Never anything else.
So the dreary winter months went by, while the deep snow filled up
lands and meadows, and covered the great mountains from summit to
base, and all around Martinswand was quite still, and now and then
the post went by to Zirl, and on the holy-days the bells tolled;
that was all. His mother sat between the stove and his bed with a
sore heart; and his father, as he went to and fro between the
walls of beaten snow, from the wood shed to the cattle byre, was
sorrowful, thinking to himself the child would die, and join that
earlier Findelkind whose home was with the saints,
But the child did not die.
He lay weak and wasted and almost motionless a long time; but
slowly, as the springtime drew near, and the snows on the lower
hills loosened, and the abounding waters coursed green and crystal
clear clown all the sides of the hills, Findelkind revived as the
earth did, and by the time the new grass was springing and the
first blue of the gentian gleamed on the Alps, he was well.
But to this day he seldom plays and scarcely ever laughs. His face
is sad, and his eyes have a look of trouble.
Sometimes the priest of Zirl says of him to others, "He will be a
great poet or a great hero some day." Who knows?
Meanwhile, in the heart of the child there remains always a weary
pain, that lies on his childish life as a stone may lie on a
flower.
"I killed them!" he says often to himself, thinking of the two
little white brothers frozen to death on Martinswand that cruel
night; and he does the things that are told him, and is obedient,
and tries to be content with the humble daily duties that are his
lot, and when he says his prayers at bedtime always ends them so:
--
"Dear God, do let the little lambs play with the other Findelkind
that is in heaven."