

So we went on. The snow crunched under our feet, and wherever the wind had carried it away, there the black patch of bare ground was so hard that our shoes rang upon it. The people talked and laughed a great deal, but this seemed not a bit right to me in the holy night of Christmas. I could only think all the while about the church and what it must be like when there is music and High Mass in the dead of night.

When we had been going for a long time along the road and past isolated trees and houses, then again over fields and through a wood, I suddenly heard a faint ringing in the tree-tops. When I wanted to listen, I couldn't hear it; but soon after I heard it again, and clearer than the first time. It was the sound of the little bell in the church steeple. The lights which we saw on the hills and in the valley became more and more frequent, and we could now see that they were all hastening churchwards.

The little calm stars of the lanterns floated towards us, and the road was growing livelier all the time. The small bell was relieved by a greater, and this one went on ringing until we had almost reached the church. So it was true, what grandmother had said: at midnight the bells begin to ring, and they ring until the very last dweller in the farthest valleys has come to church.

The church stands on a hill covered with birches and firs, and round it lies the little God's-acre encircled by a low wall. The few houses of the village are down in the valley.

When the people came close to the church, they extinguished their torches by sticking them head downwards in the snow. Only one was fixed between two stones in the churchyard wall, and left burning.

And now from the steeple in slow, rhythmical swing, rang out the great bell. A clear light shone through the high, narrow windows. I longed to go into the church; but Sepp said there was still plenty of time, and stayed where he was, laughing and talking with other young fellows and filling himself a pipe.

At last all the bells pealed out together; the organ began to play inside the church, and then we all went in. There it looked quite different from what it did on Sundays. The candles burning on the altar were clear, white, beaming stars, and the gilded tabernacle reflected them most gloriously. The lamp of the sanctuary light was red. The upper part of the church was so dark that one could not see the beautiful painting of the nave. Mysterious shapes of men were seated in the chairs, or standing beside them; the women were much wrapped up in shawls and were coughing. Many had candles burning in front of them, and they sang out of their books when the _Te Deum_ rang out from the chancel.

Sepp led me between two rows of chairs towards a side altar, where several people were standing. There he lifted me up on to a stool before a glass case, which, lighted by two candles, was placed between two branches of fir trees, and which I had never seen before when I went to church with my parents. When Sepp had set me on the stool, he said softly in my ear, "There, now you can have a look at the crib." Then he left me standing, and I gazed in through the glass. Thereupon came a friendly little woman and whispered, "Look here, child, if you want to see that, somebody ought to explain it to you." And she told me who the little figures were. I looked at them. Save for the Mother Mary, who had a blue wrapped garment round her head which fell down to her very feet, all the figures represented mere human beings: the men were dressed just like our farm-servants or the elder peasants. Even St. Joseph wore green stockings and short chamois-leather breeches.

When the _Te Deum_ was over, Sepp came back, lifted me from the stool, and we sat down on a bench. Then the sacristan went round lighting all the candles that were in the church, and every man, including Sepp, pulled a little candle out of his pouch, lighted it, and fastened it on to the desk in front of him. Now it was so bright in the church that one could see the paintings on the roof clearly enough.

Up in the choir they were tuning fiddles and trumpets and drums, and, just as the little bell on the door of the sacristy rang, and the priest in his glittering vestments, accompanied by acolytes and tall lantern-bearers, passed over the crimson carpet to the altar, the organ burst forth in all its strength, joined by a blast of trumpets and roll of drums.

The incense smoke was rising, and shrouding the shining high altar in a veil. Thus the High Mass began, and thus it shone and sounded and rang in the middle of the night. Throughout the offertory all the instruments were silent, only two clear voices sang a lovely shepherd-song; and during the Benedictus a clarionet and two horns slow and softly crooned the cradle-song. During the Gospel and the Elevation we heard the cuckoo and nightingale in the choir, just as in the midst of the sunny spring-time.

