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.
All at once he heard through the stillness--for there is nothing
so still as a mountainside in snow--a little pitiful bleat. All
his terrors vanished; all his memories of ghost-tales passed
away; his heart gave a leap of joy; he was sure it was the cry of
the lambs. He stopped to listen more surely. He was now many
score of feet above the level of his home and of Zirl; he was, as
nearly as he could judge, half-way as high as where the cross in
the cavern marks the spot of the Kaiser's peril. The little bleat
sounded above him, very feeble and faint.

Findelkind set his lantern down, braced himself up by drawing
tighter his old leathern girdle, set his sheepskin cap firm on
his forehead, and went toward the sound as far as he could judge
that it might be. He was out of the woods now; there were only a
few straggling pines rooted here and there in a mass of loose-
lying rock and slate; so much he could tell by the light of the
lantern, and the lambs by the bleating, seemed still above him.

It does not, perhaps, seem very hard labour to hunt about by a
dusky light upon a desolate mountainside; but when the snow is
falling fast,--when the light is only a small circle, wavering,
yellowish on the white,--when around is a wilderness of loose
stones and yawning clefts,--when the air is ice and the hour is
past midnight,--the task is not a light one for a man; and
Findelkind was a child, like that Findelkind that was in heaven.