Chapter M: E. K (7)

Then Heidepeter got up, and took the road under his feet, and climbed over the steep slope until he came to Castle Frohnburg on the other side of the mountain. There a great shooting party were assembled, noblemen and gentlemen, and all drinking out of foaming beakers "Good luck to the sportsman!"

Peter strode through the midst of them and right up to his master. He seemed like another man than himself to-day. "I must defend my bread, sir," he said in a stifled voice; "but so that I mayn't do any wrong, I've come all this way to tell you I'm going to shoot the stag."

Then the Count roared with laughter and called out:

"You little fool! why do you put yourself to the trouble?" He whistled for his two bulldogs. Heidepeter said never another word, but went away. And that night he shot the stag.

Early next morning the huntsmen came to his house and clapped irons on his hands. He suffered this quietly, and said to his inconsolable wife:

"Don't you take on about it--don't you take on. The Lord will come and do justice yet!" And so Peter was taken away and thrown into prison as a poacher.

Week after week he sat there. He was thinking neither about his cabbages, nor the stag, nor the Count, but only about his wife. "Perhaps her hour will come to-morrow, perhaps even to-day, and thy wife is giving thee thy first-born. She is holding him out to thee, but thou dost not hold out thy arms to take him! Or there may be some difficulty about the sponsors, and thou art not by her side to help her in her great need; and when thou returnest to thy house thou wilt find a mother without her child, or an orphan--or perhaps neither mother nor child"----

In his anguish he could have dashed his head against the wall, but he remained quiet, only constantly murmuring to himself as he stared at the brick floor:

"The life of a man is a wheel. To-day I'm down and you're up; to-morrow it's the other way about. Yes, Count Frohn, round and rolling--that's how God has made this world!"

At last, when his time was up, Heidepeter was set free. He hurried to his home, and found his wife and child both doing well.

The very next day he went into his workshop and planed and carved a stag out of some boards. And this he nailed to the weather-stained grey wooden wall of his house in everlasting remembrance.

The dwellers of the Wilderness had by now come to respect the determined Heidepeter, because he had been brave enough to tackle the old devil--as they called the Count under their breath; they had never expected this of the good-natured man. It was, however, the first and last time it happened: Peter saw there was nothing to be gained that way, and the burden of years and oppression took the heart out of him. He came to the conclusion this world is a valley of sorrow, and who can better it? The reasonablest thing is to endure. He no longer opposed himself to the Count; indeed, he used to say it was better to suffer wrong than do wrong. And he went on in his own quiet way, and the people, because of his gentle, submissive bearing, called him a milksop.[19]

FOOTNOTES:

[17] This is a chapter out of Rosegger's _Heidepeter's Gabriel_: a book which is largely autobiographical--Heidepeter being undoubtedly the author's father--and which gives a picture of the small peasant community in a poor mountain district called, from its bare and lonely character, the Wilderness.

[18] Heide-Peter means literally Moor-Peter, or Peter of the Moor.

[19] _Dalkerd_: a South German word, evidently meaning milksop.

XVII

Forest-Lily in the Snow

(A chapter from _The Forest Schoolmaster_)

A load is off our hearts. The storm has fallen. A soft wind came and gently relieved the trees of their burdens. There were a few mild days; then the snow settled and we can now go where we will with snow-shoes.

Nevertheless, something has happened lately over in the Karwässer. Berthold, whose family increases from year to year, and from year to year has less to eat--Berthold has turned poacher. A wood-cutter is a better hand at this than any of us, who remain faint-hearted humbugs all our lives long.--Poor people need not marry, says the wood-cutter. Well, according to custom and practice, they have not married, but they have kneeled before me in the forest ... and ... and now they are all starving together.

So Berthold has turned poacher. Wood-cutting brings in far too little for a roomful of children. I send them all the food I can, but it is not enough. He must have good, strong soup for the ailing wife and a piece of meat for the children; so he shoots the roe that comes his way. To this, then, has passion brought him, until Berthold, who once, as a herd, was such a good and jolly fellow, has, through poverty, pride, and the love of his own, grown into a pretty criminal.

I have once already pleaded with the gamekeeper for God's sake to be a little, just a little lenient with the poor husband and father: he was sure to mend his ways, I said, and I would go bail for him. Up to the present he has not mended his ways; but the events of these wild winter days have made him weep aloud, for he loves his Lily-of-the-Forest above everything.

It happened on a murky winter evening. The little windows are walled up with moss; outside new flakes are falling on the old snow. Berthold is sitting up with the children and with his sick Aga, only waiting until the eldest girl, Lily, comes back with the milk which she has gone to beg of a neighbouring hermit on the Hinterkar. For the goats at home have been killed and eaten; and, if only Lily would return, Berthold means to go into the forest with his gun. For the roe cannot be far to seek in this weather.

But it grows dark and Lily does not return. The snow falls thicker and heavier, night draws in and Lily does not come. The children by now are crying for their milk; the father is eager to be after his game; the mother sits up in bed:

"Lily!" she calls. "Wherever are you, child, trotting about in that pitch-dark forest? Come home!"