Deep down in my soul I understood it, the wonder and splendour of Christmas. But I did not exclaim with delight; I remained grave and silent, I felt the solemn glory of it all. But while the music was playing I could not help thinking about father and mother and grandmother at home. They are kneeling by the table now in the light of the single candle, and praying; or they are even asleep, and the room is all dark--only the clock ticking--while a deep peace lies upon the forest-clad mountains, and the Eve of Christmas is spread abroad over all the earth.

The little candles in the seats were burning themselves out, one after another, as the service neared its close at last; and the sacristan went round again and extinguished the lights on the walls and altars and before the pictures with the little tin cap. Those on the high altar were still burning when a joyous march music sounded from the choir and the folk went crowding out of the incense-laden church.

When we came outside, in spite of the thick mist which had descended from the hills, it was no longer quite so dark as before midnight. The moon must have risen; no more torches were lighted. It struck one o'clock, but the schoolmaster was already ringing the prayer bell for Christmas morning.

I glanced once more at the church windows. All the festal shine was quenched, I saw only the dull red glimmer of the sanctuary lamp.

And now, when I wanted to renew my hold on Sepp's coat, he was no longer there: I found myself among strangers, who talked together for a little, and then immediately set out for their several homes. My guide must be already on ahead. I hurried after him, running quickly past several people, hoping soon to overtake him. I ran as hard as my little feet were able, going through a dark wood and across fields over which such a keen wind was blowing, that warm as I otherwise was I scarcely felt my nose and ears at all. I passed houses and clumps of trees; the people who were still on the road a short time before had dropped off little by little; I was all alone, and still I hadn't overtaken Sepp. I thought he might just as well be still behind me, but I determined to hurry straight home. Here and there I saw black spots on the road, the charcoal that folk had shaken down from their torches on their way to church. I made up my mind not to look at the bushes and little trees which stood beside the way and loomed eerily out of the mist, for they scared me. I was specially frightened whenever a path cut straight across the road, because that was a cross-road, where on Christmas Eve the Evil One loves to stand, and has chinking treasure with him with which he entices the hapless children of men to himself. It is true the cowman had said he did not believe it, but such things must be or people would not talk so much about them. I was very agitated; I turned my eyes in all directions, lest a ghost should be somewhere making for me. Then I determined to think no more of such nonsense; but the harder I made up my mind, the more I thought about it.

And now I had reached the path which should take me down through the forest and into the valley. I turned aside and ran along under the long-branched trees. Their tops rustled loudly, and now and again a great lump of snow fell down beside me. Sometimes it was so dark that I did not see the trunks until I ran up against them; and then I lost the path. This I did not mind very much, for the snow was shallow and the ground nice and level. But gradually it began to grow steep and steeper, and there were a lot of brambles and heather under the snow. The tree-stems were no longer spaced so regularly, but were scattered about, many leaning all awry, many with torn-up roots resting against others, and many, in a wild confusion of up-reaching branches, lying prone upon the ground. I did not remember seeing all this on our outward journey. Sometimes I could hardly get on at all, but had to wriggle in and out through the bushes and branches. Often the snow-crust gave way under me, and then the stiff heather reached right up to my chest. I realised I had lost the right path, but told myself that when I was once in the valley and beside the brook I should follow that along and so was bound to come at last to the mill and our own meadows.

Lumps of snow fell into the pockets of my coat, snow clung to my little breeches and stockings, and the water ran down into my shoes. At first all that clambering over fallen trees and creeping through undergrowth had tired me, but now the weariness had vanished; I didn't heed the snow, and I didn't heed the heather, nor the boughs that so often scratched me roughly about the face, but I just hurried on. I was constantly falling, but as quickly picking myself up again. Then, too, all fear of ghosts was gone; I thought of nothing but the valley and our house. I had no notion how long I had been astray in the wilderness, but felt strong and nimble, terror spurring me on.

Suddenly I found myself standing on the brink of a precipice. Down in the abyss a grey fog lay, with here and there a tree-top rising out of it. The forest was sparser about me, it was bright overhead and the half-moon stood in the sky. Before me, and away beyond that, there was nothing but strange cone-shaped, forest-clad mountains.

Down there in the depths must be the valley and the mill. It seemed to me as if I heard the murmur of the brook; but it was only the soughing of the wind in the forest on the farther side.

