"A chamois must have fallen into the stream above," added Veit.
"But Ruepel hasn't come home yet!" Klaus declared, and a little later he
continued: "It will be easy enough to find out if it is chamois' blood."
Veit was as pale as death. "Klaus," he said, "come up the ravine with
me!"
They walked along the little stream; the water had now become clear
again.
Lower and lower the sunbeams penetrated among the silent rocks; higher
and higher, and hurrying more with every step, the two lads climbed,
forcing themselves through narrow, gloomy defiles, which had been torn
asunder by the water in violent storms, or hollowed out in peaceful
seasons. The lads spoke not a word to one another; they struggled
through raspberry-bushes and underbrush, wet with dew; they clambered up
the steep precipice; they heard a roaring sound, for they were
approaching the spot where the water fell like a golden band over the
sunny cliff.
"Here is something; look!" Klaus cried suddenly. They discovered two
straws fastened together, and near them the bow made from the
pine-bough. On the bushes of the cliff hung a number of torn and broken
straws, and below, in the depths of the abyss--in the depths of the
abyss lay the old man.
His head was crushed; in his left hand he rigidly held the branch of an
Alpine rose-bush. Over his right hand the water was trickling.
So they found him. Who could tell how he came to his death? Perhaps he
was searching up there for the gold of the Alpine glow, with which to
make himself a new harp, and while doing this, the poor old man had
plunged over the cliff into the defile below. While falling, he had
evidently tried to hold himself by the rose-bush, and the branch, with
its one brilliant blossom, had remained in his hand.--Thus ended the
life of the forest singer.
On this Corpus Christi festival we laid him in the ground. There were
not many people present. But the birds in the tree-tops sang a
melodious slumber song to their brother.
No one in the Winkel forests seemed so poor as this man, and yet no one
was so rich. The all-powerful, mysterious, sacred gift of folk-song
found its embodiment in this strange being.
Upon Father Paul's grave stands a cross, made from the wood of an
ancient pine. Upon the singer's mound I plant a young, living tree.