How can the sick woman's weak voice reach the wanderer through the fierce snowstorm?

As the night grows darker and stormier, Berthold's craving to go poaching grows deeper, while his fears for his Lily-of-the-Forest rise higher and higher. She is a frail little twelve-year-old girl. True, she knows the precipices and the wooded mountain-paths; but the paths are hidden by the snow and the precipices by the darkness.

At last, the man leaves his house to go in search of his child. For hours he roams and shouts through the storm-swept wilderness; the wind fills his eyes and mouth with snow; he has to put forth all his strength to get back to his hut.

And now two days pass. The snow keeps on falling; Berthold's hut is almost snowed in. They do their noisy best to console themselves: Lily is sure to be at the hermit's. This hope is destroyed on the third day, when Berthold, after struggling for hours over the snow-clad landscape, succeeds in reaching the hermitage. True, Lily was at the hermit's three days ago, but left early on her way home with the milk-pot.

"Then my Lily-of-the-Forest lies buried in the snow," says Berthold.

Whereupon he goes to other wood-cutters and begs, as no one has ever seen this man beg before, that they will come and help him look for his dead child.

They find Lily-of-the-Forest on the evening of the same day.

Down a lonely forest-glen, in a dark and tangled thicket of young pines and larches, through which no snowflake can make its way and upon which the loads of snow lie heaped and arched till the young branches groan again, in this thicket Forest-Lily is found sitting on the ground, on the dry pine-needles, amid a family of six roe-deer.

It is a very wonderful story. The child, returning home, lost her way in the forest-glen; and, as she was no longer able to cope with the masses of snow, she crept into the dry thicket to rest. She did not long remain alone. Hardly had her eyes begun to close, when a herd of deer, old and young together, came up to her and sniffed at the little girl and looked at her with gentle eyes of pity and understanding, and were not the least afraid of this human thing, but stayed and lay down and gnawed the little trees and licked one another and were quite tame: the thicket was their winter home.

The next day everything was muffled up in snow. Forest-Lily sat in the dark, which was only tempered by a faint twilight, and refreshed herself with the milk which she was taking to her people, and nestled up against the kind animals so as not to become quite numb with cold.

Thus passed the grim hours while she was lost. And, when Lily-of-the-Forest had already laid her down to die and, with her simple fancy, asked the animals to stay with her faithfully in her last dying hour, suddenly the roe-deer began to snuffle very strangely, and lifted their heads, and pricked up their ears, and broke through the thicket with wild bounds, and darted away with shrill cries.

And now the men work their way through the snow and underwood and see the little maiden and hurrah for joy; and old Rüpel, who is among them, shouts:

"Didn't I tell you to come and look in here with me,--that perhaps she was with the deer?"

And so it was; and when Berthold heard that the beasts of the forest had saved his child from being frozen to death, he yelled like a madman:

"Never again! As long as I live, never again!"

And he took the rifle with which for many years he had killed the beasts of the forest and smashed it on a stone.

I saw it myself; for I and the parish priest were in the Karwässer to help look for Lily-of-the-Forest.

This Lily-of-the-Forest is almost as soft and white as snow and has the eyes of a roe-deer in her little head.

XVIII

The Sacred Cornfield

(_The translation of a chapter from "Jakob der Letzte," in which tragic story Rosegger tells how a rich man comes to a poor upland community, and gradually bribes and tricks all the peasants except Jacob--who after a dignified and then desperate effort to save the place, breaks his heart and goes mad--to part with their homes and holdings to him for deer-forest._)

Again and again Jacob sought refuge in his work. It was a good thing for him that it was pressing, and left little time for his heartache. The field must be tilled, the garden manured, and the meadows watered. In the early part of the year the melted snow rushes wildly down, often tearing up the earth as it goes; then comes the hot sunshine on the slopes: so that to-day there is too much moisture and to-morrow too little. Hardly had the first blades sprouted when the cattle were driven to the higher pastures, for the winter's supply of fodder was nearly all devoured before the spring gave its new green. Living through the winter on moss and brushwood, the beasts were in such poor condition when at last they came out into the open that they could hardly climb the slopes, and many a one would slip and break a leg.

And yet there was a new motto in Altenmoos: up with cattle-breeding and down with agriculture! Jacob could not make up his mind to alter his method of farming: he loved his fields, all his heart was in them, and their tending was a ritual to him.