I went to right and to left, searching for a footpath that might take me down, and I found a place where I thought I should be able to lower myself by the help of the loose rocks which lay about, and of the juniper bushes. In this I succeeded for a little, but only just in time I clutched hold of a root--I had nearly pitched over a perpendicular cliff. After that I could go no farther, but sank in sheer exhaustion to the ground. In the depths below lay the fog with the black tree-tops. Save for the soughing of the wind in the forest, I heard nothing. I did not know where I was. If only a deer would come I would ask my way of it; quite probably it would be able to direct me, for everyone knows that on Christmas Eve the beasts can talk like men.

I got up to climb back again, but only loosened the rocks and made no progress. Hands and feet were aching. I stood still and called for Sepp as loud as ever I could. Lingering and faint, my voice fell back from the forests and cliffs. Then again I heard nothing but the soughing of the wind.

The frost was cutting right into my limbs. "Sepp! Sepp!" I shouted once more with all my might. Again nothing but the long-drawn-out echo. Then a fearful anguish took possession of me. I called quickly, one after another, my parents, my grandmother, all the farm-hands and maids of our household by name. It was all in vain.

I began to cry miserably.

There I stood trembling, my body throwing a long shadow aslant down the naked rock. I went to and fro along the ledge to warm myself a little, and I prayed aloud to the holy Christchild to save me.

The moon stood high in the dark heavens.

I could no longer cry or pray, I could scarcely move any more. I crouched down shivering on a stone and said to myself, "I shall go to sleep now; it's all only a dream, and when I wake up I shall either be at home or in heaven."

Then on a sudden I heard a rustling in the juniper bushes above me, and soon after I felt that something was touching me and lifting me up. I wanted to scream, but I couldn't--my voice was frozen within me. Fear and anguish kept my eyes fast shut. Hands and feet, too, were as if lamed, I could not move them. Then I felt warm, and it seemed to me as if all the mountain rocked with me.

When I came to myself and awoke it was still night; but I was standing at the door of my home and the house-dog was barking furiously. Somebody had let me slip down on the hard-trodden snow, and had then knocked loudly on the door and hurried away. I had recognised this somebody; it was the Moss-wife.

The door opened, and grandmother threw herself upon me with the words, "Jesus Christ, here he is!"

She carried me into the warm living-room, but from thence quickly back again into the entrance. There she set me on the bread-trough, and hastened outside and blew her most piercing whistle.

She was quite alone. When Sepp had come back from church and not found me at home, and when, too, the others came and I was with none of them, they had all gone down into the forest and through the valley and up the other side to the high road, and in all directions. Even my mother had gone with them, and everywhere, all the time, had called out my name.

So soon as my grandmother believed it could no longer harm me, she carried me back into the warm room, and when she drew off my shoes and stockings they were quite frozen together and almost frozen to my feet. Thereupon she again hurried out of doors, whistled again, brought some snow in a pail, and set me barefoot down in it. Standing thus I felt such a violent pain in my toes that I groaned; but grandmother said, "That's all right; if it hurts, your feet aren't frozen."

Soon after that the red morning light shone in through the window, and one by one all the farm-hands came home. At length my father, and quite last of all--when the red disk of the sun was rising over the Wechselalpe, and after grandmother had whistled countless times--came my mother. She came to my little bed, where they had tucked me up, my father sitting beside me. She was quite hoarse.

She said I ought to go to sleep now, and she covered the window with a cloth so that the sun should not shine in my face. But my father seemed to think I ought not to go to sleep yet: he wanted to know how I had got away from the servant without his noticing it, and where I had been wandering. I at once related how I had lost the path, and how I got into the wilderness; and when I had told them about the moon and the black forests, and about the soughing of the wind and the rocky precipice, my father said under his breath to my mother, "Wife, let us give God praise and thanks that he is here--he has been on the Troll's rock!"

At these words my mother gave me a kiss on the cheek, a thing she did but seldom, and then she put her apron before her face and went away.

