Findelkind, however, was very fond of his books; he would study
day and night, in his little ignorant, primitive fashion. He loved
his missal and his primer, and could spell them both out very
fairly, and was learning to write of a good priest in Zirl, where
he trotted three times a week with his two little brothers. When
not at school, he was chiefly set to guard the sheep and the cows,
which occupation left him very much to himself; so that he had
many hours in the summertime to stare up to the skies and wonder--
wonder--wonder about all sorts of things; while in the winter--the
long, white, silent winter, when the post-wagons ceased to run,
and the road into Switzerland was blocked, and the whole world
seemed asleep, except for the roaring of the winds--Findelkind,
who still trotted over the snow to school in Zirl, would dream
still, sitting on the wooden settle by the fire, when he came home
again under Martinswand. For the worst--or the best--of it all was
that he WAS Findelkind.
This is what was always haunting him. He was Findelkind; and to
bear this name seemed to him to mark him out from all other
children and to dedicate him to heaven. One day three years
before, when he had been only six years old, the priest in Zirl,
who was a very kindly and cheerful man, and amused the children as
much as he taught them, had not allowed Findelkind to leave school
to go home, because the storm of snow and wind was so violent, but
had kept him until the worst should pass, with one or two other
little lads who lived some way off, and had let the boys roast a
meal of apples and chestnuts by the stove in his little room, and,
while the wind howled and the blinding snow fell without, had told
the children the story of another Findelkind--an earlier
Findelkind, who had lived in the flesh on Arlberg as far back as
1381, and had been a little shepherd lad, "just like you," said
the good man, looking at the little boys munching their roast
crabs, and whose country had been over there, above Stuben, where
Danube and Rhine meet and part.
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