His little lantern did not show much light, and as he went higher
upwards he lost sight of the moon. The cold was nothing to him,
because the clear still air was that in which he had been reared;
and the darkness he did not mind, because he was used to that
also; but the weight of sorrow upon him he scarcely knew how to
bear, and how to find two tiny lambs in this vast waste of silence
and shadow would have puzzled and wearied older minds than his.
Garibaldi and all his household, old soldiers tried and true,
sought all night once upon Caprera in such a quest, in vain.
If he could only have awakened his brother Stefan to ask him which
way they had gone! but then, to be sure, he remembered, Stefan
must have told that to all those who had been looking for the
lambs from sunset to nightfall. All alone he began the ascent.
Time and again, in the glad springtime and the fresh summer
weather, he had driven his flock upwards to eat the grass that
grew in the clefts of the rocks and on the broad green alps. The
sheep could not climb to the highest points; but the goats did,
and he with them. Time and again he had lain on his back in these
uppermost heights, with the lower clouds behind him and the black
wings of the birds and the crows almost touching his forehead, as
he lay gazing up into the blue depth of the sky, and dreaming,
dreaming, dreaming.
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