When, as sower, he trod the long furrows, casting the seed abroad in the earth, it was in an earnest, almost solemn manner, as if he were about some sacred business; and then before his eyes the miracle of the divine love began to fulfil itself. This man, with all his anxiety, his hope, his silent grief, knew nothing better than to watch the resurrection of the buried grain. In the peaceful time, after his working day was over and he sat alone, utterly alone on his stone-heap, he would give himself up to blessed contemplation. Before him the brown fields stretch away, the larks blow trumpets, and in tender, reddish blades the dead arise and look up to heaven. Then gradually everything begins to grow green, the tiny leaves curl and bend earthwards again as if they are listening for any good counsels about life that the Mother may have to give them. Then they aspire upwards, rolling themselves into sheaths, out of which, little by little, emerges the stalk and the inmost being of the corn. By the time Ascension Day is there the corn is looking skywards even in the mountain districts, as if gazing in loving gratitude after Him who called it to life, and who will come again to waken the human seeds that are sown in all the churchyards. In the young summer breeze the cornfield ripples like a blue-green lake, with the cloud-shadows gliding graciously over it. And the single blade is now in its full glory. The four-sided ear, in which the still tender grains lie scale-like over each other, hangs its blossom out like tiny flags wherever a grainlet lies in its cradle, which flutter and tremble without ceasing, while the high stalk rocks thoughtfully to and fro.

God keep us from storms in this blessed season! From rain, too, with the sun shining through it, for that breeds mildew. Wet seasons cause a growth upon the ears, for which the local name of Mother-grain is far too pretty for truth. The sky-climbing youth of the corn soon comes to an end, the hot summer whitens its hair; then, still conscious of its strength and its virtue, it yet bows its head in humility before Him who has given it virtue and strength.

Deeper within this forest of grain, thistles and the parasitical couch grass, the fair-seeming darnel, and every sort of tangled rubble and lawless company thrive rankly enough in the shadow of the corn and are nourished upon its roots. There, also, the wanton corn-cockle is to be found, whose seed later makes the flour--if not already red with shame--such a dirty bluish colour; there the will-o'-the-wisp poppy, and the kindly, patriarchal cornflower, whose crown is made of many little crowns.

Many a time, while a thunderstorm was raging over Altenmoos, Jacob would stand under the heavy eaves over his door, looking out quiet and resigned. Man cannot alter things, God is almighty; what is the good, then, of trembling or complaining? When it grows light, he sees his whole cornfield, now nearly ripe, beaten down. Jacob says, "Thanks and praise be to God that there was no ice in it--all the stalks lie in order and flat on the ground, not one lifts so much as a knee! The heavy rain has laid the corn low, the wind will dry it--lift it up again." But there are years when it does not get up, when the rain beats it down again and again; then it is that the alien, lawless rabble get the upper hand--they rise up from between the prone stalks, and weave a trellis overhead, and begin a godless blooming and bragging above the poor imprisoned corn.

When, however, God does give rain and sunshine in due season (just as the folks who go pilgrimages pray to have it), the fields are glorious. Strong and slender the stalks grow up from joint to joint. The lance-shaped, dark green leaves that lorded it at first, have nearly vanished, the stalks droop their heavy heads, which give back the sown grain thirty or forty-fold, one stalk laying its golden head on the shoulder of another. In the sun's heat by day, at night in the light of the moon and the stars and the glimmer of glow-worms, they are ripening towards harvest.

At last come the reapers. Every grain is armed with a sharp spear for defence or offence, but the reaper does not flinch before the fine-toothed saws that allow no hand to glide downwards, but only upwards from below,--only from lowly to lofty.

When Jacob, always first and last in the heat and burden of the day, rests in late evening beneath a corn-stook in the harvest-field, his dreaming begins again. The breath of grass and flowers makes him drowsy: he watches the antics of a jolly grasshopper, hears the chirp of a cricket--then it all fades away. He is looking out over a country where there is no blue forest, no green meadows, no mountain crags, and no clear streams. So far as ever the eye can reach is one great golden sea, an immeasurable field of corn. Above it, a cloudless sky presses hot and heavy on his heart. Then it comes to his mind: "Say thy grace, Jacob, for this place is the table of a mighty people. Those who live in the mountains must tend their poultry and their cattle, and fetch the bread of corn from this table."

Then Jacob awakes, pulls himself up by the stook, and says into the night, "It'll have to come to that. And yet the cornfield is beautiful--more beautiful than anyhow else--when it lies between the forest and meadow! And a home, if it's a real home, should yield its children everything that they need."

Besides, the soil in Altenmoos is not less rich than elsewhere! When the last wagon-load of sheaves has gone swaying home to the barn, there's always something for the poor woman who comes gleaning the scattered ears among the stubble. Then the cattle are pastured there, and a fine grass springs up; only the beasts must not mind a stubble-prick in the nose for every mouthful they get. At last, it may be, the plough comes again, still unwilling as ever to grant the fields a rest; but then comes Winter, and says, "Enough!" and covers the tired earth with its white mantle.

Even under that cover there is no peace. A little grain fell out of the sheaf at harvest-time; the earth takes it to herself, lets it silently decay, and gives it back again, all new-made, in the sunshine of the following spring.

With such dreams, whereby, as on Jacob's ladder, he climbed up and down between earth and heaven, this lonely man pleased and edified himself; and when the shadow came over his spirit, he would say to himself, "In God's name, Jacob, if it must be, thou mayst well entrust thyself willingly to the faithful and undying earth. Perhaps thou wilt rise up again, and find better days in Altenmoos."

