A few days afterwards I went up to the pasture again, and came, by chance, to the head of the little dell dividing the two herds. I had been wandering in the fir-forest, and reached the place unexpectedly. There was a pleasant view from the spot, and I seated myself in the shade, to rest and enjoy it. The first object which attracted my attention was Otto, knitting as usual, beside his herd of cows. Then I turned to the other side to discover what Hans was doing. His cattle, this time, were not straying; but neither did he appear to be minding them in the least. He was walking backwards and forwards on the mountainside, with his eyes fixed upon the ground. Sometimes, where the top of a rock projected from the soil, he would lean over it, and look along it from one end to the other, as if he were trying to measure its size; then he would walk on, pull a blue flower, and then a yellow one, look at them sharply, and throw them away. “What is he after?” I said to myself. “Has he lost something, and is he trying to find it? or are his thoughts so busy with something else that he doesn’t really know what he is about?”
I watched him for nearly half an hour, at the end of which time he seemed to get tired, for he gave up looking about and sat down in the grass. The cattle were no doubt acquainted with his ways—(It is astonishing how much intelligence they have!)—and they immediately began to move towards the forest, and would soon have wandered away, if I had not headed them off and driven them back. Then I followed them, much to the surprise of Hans, who had been aroused by the noise of their bells as they ran from me.
“You don’t keep a very good watch, my boy!” I said.
As he made no answer, I asked, “Have you lost anything?”
“No,” he then said.
“What have you been hunting so long?”
He looked confused, turned away his head, and muttered, “Nothing.”
This made me sure he had been hunting something, and I felt a little curiosity to know what it was. But although I asked him again, and offered to help him hunt it, he would tell me nothing. He had a restless and rather unhappy look, quite different from the bright, cheerful eyes and pleasant countenance of Otto.
His father, he said, worked in a mill below the town, and got good wages; so he was allowed half the pay for tending the cattle during the summer.
“What will you do with the money?” I asked.