"Well, you young scaramouch, and how did you get home after all?" asked my father. I said I didn't know; that after a prolonged sleeping and rocking, I found myself at our door, and that Moss-Maggie had stood beside me. My father asked me yet again about this circumstance, but I told him I hadn't got anything else to say about it.

My father then said he must be off to High Mass in the church, because to-day was Christmas Day; and he bade me go to sleep.

I must have slept many hours after that, for when I awoke it was twilight outside, and in the dwelling-room it was nearly dark. My grandmother sat nodding beside my bed, and from the kitchen I heard the crackling of the fire on the hearth.

Later, when the servants were all sitting at the evening meal, Moss-Maggie was with them at table. During the morning service she had been out in the churchyard, cowering on her husband's grave; and after High Mass my father went and found her there and brought her with him to our house.

They could get nothing out of her about the event of the night, save that she had been searching for the Christchild in the forest. Then she came over to my bed and looked at me, and I was scared at her eyes.

In the back part of our house was a room in which there were only old, useless things and a lot of cobwebs. This room my father gave Moss-Maggie for a dwelling, and put a stove and a bed and a table in it for her.

And she stayed with us. She would still very often go rambling about in the forest, and bring home moss, and then return and sit for hours upon her husband's grave; from which she could never more tear herself away to return to her own district--where, indeed, she would have been just as lonely and homeless as everywhere else. Of her circumstances we could learn nothing more definite: we could only conjecture that the woman had once been happy and certainly in her right mind; and that grief for the loss of her mate had robbed her of reason.

We all loved her, for she lived peacefully and contentedly with all and caused nobody the least trouble. The house-dog alone, it seemed, would never trust her, he barked and tore furiously at the chain whenever she came across the home meadow. But the creature was meaning something quite different than we thought, all the time; for once when the chain broke he rushed to the woman, leapt whining into her bosom and licked her cheeks.

At last in the late autumn, when Moss-Maggie was almost always in the graveyard, there came a time when, instead of barking cheerily, the dog howled by the hour together, so that my grandmother, herself very worn and weary by then, said, "You mark my words; there'll soon be somebody dying in our neighbourhood now, when the dog howls like that! God comfort the poor soul!"

And a little while after that Moss-Maggie fell ill, and when winter came she died.

* * * * *

In her last moments she held both my father and mother by the hand and uttered the words, "May God requite you a thousand and a thousandfold, right up into heaven itself!"

FOOTNOTES:

[3] A morning service of the Catholic Church held during Advent.

[4]

In God's name let us arise
Towards God to go,
Towards God to take our way,
To the Heavenly Father to pray,
That He lend to us
Dear little angels three:

The first to guide us,
The second to feed us,
The third to shelter and protect us
That nothing mischance us in body or soul.

[5] The birchen Lizzie--_Die birkene Liesel_.

IV

A Last Will and Testament

When of a Saturday evening my father sat at his shaving I had to creep under the table because it was dangerous above.

When my father sat shaving himself, and when he had lathered his cheek and lips to such a snowy whiteness that he looked like the herd-boy after he has been lapping cream behind the milkmaid's back; when, further, he sharpened his gleaming razor on his brown-leather braces and then passed it slowly over his cheek, he would straightway begin to twist mouth, cheeks, and nose--indeed, his whole countenance--in such a fashion as made his dear kind face quite unrecognisable. He drew both lips deep into his mouth, till he was like nothing so much as old neighbour Veit who had lost all his teeth; or he stretched his mouth crosswise, from left to right, like Köhler-Sani scolding his hens; and he screwed one eye up tight and blew out a cheek, for all the world like poor Tinili the tailor, after his virago wife had been caressing him. All the funniest faces in the whole neighbourhood came to my mind in turn when my father sat at his shaving. And that set me off.

At this point my father, still friendly, would say, "Do be quiet, laddie." But scarcely had he spoken when again there came such a wonderful face that I simply couldn't help laughing outright. He peered into the little looking-glass, and I fully expected to see his distorted features relax into a smile. Then he suddenly called out, "If you're not quiet, boy, I'll break the shaving-brush over your pate!"