XIX

About my Mother

I

It was high carnival in Gratz city. In the evenings, a mad thronging in the streets, a well-nigh deafening rattling of carriages, a yelling and shouting, a flaring and glaring from the shops and stalls and from the hundreds of lamps and numberless transparencies in the windows. Gold and silver, silks and damasks gleamed in the shop-fronts. Masks of every hue and shape grinned beside them. Ha, what a mad thing life can be!

I hurried through the crowd. The clock on the castle hill struck six: six strokes so clear that they outrang all the din and re-echoed from the tall, light-pierced walls of the houses. The summons of the clock is a stern admonisher: let man play as childishly as he will with tinsel pleasures and light dalliance, it counts the hours out to him and gives him not a minute's grace.

I went home to my quiet room and was soon in bed.

Next morning, the winter sun lay shining on the snow-clad roofs; and I was jotting down the fairy-tale of the Lost Child, when someone knocked at my door. A man entered and handed me a telegram:

"Dear son, yesterday evening, at six o'clock, our dear mother
passed away. Come home, we are expecting you in the greatest
affliction. Your father."

Last evening it had happened, in the poor cottage, while I was striding through the worldly turmoil. And at six o'clock!

Early next morning, I was in the parish village. I entered on the road alone, over hills glittering with snow and through long woods, far into the lonely mountain valley. I had walked that road endless times before, had always delighted in the glistening snow, in the sparkling icicles, in the snowy mantles of the boughs, or, if it was summer, in the green leaves and the blossoms and the fragrance, in the song of the birds, in the drops of light that trickled through the branches, in the profound peace and loneliness. How often had I gone that way with mother, when she was still well and in her prime, and, later, when, crippled through illness, she tottered along on my arm! And, on this forest road, I thought of my parents' life.

He had come to the forest farm a young man.

People called him Lenz, not because he was young and blooming and joyful as the _Lenz_, or spring, but because his name was Lorenz.

His father had been severely wounded in a brawl, lain ill for but a little while and died an early death.

So now Lenz was the owner of the forest farm. To recover in a measure from his sadness for his father's sake, he did a capital thing: he looked about him for a wife. He took almost the poorest and the most disregarded that the forest valley contained: a girl who was frightfully black all through the week, but had quite a nice little white face on Sundays. She was the daughter of a charcoal-burning woman and worked for her aged mother, but had never seen her father.

One year after the wedding, in the summer, the young woodman's wife presented her Lenz with a first-born. He received the name of Peter and now runs all over the world with it, an everlasting child.

Her life was so peculiar, her life was so good, her life had a crown of thorns.

Our farm was no small one and its days were well-ordered; but my mother did not play the grand farmer's wife: she was housewife and servant-maid in one.

My mother was an educated woman: she could "read print"; she had learnt that from a charcoal-burner. She knew the story of the Bible by heart; and she had no end of legends, fairy-tales and songs from her mother. Moreover, she was always ready with help in word and deed and never lost her head in any mishap and always knew the right thing to do.

"That's how my mother used to do, that's what my mother used to say," she was constantly remarking; and this continued her rule and precept, long after her mother was laid to rest in the churchyard.

No doubt, there was at times a little bigotry, what we call "charcoal-burner's faith," mixed up with it, yet in such a way that it did no harm, but rather spread a gentle poetry over the poor life in the houses in the wood.

The poor knew my mother from far and wide: none knocked at her door in vain; none was sent hungry away. To him whom she considered really poor and who asked her for a piece of bread she gave half a loaf; and, if he begged for a gill of flour, she handed him a lump of lard with it. And "God bless you!" she said, in addition: that she always said.

"What will be the end of us, if you give everything away wholesale?" my father often said to her, almost angrily.

"Heaven, perhaps," she answered. "My mother often used to say that the angels register every 'God reward you' of the poor before God's holy throne. How glad we shall be one day, when we have the poor to intercede for us with Our Lord!"

My father believed in fasting on Saturdays and often did not take a morsel of food before the shadows began to lengthen. He did this in honour of the Blessed Virgin.[20]

"I tell you, Lenz, that sort of fasting serves no useful purpose!" my mother would sometimes say, in protest. "What you go without to-day, you simply eat to-morrow. My mother always used to say, 'What you have through fasting left, give to the poor so sore bereft.' I somehow think it does no good otherwise."

My father used to pray in the evenings, especially at "rosary-time," and on Saturdays prayed long and loud, but often did odd jobs at the same time, such as nailing his shoes, patching his trousers or even shaving himself. In so doing, he not seldom lost the thread of his prayers, until my mother would snatch the things from his hands and cry:

"Heavens alive, what manner of praying is this! Kneeling beside the table and saying three Our Fathers with application is better than three rosaries during which the evil one steals away your good thoughts while you're playing about!"

At times of hard work, my mother was fond of a good table:

"Who works with a will may eat with a will," she said. "My mother used always to say, 'Who dares not risk to lose a tittle, dares not either win a little.'"

My father was content with scanty fare; he was always fearing that the home would be ruined.

