"As a novice of the Augustinian Order?" the elder Halle asked doubtfully.
"Not quite." Father Paul smiled again, at Franz this time. "Novices must clutter their minds with Latin and any number of similar subjects. He may be a lay worker, or maronnier. Would you like that, Franz?"
"Oh, yes!" Franz's soaring imagination sped him out of Dornblatt to the fabled Hospice of St. Bernard.
"Will he go now?" the elder Halle asked.
"Hardly," Father Paul replied, "for it takes time to arrange such matters. He may very well go next summer. Meanwhile, I know you will find some useful occupation for him."
Franz's father said, "He can cut wood."
3: THE
GREEDY
VILLAGER
Franz sank his razor-sharp ax in the raw stump of a new-cut birch and used both hands to close his jacket against an icy wind that whistled down from the heights. He looked up at the cloud-stabbing peak of Little Sister and smiled. Yesterday, the snow line had been exactly even with a pile of tumbled boulders that, according to some of the more imaginative residents of Dornblatt, resembled an old man with a pipe in his mouth. Today, it was a full fifty yards farther down the mountain.