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Updated: June 8, 2025
Next to the church there is a little stone sort of shed with two arched openings, and from it you look into the tiny church with its crucifixes and relics, or out to great, bold, sombre Martinswand, as you like best; and in this spot Findelkind would sit hour after hour while his brothers and sisters were playing, and look up at the mountains or on to the altar, and wish and pray and vex his little soul most woefully; and his ewes and his lambs would crop the grass about the entrance, and bleat to make him notice them and lead them farther afield, but all in vain.
"Didst never think of thy mother's love and of my toil? Look at home." Findelkind was mute. The drive was very long, backward by the same way, with the river shining in the moonlight and the mountains half covered with the clouds. It was ten by the bells of Zirl when they came once more under the solemn shadow of grave Martinswand.
The Martinswand is a grand mountain, being one of the spurs of the greater Sonnstein, and rises precipitously, looming, massive and lofty, like a very fortress for giants, where it stands right across that road which, if you follow it long enough, takes you on through Zirl to Landeck old, picturesque, poetic Landeck, where Frederic of the Empty Pockets rhymed his sorrows in ballads to his people and so on, by Bludenz, into Switzerland itself, by as noble a highway as any traveller can ever desire to traverse on a summer's day.
It was ten by the bells of Zirl when they came once more under the solemn shadow of grave Martinswand. There were lights moving about the house, his brothers and sisters were still up, his mother ran out into the road, weeping and laughing with fear and joy. Findelkind himself said nothing. He hung his head.
When he was fairly out from under the shadow of Martinswand, he slackened his pace, and saw the sun come on his path, and the red day redden the gray-green water, and the early Stellwagen from Landeck, that had been lumbering along all the night, overtook him. He would have run after it, and called out to the travellers for alms, but he felt ashamed.
But Luca heard not; he was still kneeling at the feet of Raffaelle, where the world has knelt ever since. There was a little boy, a year or two ago, who lived under the shadow of Martinswand.
But the soldiers were good in those days: they did not laugh and use bad words." And Findelkind, on whose shoulder the orderly's hold was still fast, faced the horses which looked to him as huge as Martinswand, and the swords which he little doubted were to be sheathed in his heart. The officers stared, laughed again, then whispered together, and Findelkind heard them mutter the word "toll."
Indeed, all he thought of was Katte, Katte and the lambs. He knew the way that the sheep-tracks ran; the sheep could not climb so high as the goats; and he knew, too, that little Stefan could not climb so high as he. So he began his search low down upon Martinswand.
"The chase you have led me! and your mother thinking you were drowned! and all the working day lost, running after old women's tales of where they had seen you! Oh, little fool! little fool! what was amiss with Martinswand that you must leave it?" Findelkind slowly and feebly rose and sat up on the pavement, and looked up, not at his father, but at the knight Theodoric.
The path went zigzag and was very steep; the Arolla pines swayed their boughs in his face; stones that lay in his path unseen in the gloom made him stumble. Now and then a large bird of the night flew by with a rushing sound; the air grew so cold that all Martinswand might have been turning to one huge glacier.
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