"Why! you are the old man from the mountain," exclaimed the astonished person addressed.
"I am coming to the valley to live. I am now seeking a shelter."
"Yonder," answered the man, "is a cottage just vacated by a man and wife. Would that suit you?"
"Anything that will shelter me will suit," was the answer. "Dost thou know who owns the house?"
"Von Nellser, the gardener. He lives down by the river now, and works for all the rich men in the valley."
"I'll see him to-night," said the old man, and, thanking his informant, was moving on.
"But, good father, the sun has already set; the night shades appear. Come and share my shelter and bread to-night, and in the morning seek Von Nellser."
The old man gladly accepted his kind offer. "The vale makes men kindly of heart and feeling," he said, as he uncovered his head to enter the home of the laborer. A fair woman of forty came forward, and clasped his hand with a warmth of manner which made him feel more at ease than many words of welcome would have done.
The three sat together at supper, and refreshed themselves with food and thought.
He retired early to the nice apartment assigned him, and lay awake a long time, musing on the past and the present. "Ah, I see," he said to himself, "why I am an object of wonder and something of awe to the people of the valley. I have lived apart from human ties, while they have grown old and ripe together. I must be a riddle to them all—a something which they have invested with an air of veneration, because I was not daily in their midst. Had it been otherwise, I should have been neither new nor fresh to them. How know I but this is God's reserve force wherewith each may become refreshed, and myself an humble instrument sent in the right moment to vivify those who have been thinking alike too much?"