FINDELKIND




There was a little boy, a year or two ago, who lived under the
shadow of Martinswand. Most people know, I should suppose, that
the Martinswand is that mountain in the Oberinnthal where, several
centuries past, brave Kaiser Max lost his footing as he stalked
the chamois, and fell upon a ledge of rock, and stayed there, in
mortal peril, for thirty hours, till he was rescued by the
strength and agility of a Tyrol hunter--an angel in the guise of a
hunter, as the chronicles of the time prefer to say.

The Martinswand is a grand mountain, being one of the spurs of the
greater Sonnstein, and rises precipitously, looming, massive and
lofty, like a very fortress for giants, where it stands right
across that road which, if you follow it long enough, takes you
through Zell to Landeck,--old, picturesque, poetic Landeck, where
Frederick of the Empty Pockets rhymed his sorrows in ballads to
his people,--and so on by Bludenz into Switzerland itself, by as
noble a highway as any traveler can ever desire to traverse on a
summer's day. It is within a mile of the little burg of Zell,
where the people, in the time of their emperor's peril, came out
with torches and bells, and the Host lifted up by their priest,
and all prayed on their knees underneath the steep gaunt pile of
limestone, that is the same to-day as it was then, whilst Kaiser