One Saturday afternoon the busy sound of the hammer and of the adze was heard on the green hill-top which served the good folks of Nordstetten as their public gathering-place in the open air.
Valentine the carpenter, with his two sons, was making a scaffolding designed to serve no less a purpose than that of an altar and a pulpit. Christian the tailor's son Gregory was to officiate at his first mass and to preach his first sermon.
Ivo, Valentine's youngest son, a child of six years of age, assisted his father with a mien which betokened that he considered his services indispensable. With his bare head and feet he ran up and down the timbers nimbly as a squirrel. When a beam was being lifted, he cried, "Pry under!" as lustily as any one, put his shoulder to the crowbar, and puffed as if nine-tenths of the weight fell upon him. Valentine liked to see his little boy employed. He would tell him to wind the twine on the reel, to carry the tools where they were wanted, or to rake the chips into a heap. Ivo obeyed all these directions with the zeal and devotion of a self-sacrificing patriot. Once, when perched upon the end of a plank for the purpose of weighing it down, the motion of the saw shook his every limb, and made him laugh aloud in spite of himself: he would have fallen off but for the eagerness with which he held on to his position and endeavored to perform his task in the most workmanlike manner.
At last the scaffolding was finished. Lewis the saddler was ready to nail down the carpets and hanging. Ivo offered to help him too; but, being gruffly repelled, he sat down upon his heap of chips, and looked at the mountains, behind which the sun was setting in a sea of fire. His father's whistle aroused him, and he ran to his side.
"Father," said Ivo, "I wish I was in Hochdorf."
"Why?"
"Because it's so near to heaven, and I should like to climb up once."
"You silly boy, it only seems as if heaven began there. From Hochdorf it is a long way to Stuttgard, and from there it is a long way to heaven yet."