I
August lived in a little town called Hall. Hall is a favorite
name for several towns in Austria and in Germany; but this one
especial little Hall, in the Upper Innthal, is one of the most
charming Old-World places that I know, and August for his part
did not know any other. It has the green meadows and the great
mountains all about it, and the gray-green glacier-fed water
rushes by it. It has paved streets and enchanting little shops
that have all latticed panes and iron gratings to them; it has a
very grand old Gothic church, that has the noblest blendings of
light and shadow, and marble tombs of dead knights, and a look of
infinite strength and repose as a church should have. Then there
is the Muntze Tower, black and white, rising out of greenery and
looking down on a long wooden bridge and the broad rapid river;
and there is an old schloss which has been made into a guard-house,
with battlements and frescos and heraldic devices in gold and
colors, and a man-at-arms carved in stone standing life-size in
his niche and bearing his date 1530. A little farther on, but
close at hand, is a cloister with beautiful marble columns and
tombs, and a colossal wood-carved Calvary, and beside that a
small and very rich chapel: indeed, so full is the little town of
the undisturbed past, that to walk in it is like opening a missal
of the Middle Ages, all emblazoned and illuminated with saints
and warriors, and it is so clean, and so still, and so noble, by
reason of its monuments and its historic color, that I marvel
much no one has ever cared to sing its praises. The old pious
heroic life of an age at once more restful and more brave than
ours still leaves its spirit there, and then there is the girdle
of the mountains all around, and that alone means strength,
peace, majesty.
In this little town a few years ago August Strehla lived with his
people in the stone-paved irregular square where the grand church
stands.
He was a small boy of nine years at that time,--a chubby-faced
little man with rosy cheeks, big hazel eyes, and clusters of
curls the brown of ripe nuts. His mother was dead, his father was
poor, and there were many mouths at home to feed. In this country
the winters are long and very cold, the whole land lies wrapped
in snow for many months, and this night that he was trotting
home, with a jug of beer in his numb red hands, was terribly
cold and dreary. The good burghers of Hall had shut their double
shutters, and the few lamps there were flickered dully behind
their quaint, old-fashioned iron casings. The mountains indeed
were beautiful, all snow-white under the stars that are so big in
frost. Hardly any one was astir; a few good souls wending home
from vespers, a tired post-boy who blew a shrill blast from his
tasselled horn as he pulled up his sledge before a hostelry, and
little August hugging his jug of beer to his ragged sheepskin
coat, were all who were abroad, for the snow fell heavily and the
good folks of Hall go early to their beds. He could not run, or
he would have spilled the beer; he was half frozen and a little
frightened, but he kept up his courage by saying over and over
again to himself, "I shall soon be at home with dear Hirschvogel."
[Illustration: HE WENT ON THROUGH THE STREETS, PAST THE STONE
MAN-AT-ARMS OF THE GUARD-HOUSE]
He went on through the streets, past the stone man-at-arms of the
guard-house, and so into the place where the great church was,
and where near it stood his father, Karl Strehla's house, with a
sculptured Bethlehem over the door-way, and the Pilgrimage of the
Three Kings painted on its wall. He had been sent on a long
errand outside the gates in the afternoon, over the frozen
fields and the broad white snow, and had been belated, and had
thought he had heard the wolves behind him at every step, and had
reached the town in a great state of terror, thankful with all
his little panting heart to see the oil-lamp burning under the
first house-shrine. But he had not forgotten to call for the
beer, and he carried it carefully now, though his hands were so
numb that he was afraid they would let the jug down every moment.
The snow outlined with white every gable and cornice of the
beautiful old wooden houses; the moonlight shone on the gilded
signs, the lambs, the grapes, the eagles, and all the quaint
devices that hung before the doors; covered lamps burned before
the Nativities and Crucifixions painted on the walls or let into
the wood-work; here and there, where a shutter had not been
closed, a ruddy fire-light lit up a homely interior, with the
noisy band of children clustering round the house-mother and a
big brown loaf, or some gossips spinning and listening to the
cobbler's or the barber's story of a neighbor, while the
oil-wicks glimmered, and the hearth-logs blazed, and the
chestnuts sputtered in their iron roasting-pot. Little August saw
all these things, as he saw everything with his two big bright
eyes that had such curious lights and shadows in them; but he
went heedfully on his way for the sake of the beer which a single
slip of the foot would make him spill. At his knock and call the
solid oak door, four centuries old if one, flew open, and the boy
darted in with his beer, and shouted, with all the force of
mirthful lungs, "Oh, dear Hirschvogel, but for the thought of you
I should have died!"
It was a large barren room into which he rushed with so much
pleasure, and the bricks were bare and uneven. It had a
walnut-wood press, handsome and very old, a broad deal table, and
several wooden stools for all its furniture; but at the top of
the chamber, sending out warmth and color together as the lamp
shed its rays upon it, was a tower of porcelain, burnished with
all the hues of a king's peacock and a queen's jewels, and
surmounted with armed figures, and shields, and flowers of
heraldry, and a great golden crown upon the highest summit of
all.