them alone to their chestnuts and crabs, and went into his own
oratory to prayer. The other boys laughed and chattered; but
Findelkind sat very quietly, thinking of his namesake, all the
day after, and for many days and weeks and months this story
haunted him. A little boy had done all that; and this little boy
had been called Findelkind: Findelkind, just like himself.

It was beautiful, and yet it tortured him. If the good man had
known how the history would root itself in the child's mind,
perhaps he would never have told it; for night and day it vexed
Findelkind, and yet seemed beckoning to him and crying, "Go thou
and do likewise!"

But what could he do?

There was the snow, indeed, and there were the mountains, as in
the fourteenth century, but there were no travellers lost. The
diligence did not go into Switzerland after autumn, and the
country people who went by on their mules and in their sledges to
Innspruck knew their way very well, and were never likely to be
adrift on a winter's night, or eaten by a wolf or a bear.

When spring came, Findelkind sat by the edge of the bright pure
water among the flowering grasses, and felt his heart heavy.
Findelkind of Arlberg who was in heaven now must look down, he
fancied, and think him so stupid and so selfish, sitting there.
The first Findelkind, a few centuries before, had trotted down on
his bare feet from his mountain pass, and taken his little crook,
and gone out boldly over all the land on his pilgrimage, and
knocked at castle gates and city walls in Christ's name, and for