A Round Dozen

"'No,' said Fritz, who had forgotten all about time.

"'It is just noon.'

"'Really? Oh, how frightened the mother will be!' cried Fritz, his heart sinking as he thought of the terrible cliffs which he must descend.

"'He never can go home as he came,' declared a rainbow, craning its long curved neck like a giraffe's over the heads of the others.

"'I'll tell you, let us all carry him down on our shoulders,' suggested Little Pink.

"'So we will,' shouted the clouds in a chorus; and jostling and laughing they all crowded into the narrow passage, bearing Fritz in their midst. As the door swung open, in swept fresh visitors, a crowd of tiny scurrying shapes, and some one behind, whipping them along with a lash of many-colored air.

"'Why, where are you all going?' demanded the new-comer, in a breezy voice. 'I've collected these stray lambs from hither and yon, and now I'm in for the day. What takes you out, pray?'

"'We'll not be gone a minute. We're only going to carry this boy home,' answered the rest; while Little Pink whispered in Fritz's ear, 'That's the West Wind. He's a great favorite with us all.'

"'Hallo! A boy! Why, so it is,' cried West Wind. He pounced on Fritz as he spoke, kissed him, ruffled his hair, boxed his ears softly, all in a minute. Then, with a gay, whooping laugh he vanished into the passage, while the clouds, raising Fritz, floated downward like a flock of white-winged birds. Little Pink lay under his cheek like a pillow. Softly as thistle-down touches earth they landed on the valley floor, laid Fritz on a bed of soft grass, and rose again, leaving him there. He looked up to watch them rise, bright and smiling. Little Pink waved a rosy hand. Higher and higher sailed the clouds, then they vanished into the door, and the door was shut."

I am telling the story, as you see, rather in my own words than in those of the old shepherd, but you won't mind that. The truth is, I cannot remember the exact language he used, but so long as I keep to the main points of the history it doesn't much matter, does it?

"In a few minutes Fritz recovered his wits and made haste home, for he feared his mother might be alarmed at his long absence. She was not, however, for she supposed that he had risen early, as he sometimes did, and taking a piece of bread in his hand, had followed the goats up the valley, breakfasting by the way. She met him, full of wonder at a strange thing that had happened.

"'Such a queer mist filled the valley just now,' she said, 'I could not see the sun at all. I feared a storm was coming, but presently it rolled away all in a minute, and left the day as fine as ever. Did you notice it? I never saw anything like it before.'

"Fritz let his mother wonder, and held his peace. She would think that he had fallen asleep and dreamed it all, he was sure; in fact, after a little he himself began to believe that it was a dream.

"But, dream or no dream, the strange thing was that it came true! From that time on, the climate of the Unlucky Valley seemed to change. Years passed by without a single drought or inundation. When the pastures below were parched with thirst, rain fell on Fritz's fields, keeping them green as emerald. All his crops succeeded; his goats and sheep gave double share of milk, and little by little he grew rich.

"'The Lucky Valley,' people now called the once unlucky spot, while to Fritz they gave the name of 'The Favored of the Saints.' Year after year his gains went on increasing. Gradually all the land in the valley became his, except one tiny strip, there at the upper end, which belonged to a widow, poor as Fritz's mother once had been. This strip Fritz desired to buy, but the widow refused to sell, though he offered a large price. She had come there a bride, she declared, with the myrtle-crown on her head, and there she wished to die and be buried when her time should come. The memory of his own poor mother, who had died some time before, should have made Fritz pitiful to this lonely woman, but his heart had grown hard with continued prosperity, and it angered him to be opposed. So when after many attempts she persisted in her resolution, he tried harsher means. The widow had debts. These he bought up, and when she could not pay he brought the pressure of the law to bear, and turned her from her home.

"The very night after he had watched her depart, weeping and broken-hearted, as he lay on his bed, feeling at last that the valley was all his own, the Little White Door opened on the cliffs far above, and out came the clouds.

"Not pink and purple now, smiling and full of good will, but black and wrathful. Like a flock of dark vultures they swooped at the sleeping valley. Floods of rain fell, fierce winds tore and raved, the river rose and burst its bounds, carrying all before it; and Fritz, awakened by the fearful roar, had just time to escape from his bed and gain the nearer hillside, when the waters struck the châlet and bore it away in ruins down the valley, as though it were no more than a bubble of foam. The crops were swept off, the flocks drowned in the fields. Fritz clung to a tree-trunk through that fearful night, listening to the hiss and rush of the flood, and the bleatings of the drowning sheep; and ever and anon it seemed as if shapes, dimly seen through the darkness, swooped at and buffeted him, while voices cried in his ear, 'Promise-breaker! Widow-spoiler! Is this the way you keep faith with the clouds?'

