All at once he heard
through the stillness--for there is nothing so still as a
mountainside in snow--a little pitiful bleat. All his terrors
vanished; all his memories of ghost tales passed away; his heart
gave a leap of joy; he was sure it was the cry of the lambs. He
stopped to listen more surely. He was now many score of feet above
the level of his home and of Zirl; he was, as nearly as he could
judge, halfway as high as where the cross in the cavern marks the
spot of the Kaiser's peril. The little bleat sounded above him,
and it was very feeble and faint.
Findelkind set his lantern down, braced himself up by drawing
tighter his old leathern girdle, set his sheepskin cap firm on his
forehead, and went towards the sound as far as he could judge that
it might be. He was out of the woods now; there were only a few
straggling pines rooted here and there in a mass of loose lying
rock and slate; so much he could tell by the light of the lantern,
and the lambs, by the bleating, seemed still above him.
It does not, perhaps, seem very hard labor to hunt about by a
dusky light upon a desolate mountainside; but when the snow is
falling fast,--when the light is only a small circle, wavering,
yellowish on the white,--when around is a wilderness of loose
stones and yawning clefts,--when the air is ice and the hour is
past midnight,--the task is not a light one for a man; and
Findelkind was a child, like that Findelkind that was in heaven.
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