number, and lasted as a great order down to the days of Joseph II. This
is what Findelkind in the fourteenth century did, I tell you. Bear
like faith in your hearts, my children; and though your generation is
a harder one than this, because it is without faith, yet you shall move
mountains, because Christ and St. Christopher will be with you."

Then the good man, having said that, blessed them, and left 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 love of the poor! That was to do something
indeed!

This poor little living Findelkind would look at the miniatures in the
priest's missal, in one of which there was the little fourteenth-century
boy, with long hanging hair and a wallet and bare feet, and he never
doubted that it was the portrait of the blessed Findelkind who was in
heaven; and he wondered if he looked like a little boy there, or if he
were changed to the likeness of an angel.

"He was a boy just like me," thought the po