"When morning dawned it revealed a scene of ruin. Not a blade of barley remained in the meadows, not a blade of grass in the fields. The labor of years had vanished in a single night."

"It served him right," said I.

"Ah, my lady," replied the old shepherd, "God is more merciful to sinners than we men can be. Fritz was not wicked at heart. He saw his fault now in the light of his misfortune, and was sorry for it. Gladly would he have made amends, but he was now poor as the poorest, for the waters lay over the earth, and did not run off as waters generally do. The fertile valley was become a lake, into which points of land, fringed with broken and battered trees, pushed themselves. It was a sad sight.

"News of the disaster reached the lower valleys, and the kindly peasants flocked to help. But what could they do till the water receded? Nothing. They could only say comforting words and return to their homes, leaving Fritz to his fate.

"He waited many days, then he formed a bold resolution. He determined to climb the cliff once more, knock at the Little White Door, and plead with the clouds for forgiveness."

"That was bold indeed," I said.

"It was a much harder task than it had been years before, when he was a boy and his joints were supple," continued the old shepherd. "Only desperation carried him upward, but at last he did reach the door. He knocked many times without answer, and when at length the door opened, it was not a merry little cloud which appeared, but a tall, gloomy white one, which looked like a sheeted ghost. No game was going on in the great hall. The clouds, dressed in black, each with his thunder-cap on, sat side by side, and frowned on Fritz as he stood in the midst and made his plea.

"'I have sinned,' he said sadly, as he ended, 'I have sinned grievously, and I am justly punished. I forgot my promise to you, meine Herren, and I cannot complain that you broke yours to me. But give me one more chance, I implore you. Let me atone for my fault, and if I fail again, punish me as you will.'

"It seemed to him that the clouds grew a little less gloomy as he spoke, and their voices were gentle as they replied, 'Very well, we will consider of it. Now go.' There was no offer to carry him this time. Exhausted and weary he groped his way down at peril to life and limb, and more dead than alive crept into the miserable shed which had replaced his home, with no assured hope as to what the clouds might elect to do.

"But lo, in the morning the waters had begun to fall. He hardly dared believe his eyes, but day by day they slowly grew less. By the end of a fortnight the ground was left bare. Such land! Rough, seamed, gullied by the flood, covered with slime from the mountain side and with rocks and gravel, – it seemed a hopeless task to reclaim it again into pasture.

"But Fritz was a strong man and his will was good. Little by little the rocks were removed, the fields resown, and the valley restored to its old fruitfulness. The soil seemed richer than ever before, as if the mud and slime which had lain so long on the surface were possessed of some fertilizing quality. Another châlet in time arose, in place of the old one. By the end of fifteen years Fritz again was a rich man, richer than before. But his hard heart had been drowned in the flood, and the new heart which he brought back from the Little White Door was soft and kind. As soon as he could, he sought out the poor widow and restored to her all she had lost, land and home and goats. Later on he wedded her niece, a good and honest maiden, and they took the widow to live under their own roof, and were to her as a son and daughter. So the last years of Fritz were his best years, and his name, 'The Favored of the Saints,' stuck to him for the rest of his life. And it is from him that this valley is named Das Fritzethal, my lady."

"And is the story really a true one?" I asked.

"Ah, who knows?" said the old shepherd, shaking his head wisely. "The world has so many liars in it that no one can be sure." Then he took off his odd pointed hat, made a bow, called to his goats, and went his way down the valley, followed by the herd with their many-keyed tinkling bells.

I looked up. The Little White Door shone out of the face of the cliff all rosy pink with sunset. It was time for me to go also.

"At least," I thought, "if the story is not all true, if it has changed and grown a little during the course of the years, – at least it is a good story, and I am glad I heard it."

LITTLE KAREN AND HER BABY

THE cottage in which little Karen lived stood high up on the hillside, close to the edge of a great forest. It was a strange, lonely place for a young wife, almost a girl, to be so happy in; but Karen was not afraid of the forest, and never thought her home lonely, not even when the strong winds blew in winter-time, and brought the far-off baying of wolves from the mountains beyond. Her husband, her boy, her housewifely cares, her spinning-wheel, and her needle kept her busy all day long, and she was as cheerful as busy. The cottage was not large, but it was strongly built of heavy beams and stones. Its low walls seemed to hug and clasp the ground, as if for protection in time of storm. The casement windows, with their very small panes of thick glass, let in little sun, but all summer long they stood open, and in winter, what with the crackling fire, the hum of the wheel, and Karen's bright face, the living-room never looked dark, and, for all its plainness, had an air of quaint comfort about it. Fritz, Karen's husband, who was skilful with tools, had ornamented the high-backed chair, the press for clothes, and the baby's oaken cradle, with beautiful carving, of which little Karen was exceedingly proud. She loved her cottage, she loved the great wood close by; her lonely life was delightful to her, and she had not the least wish to exchange it for the toy-like village in the valley below.