It was now high time to creep under the table, where my smothered giggles kept me shaking like a wet poodle. After that he could shave peacefully and without danger of breaking out into untimely mirth over his own or my grimaces.

And so it came to pass one winter evening that my father was sitting before the soap-bowl and I under the table when I heard someone in the entrance stamping the snow from his boots. A moment later the door opened and in came a big man whose thick red beard had icicles hanging from it just like our shingle roof outside. He at once sat down on a bench, drew a big tobacco-pipe from under his homespun cloak, gripped it between his front teeth, and, while striking a light, remarked, "Having a shave, Farmer?"

"Yes, I'm having a bit of a shave," answered my father, and went on scraping with the razor, and cut a really God-forsaken grimace.

"That's all right," said the stranger.

And later, when he was quite hidden in tobacco smoke and the icicles were dripping from his beard, he uttered himself thus:

"I don't know if so be you know me or not, Farmer. Five year agone I passed your place and took a drink of water at your spring. I come from Stanz; I'm Frau Drachenbinder's farm-hand, and I've come about the matter of that big lad of yours."

Under the table, I went hot to the tips of my toes at these words. My father had but one big lad at the time, and that was myself. I drew back into the darkest corner.

"Come about my boy?" returned my father. "You can have him if you want him--we can easily spare him; he's just too bad for anything!"

(Peasant folk are very fond of talking like that for the sake of teasing and overaweing their forward children.)

"Come, come, Farmer! Not so bad as all that! Frau Drachenbinder wants to get something written down--a will or some such matter--and she don't know anybody, far and wide, that's a good writing scholar. But now she's heard tell that the farmer at Vorderalpel has got an uncommon kind of boy that can do such things as that with his little finger alone! And so she's sent me off here, and I was to beg of you, Farmer, if you'd be so kind as to lend her the loan of the boy over there for a day. She'll soon pack him off back again, and give him something for his trouble as well."

When I heard him say that I rattled my shoe-tips against the table legs: that wouldn't come at all amiss, I thought.

"Go along with you!" said my father when he had scratched one cheek quite smooth. "However is my small boy to go to Stanz in the dead of winter? It must be at least a four hours' walk!"

"Just so," answered the big man, "and that's why I'm here. He's only got to climb up on my back and open his legs and shove 'em along past my ribs, both sides of me, towards the front, where I'll lay hold of them; and then he must hug me round the neck with his hands, like as if he was my sweetheart, so that he don't go falling off backwards."

"I see," replied my father; "you needn't make such a talk about a pig-a-back ride!"

"Well, after that I'll manage all right, and when Sunday comes I'll bring him back home again."

"I'm not afraid of your not bringing him back safe and sound," said my father; "and if Frau Drachenbinder really wants to have something written down, and seeing that you're her man, and if the lad will go with you--there's no objection so far as I'm concerned."

He uttered these words with a smooth, ordinary countenance.

A little later I was rigged out in my Sunday clothes. Elated with my so suddenly acquired importance I strutted up and down the room.

"You wandering Jew, you!" exclaimed my father. "Haven't you got anything to sit upon?"

But there was no more peace for me. Better than anything I should have liked to settle myself there and then on the big man's broad back, and ride straight away. But just then my mother came in bringing a steaming savoury dish, saying, "Eat that, you two, before you start off!"

Not in vain did she say it. I had never yet seen our biggest wooden spoon piled up so high as then when the strange big man plied it between the meat-platter and his bearded mouth. But I walked up and down all the while and thought about how I was going to become Frau Drachenbinder's scrivener.

Presently, when matters had gone so far that my mother could turn the dish upside-down on the hearth without a crumb falling out, I hopped up on to the man's back, held on hard by his beard, and rode away in the name of God.

The sun was already setting; the valleys were full of blue shadow; the far snow-heights of the Alps were a dull rose-colour.

So long as my nag was trotting uphill over the bare pastures the snow bore his weight well, but when he came in among the young larch and pine-woods the surface became treacherous and broke under him. He was prepared for that, however. When he came up to an old hollow larch with wild arms stretching out into the air, he pulled up, thrust his right hand into the dark cavity, and fished out a pair of snow-shoes of woven willow which he bound under his shoe-soles. Upon these wide things he began the pilgrimage anew. Progress was slow, for in order to manage the shoes he must keep them far apart; but with such duck's feet there was no more breaking through.