These were the only differences in their married life; and even those did not go deep. They uttered them only to each other: when father talked to strangers, he praised mother; when mother talked to strangers, she praised father.

They were of one mind as regarded the bringing-up of children. Work and prayer, thrift and honesty, were our main precepts.

I only once received a proper thrashing. In front of the house was a young copse of larch--and fir-trees, which gradually grew up so high that it shut out the view of the mountains on that side. Now I loved this view and I thought that father would be sure to thank me if I--who was an enterprising lad in those days--cut down the little trees. And, true enough, one afternoon, when everyone was in the fields, I stole into the little wood with an axe and began to cut down young trees. Before long, my father appeared upon the scene; but the thanks which he gave me had a very queer look.

"Lend me the hatchet, boy!" he said, quietly.

I thought, "Now he'll tackle to himself: so much the better"; and I passed him the axe.

He used it to chop off a birch-switch and flattened it across my back.

"Wait a bit!" he cried. "Do you want to do for the young wood? It has more rods for you, where this came from!"

I had a thrashing just once from my mother too. I liked sitting by the hearth when mother was cooking; and, one day, I knocked over the stock-pot full of soup, half putting out the fire and nearly burning my little bare feet. My mother was not there at the moment; and, when she came running in at the sound of the mighty hissing, I cried out, crimson in the face:

"The cat, the cat has upset the stock-pot!"

"Yes, that same cat has two legs and tells lies!" mother retorted.

And she took me and thrashed me for a long time with the rod.

"If ever you tell me a lie again," she cried, when she had done, "I'll cut you to pieces with the flue-rake!"

A serious threat! Thank goodness, it never had to be fulfilled.

On the other hand, when I was good and obedient, I was rewarded. My reward took the form of songs which she sang to me, tales which she told me, when we walked through the forest together or when she sat by my bedside in the evening. All that is best in me I have from her. She had a worldful of poetry within her.

When my brothers and sisters came one after the other, mother loved us all alike and favoured none. Afterwards, when two died in their childhood, I saw mother for the first time crying. We others cried with her and thenceforth always cried whenever we saw mother shedding tears.

And this was quite often, from that time onwards. Father lay sick for two years on end. We had ill-luck in the farm and in the fields; hail and murrain came; our corn-mill was burnt down.

Then mother wept in secret, lest we children should see her. And she worked without ceasing, fretted, and ended by falling ill. The doctors of the whole neighbourhood around were called in to advise: they could do nothing but charge fat fees; only one of them said:

"I won't take payment from such poor people."

Yes, in spite of all our jollity, we had become poor people. The goods and chattels were all gone; of the once big property nothing remained to us but the taxes. My father now resolved to sell the encumbered farm as well as he could. But mother would not have it: she worked on, ill as she was, with trouble and zeal, and never gave up hope. She could not bear to think of giving up her home, the house where her children were born. She denied her illness, said that she had never felt better in her life and that she would work for three.

My brothers and sisters also considered that they could not leave the homestead; besides, none of them had one good pair of shoes left to put on. And mother, when, once in a way, she wished to go to the parish church, had to borrow a jacket free from patches from some journeyman-woodman's wife or other. And the greatest pain of all was people's arrogance and their scorn if ever they did lend any assistance. They had forgotten the kindnesses which my mother had once shown to one and all according to her power. At that time, she was the most honoured farmer's wife in all the houses in the forest. But--misfortune destroys friendship! As, indeed, her mother, the charcoal-burner, had often said.

I will relate an experience of that sad time, when my mother was ailing. It begins with a bright and sunny Whitsuntide.

That bright and sunny Whit Monday was her thirty-ninth birthday. It was a gladsome day. The crops were green in the fields; and the herds grazed in the high meadow: true, they did not belong to us, but to our neighbour; and yet we delighted in them, because they were fat and jolly. My father had already paid last year's taxes; the financial position, which had been disturbed during father's long illness, seemed gradually coming to rights; and consequently we were once more rising in people's opinions. On this day, we walked through the meadows together; and the little ones picked flowers and the grown-ups praised God's works with a cheerful word or a song. Then mother sat down on a stone and was like to die.

We dragged her home, we put her to bed, where she lay for long: weeks long, months long. All the neighbours came and brought their well-meant sympathy; all the doctors from near and far came and brought their well-meant medicine. The patient, as they admitted behind her back, had had a stroke; she was languishing. But, when the cool autumn came, she grew better: she now no longer lay in bed by day, but sat on the bench by the fire or at the table, where the children played, or by the hearth, where she instructed clumsy father in the art of cooking. She was not cheerful, nor was she cast down; she took things as they came and did not complain: only, between whiles, when she was alone, she heaved a deep sigh. Thus winter passed. The delightful Whitsuntide came again and mother was ill.

At this festival, the old woman from the Riegelberg came to see and brought a few rolls with her. She suggested all sorts of household remedies and reckoned up a number of hale and hearty people who had become hale and hearty through taking the aforesaid remedies. And at last she asked, hadn't we been to Stegthomerl--Tom of the Footpath--yet?