But Karen was unlike other people, the neighbors said, and the old gossips were wont to shake their heads, and mutter that there was a reason for this unlikeness, and that all good Christians ought to pity and pray for the poor child.

Long, long ago, said these gossips, – so long that nobody now could remember exactly when it was, – Karen's great-great-great-grandfather, (or perhaps his grandfather – who could tell?) when hunting in the high mountains, met a beautiful, tiny maiden, so small and light that a man could easily carry her in the palm of one hand. This maiden he fell in love with, and he won her to be his wife. She made a good wife; kept the house as bright as new tin; and on her wheel spun linen thread so fine that mortal eye could hardly see it. But a year and a day from the time of her marriage she went out to walk in the wood, and never came back any more! The reason of this was, that she was a gnomide, – daughter of one of the forest gnomes, – and when her own people encountered her thus alone, they detained her, and would not suffer her to return to her husband. The baby she left in the cradle grew to be a woman, – bigger than her gnome mother, it is true, but still very small; and all the women of the race have been small since that time. Witness little Karen herself, whose head only came up to the shoulder of her tall Fritz. Then her passion for woods and solitary places, her beautiful swift spinning, her hair, of that peculiar pale white-brown shade, – all these were proofs of the drops of unearthly blood which ran in her veins. Gnomes always had white hair. This was because they lived in holes and dark places. Even a potato would throw out white leaves if kept in a cellar, – everybody knew that, – and the gossips, ending thus, would shake their heads again, and look very wise.

Karen had heard these stories, and laughed at them. No fairy or gnome had ever met her eyes in the woods she loved so well; and as for hair, Rosel Pilaff's, and Gretchen Erl's too, was almost as pale as hers. Fair hair is common enough in the German mountains. Her little boy – bless him! – had downy rings which promised to become auburn in time, the color of his father's beard. She did not believe in the gnome story a bit.

But there came a time when she almost wished to believe it, for the gnomes are said to be wise folk, and little Fritz fell ill of a strange disease, which neither motherly wisdom nor motherly nursing was able to reach. Each day left him thinner and weaker, till he seemed no more than half his former size. His very face looked strange as it lay on the cradle-pillow, and Karen was at her wits' end to know what to do.

"I will go to the village and ask Mother Klaus to come and see the child," said Fritz. "She may know of a remedy."

"It will be of no use," declared Karen, sadly. "She went to the Berards' and the baby died, and to Heinrich's and little Marie died. But go, go, Fritz! – only come back soon, lest our angel take flight while you are away!"

She almost pushed him from the door, in her impatience to have him return.

A while after, when the baby had wailed himself to sleep, she went again to the door to look down the path into the valley. It was too soon to hope for Fritz, but the movement seemed a relief to her restlessness. It was dusk, not dark, – a sweet, mild dusk, with light enough left to show the tree-branches as they met and waved against the dim yellow sky. Deep shadows lay on the moss-beds and autumn flowers which grew beneath; only a faint perfume here and there told of their presence, and the night was very near.

Too unhappy to mind the duskiness, Karen wandered a little way up the wood-path, and sat down on the root of an old oak, so old that the rangers had given it the name of "Herr Grandfather." It was only to clear her brimming eyes that she sat down. She wiped them with her kerchief, and, with one low sob, was about to rise, when she became aware that somebody was standing at her side.

This somebody was a tiny old woman, with a pale, shadowy, but sweet face, framed in flossy white hair. She wore a dark, foreign-looking robe; a pointed hood, edged with fur, was pulled over her head; and the hand which she held out as she spoke was as white as the stalk of celery.

"What is the matter, my child?" she asked, in a thin, rustling voice, which yet sounded pleasantly, because it was kind.

"My baby is so ill," replied Karen, weeping.

"How ill?" inquired the old woman, anxiously. "Is it cold? Is it fever? Do its eyes water? My baby once had a cold, and her eyes – " She stopped abruptly.

"His eyes do not water," said Karen, who felt singularly at home with the stranger. "But his head is hot, and his hands; he sleeps ill, and for these ten days has hardly eaten. He grows thinner and whiter every hour, and wails whenever he is awake. Oh, what am I doing? I must go back to him." And, as she spoke, she jumped from her seat.

"One minute!" entreated the little old woman. "Has he pain anywhere?"

"He cries when I move his head," said Karen, hurrying on.