“Because I’m lame. That leg isn’t any use to me walking. I can get up hill with my crutch and a stick; but I can only get down with Moor helping me. I put my leg over his back like this, and then I can hold myself up; but I couldn’t go hardly anywhere without Moor.”
“Dogs are so nice and kind and sensible!” said Squib, drawing a long breath of satisfaction. “May I kiss Moor for being so good?”
Moor submitted to the caress in pleased silence wagging his bob-tail all the while, and he kissed Squib back again as if to ratify the compact of friendship. Then he and Czar were formally introduced, with much wagging of tails, and many snuffs, and a few dignified gambols. The two boys looked on with great interest, and Squib suddenly asked,—
“What is your name?”
“Seppi,” answered the child, “and I live over there in that house,” and he pointed to one of the chalets Squib had been observing, which were larger and more solid than the little huts for cattle which lay around his own present home.
“And do you live there always? or do you go down into the valleys in the winter?”
“Our thal is warm—we stay there all the year round,” answered the little boy. “The little Herr sees how it lies—all open to the warm sun in the south and west, and sheltered by the great, beautiful mountains from the cruel north. We get the snow, to be sure—and we are shut up for the winter months, except those that can go about in sledges or with their snow-shoes. But with us the winter does not last as it does in other parts. When the beautiful spring comes, and the sun looks over the mountain ridges for many long hours day by day, then the snow begins to get full of strange holes, and the ice slips down off the roof, and there is a great cracking and crashing amongst the pine trees, and the rivers begin to wake and leap into life, and the snow goes slipping, slipping down into them, and they grow deeper and wilder and fiercer; and it seems as if the valley were full of voices and the laughter of the fairies, pushing the snow down the cascades and clapping their hands to see it swirled along in the fierce water. Then the men take up the bridges—because they would all get swept away—and for a little bit we are more shut in than ever, for it is nothing but a world of water. But the sun goes on shining, shining, shining, and then some morning we wake up and the valley is green again, and the cows and goats go out to the hill slopes, and by-and-by the cows from the valleys come up, and life begins again as it is in the happy summer-time. But yet I like the winter too. It is very beautiful, although I do miss coming out here and taking care of my goats.”
All this was not said at once, but bit by bit, as Seppi sat staring straight in front of him, and seemed to see the whole scene rising before him as he conjured it up before his mental vision. Squib listened with breathless interest, seeing it all, and hearing the strange voices of the valley almost as clearly as his companion. The lake so blue and smiling now, how did it look when lashed by winter storms and filled high with masses of half-melted snow?
“Do the Seligen Fräulein play there when it is all covered with ice and snow?” he asked; but at those words his companion turned upon him a half-frightened look.
“What does the little Herr know of the Seligen Fräulein?” he asked in a low voice.