No, we confessed, we had not been to him as yet.

Then how could we have been so remiss and however could we have neglected to go to Tom of the Footpath? He was the very first to whom one ought to send in that sort of illness!

But it was such a distance to get there, father objected. "And, if it was a three days' journey, it is not too far for health's sake."

"That's very true, I grant you: it would not be too far for health," said father. "And think you, Riegelbergerin, that he could cure her?"

"Curing, my dear woodman, is in God's hands," answered the woman from the Riegelberg, with her wonted superiority. "Even the best doctors cannot work miracles. But he knows, does Tom of the Footpath, and he'll tell you whether a cure is still possible or not." The very next day, a messenger was sent over the mountains to the valley where Tom of the Footpath lived. He went off early and he came home late and he brought the answer that Tom of the Footpath had said he could say nothing at all as long as he did not see the invalid for himself.

The next day, another messenger went off (for the first had gone lame on the long road) to fetch Tom of the Footpath. He came back late at night alone and brought the news that Tom of the Footpath didn't visit patients: Thomas himself was not as young as he had been; also he did not wish to be locked up again because the qualified doctors suffered from an infernal professional jealousy and wanted to bury everybody themselves. If the sick woodman's wife cared to come to him, there might be something to be done. But he did not go running after sick people.

This was manfully spoken, after all, and we all of us understood that a man who knows his own value does not exactly care to make himself cheap. But now came a great embarrassment. The weather, to be sure, was fine and warm; the days were long, and mother was quite ready to go. But how were we to carry her on that many-hours' road to Tom of the Footpath? It was impossible. Drive? We had no cart; and the last pair of draught-oxen had been taken from us by the creditors to whom we had had to apply once more during mother's illness. The neighbours were using their oxen just now for ploughing the fields. The jobbing farmer had two horses: he was willing to let them out to us, but his charge for the day--father struck his hands together at the thought--was five florins and their oats.

And, as we were all sitting in deep distress around our sick mother, seeking for a way out of the difficulty and finding none, the door opened and the lad from the road-side tavern walked in.

"What do you want, my boy?" asked my father.

The boy stood dangling his arms.

"Ay," he said, "it's this way: Samersteffel sends word to say that, if the woodman likes to have his horse and cart, he can have them."

Samersteffel was what Stephen, the local carrier, was called.

"Where is Carrier Steve?"

"He's with us and he's put up his horse and cart at our place."

My father thought over what he had better say; then he said:

"Steve is sure to want a good price; tell him from me, no, but I'm obliged to him."

The boy went away; and, in an hour's time, Carrier Steve came round in person. He was a little fat man, who, in the old days, before the road was made, used to carry all sorts of things over the mountain-path with a pack-horse. Now that the road was there, he had set up a little light cart, in which he conveyed corn, salt, cider and so on, but all for money, of course, as that was what he lived by; and not only that, but he wanted to get rich, so as to build a big inn on the new road. To be an innkeeper was the dream of his life; and he had the making of one in him, for he was always in a good temper and would certainly know how to entertain his visitors.

But to-day, when he walked into our parlour, he was in anything but a good temper.

"You're making a lot of useless trouble for one of us," he said, and sat down puffing and panting on the bench against the wall. "Have you ever heard, woodman, that I have pressed myself on anyone for the sake of gain? You can't have heard such a thing said about me, for, thank God, I don't need it. Once I myself propose to carry anything, I carry it gratis. I heard that your wife wanted to go to Tom of the Footpath and that she had no trap of any kind. My mother, God rest her soul, was also ill for a long time; I know what it means: it's a misery. If you like, woodman, I'll drive your wife over to Tom of the Footpath to-morrow."

Then we all felt really glad. We did not give a further thought to the question whether the long drive would do good or harm, or whether the new physic would take effect, or how the illness would turn out afterwards. To Tom of the Footpath, just to Tom of the Footpath: that would put everything right.

I was awakened early next day, when the morning star peeped through the great black ash-trees. Father had to stay behind to look after the farm; and I, the thirteen-year-old lad, must go with mother to see that nothing happened to her. Mother was already at her breakfast and did as if she thoroughly relished the milk-porridge. Carrier Steve and I ate a bowl of curds and whey and then we drove off. Steve sat on the little driver's seat and talked out loud to his nag, telling it to be a good horse and trot over the mountains briskly "so that we can bring woodman's wife home again before the day is out." My mother sat, wrapped up in all her clothes, and my father's storm-cloak into the bargain, on a leather cushion, with straw at her feet and a heavy blanket over all, allowing only a part of her head to show above it. I sat beside this sick-bed and was heavy at heart.

It was still chilly night; the sky began to turn a little pale over the Wechselberg. The road led across the meadows. Now the birds woke; now the glory of the dawn commenced; now the great sun rose in the heavens. My mother drew back the blanket a little and gazed up at the sun:

"I feel full of hope," she whispered and felt for my hand, "if only the summer helps a bit and Tom of the Footpath too. After all, I'm not so old yet. What do you think, my child? Shall I be able to look at the world again a hale woman?"

