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 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