He came into the midst of the people with the two little lambs
in his arms, and he heeded neither the outcries of neighbours nor
the frenzied joy of his mother; his eyes looked straight before
him, and his face was white like the snow.
"I killed them," he said, and then two great tears rolled down
his cheeks and fell on the little cold bodies of the two little
dead brothers.
Findelkind was very ill for many nights and many days after
that.
Whenever he spoke in his fever he always said, "I killed them!"
Never anything else.
So the dreary winter months went by, while the deep snow filled
up lands and meadows, and covered the great mountains from summit
to base, and all around Martinswand was quite still, and now and
then the post went by to Zirl, and on the holy-days the bells
tolled; that was all. His mother sat between the stove and his
bed with a sore heart; and his father, as he went to and fro
between the walls of beaten snow from the wood-shed to the
cattle-byre, was sorrowful, thinking to himself the child would
die, and join that earlier Findelkind whose home was with the
saints.
But the child did not die.
He lay weak and wasted and almost motionless a long time; but
slowly, as the springtime drew near, and the snows on the lower
hills loosened, and the abounding waters coursed green and
crystal clear down all the sides of the hills, Findelkind revived
as the earth did, and by the time the new grass was springing,
and the first blue of the gentian gleamed on the alps, he was
well.
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