I was as confident as she; I felt quite relieved. The morning sun! The dear warm morning sun!

Mother became chatty.

"It's silly, when you come to think of it," she said, suddenly, and laughed almost aloud, "how fond a body is of being in the world. Of course, I should be sorry to leave my folk. And it would be a pity for my Lenzel, your father, to be left all alone; the children are so small yet."

"But I'm getting pretty big now," I protested.

Then mother turned her face right round to me and said:

"It's just you, my Peter, it's just you about whom I'm most anxious. You see, you appear to me quite different from other boys of your age. You've no real mind for work, that is to say, you have the mind, perhaps, but you take no honest pleasure in it. Yes, yes, deny it as you may, I know you, you don't care about farming, you hang around and you want something else, you yourself don't know what. You see, that's really the worst of it. And so I should like to pray to God and ask Him to leave me with you, so that I can keep a hold on you until I know what's to become of you."

"Will you be a carrier? How would that suit you, boy?" cried Steve, over his shoulder, to us in the cart.

"A good carrier, who takes poor people driving: I wouldn't mind that," remarked my mother, whereupon Steve gave a little smirk.

The road led straight up and became stony; Steve and I got down and walked beside the creaking cart. The sun had become hot. It was a tiring drive and we only got on slowly.

When we were up at the top and driving along through the almost level, but dark woods of the Fischbacheralpe, we no longer heard the cart-wheels, for the ground was thickly strewn with pine-needles, save that, every now and again, the wheels struck against a root. The birds had become silent, for the hot day lay over the tree-tops. My mother had fallen asleep. I looked at her pale face and thought:

"Tom of the Footpath is sure to know of something that will do her good; it's a lucky thing that we were able to drive to Tom of the Footpath."

"Like a bit of bread, Peter?" asked Steve.

"I should be glad of a bit."

And, when I got my piece of bread, there was a piece of bacon on it; and now my distress began. I held the thing in my hand for ever so long and looked at it and looked up at my mother: she was asleep. I did not want to offend Steve, who meant so well by us. As, however, I could not leave the thing as it was, lying in my hand, I at last began, first quite softly, but gradually louder, to call out:

"Steve!"

"What do you want?" he asked, at last.

"I should only like to beg as a favour," I said, quite despondently, "just as a favour, that I need not eat the bacon. For indeed I don't like bacon."

"You don't know what's good," said the driver, laughing, and relieved me of my difficulty.

At last, we began to go downhill; and now the cart jolted over the burning stones and shook the invalid out of her sleep; and the sun burnt into her marrow; and she felt chilled all the same.

Steve muttered:

"Tom of the Footpath must be the devil of a good doctor to make a drive like this worth while. Hold up, Sorrel: we've not much further to go."

It was late in the afternoon when we reached the valley and stopped at the little house where Tom of the Footpath lived.

We carried mother into the musty, stuffy parlour, in which all the little windows were tight shut. There we let her down on the bench and asked for Tom.

A grumpy old woman answered that Tom was not there.

"We can see that," said Steve, "but might we ask where he is?"

"Can't say."

"When's he coming in?"

"Maybe he won't stay out long, maybe he won't be back till night, maybe he's gone to the ale-house."

The old woman left the room; and there we sat. My mother drew a deep breath.

Steve went after the old woman and asked her for a spoonful of hot soup for the invalid.

"Where should I get hot soup from at this time of day? The fire's been out on the hearth this long since."

That was the answer. Thereupon the driver himself set to and lit the fire, looked for milk and boiled it.

Mother ate only a little of the soup and pushed the bowl to us, so that we should have some warm food too.

When that was done, Steve gave the woman a silver ten-kreuzer for the milk and for the hay which the sorrel ate.

After a time, during which it turned quite dark in the parlour, once or twice, because clouds were passing in front of the sun outside, Tom of the Footpath walked into the room. He was a short, spindle-shanked man, but had a big head, broad shoulders, a very high chest and a great hump on his back. And his head was sunk into his shoulders, so that the mannikin had to turn right round, with his whole body, whenever he wanted to turn his head. I can see him plainly to this day, as he stepped in through the door and looked at us, first sharply and then smilingly, with his wandering, vacant face.

My mother at once became fidgety and tried to rise from her seat, in order to put her request to him in a respectful fashion.

Tom made a sign with his hand that she need not trouble and presently said, in a rather sing-song voice:

"I know, I know, you're the woodman's wife from the Alpel; you had a stroke a year ago."

"I had a stroke?" asked the invalid, in dismay.

"You've been doctoring all round the place, far and wide; and now, because no one else can do you any good, you come to me. They're all alike: they come to me when they're dying; and if, after that, Tom of the Footpath's physic doesn't work a miracle and the patient goes the way of all flesh, then they say that Tom of the Footpath has been the cause of his death."

These words were terrible to listen to, in themselves, but still they were bearable because they were spoken with a smiling face and because Tom went on to add:

"Hope it'll prove an exception in your case, woodman's wife. I'll just examine you now."

