"And do you doubt that it was?" Anton asked.
"No," Franz admitted, "but Caesar had something to do with it, too. Why cannot he be given due credit?"
"You have not learned the lesson of patience," Anton told him. "That is not surprising, because no youth has. I tell you everything will be all right."
"I hope so," Franz said gloomily. "Now, since all this thinking has pained me, I will clean the stable."
"A worthy endeavor," Anton said, "and one well calculated to remove your mind from your own troubles."
Caesar threw himself down on a pile of hay, pillowed his head on his paws and went to sleep. Franz started cleaning the stable. He sighed again. It would be nice if he were wise, like Father Benjamin or even like Anton, for then he would know so many things that otherwise he could never hope to know.
Since he was stupid and knew nothing except how to work with his hands, he must find contentment in such work. Presently he found it and became so absorbed in what he was doing that he was startled by Anton's voice, saying, "We must close the shutters, for it is starting to snow."
Franz looked up to discover that the stable, never bright as long as snow was heaped around the shutter openings, had grown noticeably dimmer. He hurried to help close the shutters. Anton lighted his candle lantern and hung it on the peg. With the shutters closed, the scream of the wind died to a soft moaning.
Caesar rose to pace beside Franz, as though in so doing he was somehow standing between his master and the storm. The four gentle cows, never doubting that they would be cared for, munched their hay. In the fitful light of the candle lantern, Anton's massive face looked strangely sober.
"It will be well for one of us to have his supper and then the other, little Franz," he said. "The storm will not grow less, and one of us should be here to reassure the cows if the wind screams too loudly. Do you want to go first?"