The gnomes disappeared, and with them went the cattle, the kettle, and the shining bowls. But the horn lay where the little man had dropped it, and as the hunter looked at it he found it was pure silver. Catching it up, he ran down the mountain side to the hut where his sweetheart lived. He told her the story and showed her the Alp horn, and she was very happy; for she never had wanted him to be a chamois hunter, as the life was full of danger, and she loved the poor little animals that he killed. Now he would tend flocks as she did, and they would be happy in the life of herding.
At first the hunter thought he could not change his ways, for he loved to roam over the mountains and bound from crag to crag in pursuit of the fleet-footed creatures, but the promise of the gnomes and the pleas of Heidi persuaded him, and he gathered a herd and tended it all summer.
He made an Alp horn like the one he had received in the hut and gave it to the maiden, and sometimes as they tended their cattle on different sides of the valley, they would call across to each other, and they were happy and contented—until, one evening, he forgot the warning of the gnomes and shot a chamois.
Then he raised his horn to call good night to his sweetheart. But she did not answer. He blew blast after blast, but only the echoes came back, instead of the sound of the voice he knew and loved. Darkness fell and stars flashed like diamonds above the snowy Jungfrau, and still he called and sought her, but found no trace. The next morning, as he moved with his herd, a boy told him of a strange happening.
“Last night at sunset time I was watching my goats,” he said, “and saw a girl standing on the mountain side above her cattle. She smiled as the wine color of the Alpine glow crept down toward Chamounix, and throwing back her head, sang one of our herd songs. Suddenly she disappeared, but she could not have fallen, and just then an arrow whizzed through the air and fell on the spot where she had been standing.”
He took the arrow out of his peasant blouse and showed it to the hunter, who recognized it as his own, the one he had shot at the chamois.
Then Moni remembered the words of the gnomes, and knew that because he had forgotten their warning he had lost Heidi. He burned his arrows and sorrowfully went back to herding, never again to shoot a wild creature of the hills. By day he followed the cattle, and by night made Alp horns, always thinking of his sweetheart. But he never saw her again. Some of the herdsmen say that she fled in grief because he broke his word to her, and some declare that the gnomes carried her away to an ice palace in a crevasse. But nobody knows. They know only that from that time forth he tended flocks and made Alp horns, until every herdsman in the mountains had one, and because they could keep the cattle from straying and getting lost, they became more prosperous than they had ever dreamed of being.
Since then every peak and valley in Switzerland has resounded to the notes of the Alp horn. Throughout the summer time they are heard around the lakes of Zug and Geneva, and the cattle follow them as the children of Hamelin town followed the music of the piper. They echo along the Jungfrau as the shepherds behind Interlaken call their flocks together, and their weird sweet blasts mingle with the songs of herd girls as they yodel to each other across the ravines. Travelers from every land smile at the sound of them, for one of the charms of going to Switzerland is in hearing the Alp horns; but very few of these strangers know that the mountain people say the reason the sound is so magical to the cattle is because in the beginning the horn came from the gnomes.
THE DUTY THAT WASN’T PAID
(Biography—Music—Ethics)