loved his missal and his primer, and could spell them both out
very fairly, and was learning to write of a good priest in Zirl,
where he trotted three times a week with his two little brothers.
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. For the worst--or the best
--of it all was that he was Findelkind.

This is what was always haunting him. He was Findelkind; and to
bear this name seemed to him to mark him out from all other
children, and to dedicate him to heaven. One day, three years
before, when he had been only six years old, the priest in Zirl,
who was a very kindly and cheerful man, and amused the children
as much as he taught them, had not allowed Findelkind to leave
school to go home, because the storm of snow and wind was so
violent, but had kept him until the worst should pass, with one
or two other little lads who lived some way off, and had let the
boys roast a meal of apples and chestnuts by the stove in his
little room, and, while the wind howled and the blinding snow
fell without, had told the children the story of another
Findelkind,--an earlier Findelkind, who had lived in the flesh on
Arlberg as far back as 1381, and had been a little shepherd lad,
"just like you," said the good man, looking at the little boys