Suddenly--it was already dark and the stars shining clear--my mount began to undo my shoes, pulled them clean off my feet and put them away in his turned-up apron. Then he said, "Now, laddie, stick your little hoofs in my breeches pocket, so that your toes don't freeze off." He took my hands in his own and breathed warm breath upon them--and that was instead of gloves.

The cold bit my cheeks, the snow creaked under the snow-shoes; I rode on lonely through the forest and over the heights. I rode all along the ridge of the Hochbürstling, where even in summer I had never yet been. Now and again, when progress was too deliberate, I pressed my knees into the yielding flesh, and my horse took it all in good part, going on as well as ever he could--there was no doubt about his knowing the way! I rode past a post whereon, summer and winter, that holy patron of cattle, St. Erhardi, stood. I knew St. Erhardi at home, he and I between us had charge of my father's herd. He was always much carefuller than I: if a cow came to grief, I the herdboy was blamed; if the others throve, St. Erhardi got the credit for it.--It did my heart good he should see that I had become a horseman while he stood there nailed to his post for ever and ever.

At last our path took a turn and I began riding downwards over stumps and stones, making towards a little light that glimmered in the valley below. And just when all the trees and places had passed me by and I had nothing but the dark mass with the one little pane of shining light before me, my good Christopher came to a halt and said, "Now look here, my dear boy--seeing as how I'm a stranger to you and you've come with me like this without taking thought what you were doing--how d'you know that I mayn't have got a life-long grudge against your father and am just now going to carry you into a robbers' den?"

I listened a moment. Then, as he added nothing to these words, I answered in the same tone:

"Considering my father trusted me to Frau Drachenbinder's man and that I've come with him like this, it's not likely Drachenbinder's man has got a grudge against us, and he won't carry me into a robbers' den."

At these words of mine the man snorted into his beard, and soon after he lowered me on to the stump of a tree, saying, "And now here we are at Frau Drachenbinder's house."

He opened a door in the dark mass and went in.

The small living-room had a stove with glowing embers on it, a burning pine-splinter,[6] and a straw bed with a child asleep on it. Near it stood a woman, very old and bent and with a face as pallid and creased as the coarse nightgown she was wearing. As we entered, this person uttered a strange cry, a sort of crowing, began to laugh violently, and then hid herself behind the stove.

"That's Frau Drachenbinder," remarked my guide. "She'll soon come and speak to you, and meantime you sit down there on the stool near the bed and put on your shoes again."

I did what he bade me, and he seated himself on a block of wood near by.

When the woman became composed, she moved lightly about the stove and soon brought us a steaming grey meal-soup in an earthenware pot, and two bone spoons with it. My man ate solemnly and steadily, but I couldn't quite fancy it. Then he got up and said softly to me, "Sleep well, boy!" and went away. And when I found myself alone in the close room with the sleeping child and the old woman I began to feel downright creepy.

Frau Drachenbinder came up to me, laid her light, lean hand on my cheek, and said, "I thank the dear Lord God that you've come!--It's barely six months since my daughter died. That there"--she pointed to the child--"is my young branch--such a dear mite--he's my heir. And now I hear Death knocking at the door again. I'm very old. I've saved all my life--I'm going to beg my coffin from kind folks' charity. My husband died long ago and left this little house to me. My illnesses have cost me the house--but they weren't worth it. Whatever I leave behind me is for my grandchild's very own. As yet he's too young to take it into his heart, and I can't give it into any man's hand, and so I want to have it written down so that it's kept. I won't do it through the schoolmaster in Stanz, and the doctor can't do it without the stamp-duty. And then people told me about the son of the farmer at Vorderalpel, and how he was such a scholar that he could write out people's last wills without the stamp! That's why I've had you brought all this long way. Do this favour for me to-morrow, and to-night go and get a good rest."

