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Updated: June 8, 2025
Next to the church there is a little stone lodge, or 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 wofully; 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.
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 say the word "crazed."
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.
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.
The moon was still high. Above, against the sky, black and awful with clouds floating over its summit, was the great Martinswand. Findelkind this time called the big dog Waldmar to him, and, with the dog beside him, went once more out into the cold and the gloom, whilst his father and mother, his brothers and sisters, wore sleeping, and poor childless Katte alone was awake.
Now and then he quaked a little with fear, not fear of the night or the mountains, but of strange spirits and dwarfs and goblins of ill repute, said to haunt Martinswand after nightfall. Old women had told him of such things, though the priest always said that they were only foolish tales, there being nothing on God's earth wicked save men and women who had not clean hearts and hands.
So the dreary winter months went by, while the deep snow filled up valleys and meadows and covered the great mountains from summit to base, and all around Martinswand was quite still, save that now and then the post went by to Zirl, and on the holy days the bells tolled: that was all.
"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.
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 summer-time 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.
At this farm-house, with Martinswand towering above it and Zirl a mile beyond, there lived, and lives still, a little boy who bears the old historical name of Findelkind. His father, Otto Korner, was the last of a sturdy race of yeomen who had fought with Hofer and Haspinger, and had been free men always.
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