Moni the Goat-Boy

by Johanna Spyri

Then Moni came back directly to his wondering grandmother, and while they sat together at their supper, he told her the whole story from the very beginning about his three days so full of trouble, and the happy ending to-day.

The grandmother listened very quietly and attentively and when he came to the end, she said earnestly:

"Moni, you must remember what has happened to you now, as long as you live! While you were having so great trouble with wrong-doing in order to help the little creature, the dear Lord had already found a way to help it and make you happy as soon as you would do what was right in His sight. If you had done right at once, and trusted in God, all would have gone well at first. Now the dear Lord has helped you beyond all you deserved, so that you will not forget it your whole life long."

"No, I will surely never forget it," said Moni, eagerly assenting, "and will always truly think, the first thing: I must only do what is right before the dear Lord. He will take care of all the rest."

But before Moni could lie down to sleep, he had to look into the shed once more, to see if it were really possible that the little kid was lying out there and belonged to him.

Jörgli received the ten francs according to the agreement, but he was not allowed to escape from the affair so easily as that. When he returned to the Bath House, he was brought to the landlord who took the boy by the collar, gave him a good shaking, and said threateningly:

"Jörgli! Jörgli! Don't you try a second time to bring my whole house into bad repute! If anything like this happens a single time again, you will come out of my house in a way that will not please you! See, up there hangs a very sharp willow rod for such cases. Now go and think this over."

Moreover, the event had other consequences for the boy. From this time on, if anything was lost anywhere in the Bath House, all the servants immediately exclaimed: "Jörgli from Küblis has it!" and if he came afterwards into the house they all pounced on him together and cried: "Give it here, Jörgli! Out with it!" And if he assured them he had nothing and knew nothing about it, they would all exclaim: "We know you already!" and "You can't fool us!"

So Jörgli had to endure the most menacing attacks continually, and had hardly a moment's peace any more, for if he saw any one approaching him, he at once thought he was coming to ask if he had found this or that. So Jörgli was not at all happy; and a hundred times he thought: "If only I had given back that cross immediately! I will never in my whole life keep anything else that doesn't belong to me."

But Moni never ceased singing and yodeling, the whole summer long, for there was hardly another human being in the world as happy as he was up there with his goats. Often, however, when he lay stretched out in his contentment on the Pulpit-rock, and gazed down into the sunny valley below, he had to think how he had sat that time with the heavy burden on his heart, under the Rain-rock, and all happiness was gone; and he would say again and again in his heart: "I know now what I will do, so that it will never happen again: I will do nothing that will prevent me from looking up gladly to heaven, because this is right to the dear Lord."