“Only what Lisa tells me,” answered Squib; “that they live in the ice and the snow, and love to catch mortals and send them fast, fast asleep with their cold kisses; and that nobody ever wakes again whom they have kissed to sleep. Have you ever seen them, Seppi? Lisa never has, nor the Bergmännlein either.”
Seppi shook his head as if in awed doubt. His voice was very low as he made answer,—
“I don’t think that I saw them; but I was once down, down, down with them in their blue ice home.”
“O Seppi!—tell me!”
“I don’t know how to tell, for I could never remember. That’s what everybody asks of me, but I can’t tell them anything. I was crossing the glacier with father, oh, long ago now, when I was quite a little boy. He had a rope round his waist, and he had tied the end of it round mine to keep me safe. I was following behind him when my foot caught in a little crevasse in the ice, and before I could get it out the rope jerked me off my feet and along, and then suddenly I found myself falling, falling. I was going down, down, down a great, green fissure, and the rope had broken, and there was nothing to hold me. After that I don’t remember anything till I woke up at home, with my leg all bound up; and ever since that it never grew any more, though I grew, and so I have been a cripple. And the people look at me and shake their heads, and say that I have been with the ice-maidens, and that that is why I am lame; but the good Herr Adler, he told me once that I must not think of it like that.”
“Why not?” asked Squib. “And who is the Herr Adler?”
“He is a man of God—I don’t know how else to call him,” answered the child with a look of reverence upon his face. “He lives away over in your country, little Herr; but he belongs to us too—or to Germany perhaps; and sometimes he comes here when he wants a rest, and stays one week, or two, or three here in this thal, wandering about the valley, and thinking his beautiful thoughts about everything. He always comes and talks to me. He is good to every one he meets, but to the little children most, I think—though, to be sure, the old women say he is best to them; and the men, that nobody understands them and their troubles like the Herr Adler. We all love him here, and count it a good summer when he comes. He was not with us last year. Perhaps God will send him to us soon.”
“And what did he tell you about the ice-maidens?” asked Squib, with great interest.
“Ah yes, that was what I was saying. I used to be frightened to think I had been with them, and the old women would shake their heads and whisper when I went by; and I knew they were saying that there was something wrong about me, and that nobody who had been kissed by the ice-maidens would ever live to make old bones. My mother used to cry, and I was afraid too; for I love our green valley and happy life—I didn’t want to die, or to be carried off by the Bergmännlein or the ice-maidens; and once I was crying about it when the Herr Adler came suddenly round a corner and found me; and when I told him all about it, he said such beautiful, good words, and now, whenever I think of them, I am not frightened any more.”
“What did he say?” asked Squib, with interest.