First of all, of course, he felt her pulse:

"It hops," he muttered, "it hops."

Then, with his broad fingers, he pushed her eyebrows apart and looked into the whites--and said nothing. Next, she had to bare her neck and he put his ear to it--and said nothing. Furthermore, he attentively studied the lines of her hand, then asked after the sick woman's actual state of health and went on to examine the arteries and the respiration, so that I at once conceived a high opinion of the man's conscientiousness.

And, when he had finished his examination, he sat down on a chair opposite my mother, who was slowly wrapping herself up again in her clothes, spread out his legs, sank his chin into his body and, with his arms crossed over his chest, said:

"Yes, my dear woodman's wife, you've got to die."

My mother gave a light start, I sprang to my feet. Steve, however, remained sitting quite calmly in his seat, looked hard at Tom of the Footpath for a while and then said, suddenly:

"And you haven't, I suppose? No, you old camel, your day's coming too, God damn it all!"

It was now high time to go. We hurriedly packed up and drove off homeward.

It was sultry and shady; the sky was covered with clouds; there was not a living thing in sight; not a tree-top stirred; our cart rattled heavily along. My mother lay silently in her corner and gazed at the darkling world with her great, black eyes.

Steve sat fuming on his box, but gradually became quieter; and he now grunted:

"To think of a man being as drunk as all that!"

"Who?" I asked.

"Such a drunken bout is really worth making a day's journey to go and have a look at," Steve continued. "True enough, I'd heard tell that the old camel was seldom sober; and he'd come straight from the ale-house to-day."

"I dare say it was just as well," my mother said. "If he had been sober, perhaps he would not have told me the truth."

And so we drove away in great sadness. The thunder rolled over the mountains, quite hoarse and dull; the Fischbach storm-bell rang in the distance. Then my mother sat upright and said:

"You must do something to please me, Peter; and I'll ask Steve as well: it's no use telling father, my husband, what Tom of the Footpath said."

"Indeed, it would never do to repeat such fool's talk," cried the driver, very loudly, "but I'm going to the magistrate! I shall inform against him! That's what I shall do!"

"I beg of you, Steve, let it be," my mother asked. "You mustn't think that I take it so much to heart. I myself have often thought that the thing will end with me as it ends with all ailing people. What can Tom of the Footpath do against that! We did not go to him to get him to tell us lies. I'm only sorry that we never once asked what we owed him for his straightforwardness."

Now Steve burst out laughing and sent the whip whizzing once or twice through the air, notwithstanding that the horse was doing its best.

When we drove along over the heights, the threatening storm had dispersed entirely; the setting sun shone with a faint golden gleam over the wide landscape, over wood and meadows; and a cool breeze blew in our faces.

A bright tear lay on my mother's pale cheeks.

As, silent and tired, we drove through our home meadows, the stars appeared in the sky. On every side, the song of the crickets purled and chirped in the grass. By the fence, where our hillside began, stood a black figure that accosted us and asked if it was we.

It was my father, who had come to meet us. My mother called him by name; her voice was weak and trembling.

Father took us indoors, without asking a question.

Not until we were in the parlour and the rushlight was burning did he ask how we had fared.

"Not badly," said Steve, "not at all badly: we have been very cheerful."

"And Tom of the Footpath: what did he say?"

"He said that, like other people, woodman's wife wouldn't live for ever, but that she has plenty of time before her, oh, plenty of time. Only you're to take care: give her lots of good air in the summer, not too much work and no excitement, good food and drink and no physic, no physic at all, he said. And then she'll get all right again."

A time elapsed after that. My father tried to nurse mother according to Steve's dictum, which he believed to be Tom of the Footpath's dictum; and, when winter came, she sat at the spinning-wheel and span. The mouse had not bitten the thread in two.

That same winter brought the news that Tom of the Footpath had been found frozen to death in the snow, not far from the ale-house on the Fischbacheralpe. We said an Our Father for his soul.

Carrier Steve, who came to see us now and then and always remained the good, cheerful man he was, had also forgiven Thomas: true, it was wholly and solely because he had proved wrong that time.

II

I failed--to return to our other circumstances--to take any pleasure in the peasant's life and also I really lacked the strength for it. I then took up a trade, but was not able to help my parents; I wanted to pay my father for my Sunday board, which I had at home, but he would take nothing from me, said that I was just as much his child as before, only I must not burn so many rushes when I was home on Saturday nights.

"Oh, goodness me, let him have that pleasure: he hasn't so many!" my mother would say and intercede for me.

Then things altered with me. I went into the world. It was hard parting with my mother; but, in a short time, she was able to see that my life had become happier.

And, now that happiness had come, envy soon came hobbling along--or was it stupidity? A rumour passed through the forest hills:

"So far, it's all right with Peter; but, as always happens in town, he is sure to fall away from the Christian faith."

And soon the talk grew:

"A nice story that! All of a sudden, he finds honest work too hard for him and righteous fare not good enough, goes to town and eats flesh-meat on Our Lady's day and falls away from the faith."