other side of the road that runs onward to Zirl
are a little stone church, quaint and low, and gray with age, and a
stone farm-house and cattle-sheds and timber-sheds of wood that is
darkly brown from time; and beyond these are some of the most beautiful
meadows in the world, full of tall grass and countless flowers, with
pools and little estuaries made by the brimming Inn River that flows by
them, and beyond the river the glaciers of the Sonnstein and the Selrain
and the wild Arlberg region, and the golden glow of sunset in the west,
most often seen from here through a veil of falling rain.

At this farm-house, with Martinswand towering above it and Zirl a mile
beyond, there lived, and lives still, a little boy who bears the old
historical name of Findelkind. His father, Otto Korner, was the last of
a sturdy race of yeomen who had fought with Hofer and Haspinger, and had
been free men always.

Findelkind came in the middle of seven other children, and was a pretty
boy of nine years old, with slenderer limbs and paler cheeks than his
rosy brethren, and tender, dreamy, dark-blue eyes that had the look, his
mother told him, of seeking stars in midday--_de chercher midi a
quatorze heures_, as the French have it. He was a good little lad, and
seldom gave any trouble from disobedience, though he often gave it from
forgetfulness. His father angrily complained that he was always in the
clouds--that is, he was always dreaming--and so very often would spill
the milk out of the pails, chop his own fingers instead of the wood, and
stay watching the swallows when he was sent to draw water. His brothers
and sisters were always making fun of him: they were sturdier, ruddier
and merrier children than he was, loved romping and climbing and
nutting, thrashing the walnut trees and sliding down snow-drifts, and
got into mischief of a more common and childish sort than Findelkind's
freaks of fancy. For indeed he was a very fanciful little boy:
everything around had tongues for him, and he would sit for hours among
the long rushes on the river's edge, trying to imagine what the wild
green-gray water had found in its wanderings, and asking the water-rats
and the ducks to tell him about it; but both rats and ducks were too
busy to attend to an idle little boy, and never spoke, which vexed him.

Findelkind, however, was very fond of his books: he would study day and
night in his little ignorant, primitive fashion. He loved his missal and
his