munching their roast crabs, and whose country had been over
there, above Stuben, where Danube and Rhine meet and part.

The pass of Arlberg is even still so bleak and bitter that few
care to climb there; the mountains around are drear and barren,
and snow lies till midsummer, and even longer sometimes. "But in
the early ages," said the priest (and this is quite a true tale
that the children heard with open eyes, and mouths only not open
because they were full of crabs and chestnuts), "in the early
ages," said the priest to them, "the Arlberg was far more dreary
than it is now. There was only a mule-track over it, and no
refuge for man or beast; so that wanderers and peddlers, and
those whose need for work or desire for battle brought them over
that frightful pass, perished in great numbers, and were eaten by
the bears and the wolves. The little shepherd boy Findelkind--who
was a little boy five hundred years ago, remember," the priest
repeated--"was sorely disturbed and distressed to see these poor
dead souls in the snow winter after winter, and seeing the
blanched bones lie on the bare earth, unburied, when summer
melted the snow. It made him unhappy, very unhappy; and what
could he do, he a little boy keeping sheep? He had as his wages
two florins a year; that was all; but his heart rose high, and he
had faith in God. Little as he was, he said to himself he would
try and do something, so that year after year those poor lost
travellers and beasts should not perish so. He said nothing to
anybody, but he took the few florins he had saved up, bade his
master farewell, and went on his way begging,--a little
fourteenth century boy, with long, straight hair, and a girdled
tunic, as you see them," continued the priest, "in the miniatures
in the black-letter missal that lies upon my desk. No doubt