She ushered me, by the light of the burning splinter, into the little room adjoining. It was made only of boards. A bed of hay, with a covering in the shape of the woman's thick, best Sunday dress, was there, and in a corner stood a little brown church with two small towers in which little bells were set a-tinkling whenever one trod the shaky floor. Frau Drachenbinder stuck the burning pine-wood in the window of one of the towers, made the sign of the cross on me with her thumb, and then I was alone in the room. It was cold: I was shivering with the bitter winter, and with a fear of my hostess too, but, before ever I crept into my nest, curiosity impelled me to open the door of the little church. Out sprang a mouse who had just made her supper off the gold-paper altar and St. Joseph's cardboard hand. Saints and angels were there within, and gay banners and wreaths--it was a lovely toy. I thought to myself that this must be Frau Drachenbinder's parish church, for the little body was far too feeble to walk to Stanz for mass. I said my evening prayer before it, asking Our Lord to protect me during that night; then I extinguished the splinter so that it should not burn right down to the window-frame, and after that laid myself down on the hay, in God's name.

It seemed to me as if I had been torn away from myself and were some learned clerk in a far-away cold house, while the real boy of the forest farm was sleeping at home in his own warm little nest. Just as I was falling asleep I heard the short, sharp cries of joy again in the living-room, and soon after that the loud laughter. Whatever was it that delighted her so much, and at whom was she laughing? I was terrified, and thought of running away. One of the boards could be easily shifted, but then--the snow!

Only towards morning did I fall asleep, and I dreamed and dreamed about a red mouse that had bitten off the right hand of all the saints in the church. And my father was looking out of the window of the tower with his lathered, distorted cheeks and holding a lighted pine-splinter in his mouth: and I sobbed and giggled together, and was hot with fear. When at last I awoke I thought I was in a cage with silver bars, for so the white daylight looked through the vertical cracks in the woodwork. And when I went outside the house door I was astonished to see how narrow the ravine was, and how high and wintry the mountains.

Within doors the child was screaming, and then Frau Drachenbinder broke out into her jubilant cries again.

At breakfast there was my horse again, but he hardly spoke at all, giving all his attention to his food; and when that was finished he got up, put on his huge hat, and went off to church at Stanz.

When the old woman had comforted the child, fed the fowls, and done other household work, she pushed the wooden bolt of the house door, went into the inner room, and began ringing the bells of the little church. She lighted two candles that stood on the altar, and then she made a prayer, and one more moving have I never heard. She knelt before the church, held out her hands, and murmured: "By the most sacred wound of Thy right hand, O my crucified Saviour, save my parents if they be still in torment. Though they have lain for half a century in the earth I can still hear my father in the dead of night crying out for help.--By the most sacred wound of Thy left hand I commend to Thee the soul of my daughter. She had hardly looked round upon the world and she was just going to lay her little one in her husband's arms, when up comes cruel Death and takes and buries her out of our sight!--By the most sacred wound of Thy right foot, I pray Thee from my very heart for my husband, and for my kindred and benefactors, and that Thou wilt not forget this little lad from the forest farm.--By the most sacred wound of Thy left foot, O crucified Saviour, in love and mercy remember also all my enemies, who have smitten me with their hands and trodden me with their feet. Blinded men crucified Thee to death, and yet Thou hast forgiven them.--By the most holy wound of Thy sacred side, I invoke Thee a thousand and a thousand times.--O crucified God, take up my grandchild to Thy Divine Heart. His father is far away with the soldiers, and perhaps I have not long to live. Be Thou a guardian to the child, I beseech Thee."

That was how she prayed. The little red candles burned devoutly. At that moment it seemed to me that if I were Our Lord I would come down from Heaven and take the child in my arms, and say, "See for yourself, Frau Drachenbinder, I am holding him close to My heart, and I will be his guardian." I would let him grow white wings, so that he could fly away to the Better Land.

But then, I wasn't Our Lord.

Presently Frau Drachenbinder said, "Now let's get to the writing." But when we wanted to begin there was no ink and no pen and no paper. We had forgotten every one of these things.

The old woman leant her head on her palm, murmuring, "What a misfortune!"