Findelkind this time called the big dog Waldmar to him, and with the dog beside him went once more out into the cold and the gloom, whilst his father and mother, his brothers and sisters, were sleeping, and poor childless Katte alone was awake. He looked up at the mountain, and then across the water-swept meadows to the river. He was in doubt which way to take. Then he thought that in all likelihood the lambs would have been seen if they had wandered the river-way, and even little Stefan would have had too much sense to let them go there. So he crossed the road and began to climb Martinswand. With the instinct of the born mountaineer he had brought out his crampons with him, and had now fastened them on his feet: he knew every part and ridge of the mountains, and had more than once climbed over to that very spot where Kaiser Max had hung in peril of his life.
On second thoughts he bade Waldmar go back to the house. The dog was a clever mountaineer too, but Findelkind did not wish to lead him into danger. "I have done the wrong, and I will bear the brunt," he said to himself; for he felt as if he had killed Katte's children, and the weight of the sin was like lead on his heart, and he would not kill good Waldmar too.
His little lantern did not show much light, and as he went higher upward he lost sight of the moon. The cold was nothing to him, because the clear still air was one in which he had been reared; and the darkness he did not mind, because he was used to that also; but the weight of sorrow upon him he scarcely knew how to bear, and how to find two tiny lambs in this vast waste of silence and shadow would have puzzled and wearied older minds than his. Garibaldi and all his household, old soldiers tried and true, sought all night once upon Caprera on such a quest in vain. If he could only have awakened his brother Stefan to ask him which way they had gone! But then, to be sure, he remembered, Stefan must have told that to all those who had been looking for the lambs from sunset to nightfall. All alone he began the ascent.
Time and again, in the glad spring-time and the fresh summer weather, he had driven his flock upward to eat the grass that grew in the clefts of the rocks and on the broad green alps. The sheep could not climb to the highest points, but the goats did, and he with them. Time and again he had lain on his back in these uppermost heights, with the lower clouds behind him and the black wings of the birds and the crows almost touching his forehead, as he lay gazing up into the blue depth of the sky and dreaming, dreaming, dreaming.
He would never dream any more now, he thought to himself. His dreams had cost Katte her lambs, and the world of the dead Findelkind was gone for ever: gone all the heroes and knights; gone all the faith and the force; gone every one who cared for the dear Christ and the poor in pain.
The bells of Zirl were ringing midnight. Findelkind heard, and wondered that only two hours had gone by since his mother had kissed him in his bed. It seemed to him as if long, long nights had rolled away and he had lived a hundred years. He did not feel any fear of the dark calm night, lit now and then by silvery gleams of moon and stars. The mountain was his old familiar friend, and the ways of it had no more terror for him than these hills here used to have for the bold heart of Kaiser Max. Indeed, all he thought of was Katte—Katte and the lambs. He knew the way that the sheep-tracks ran—the sheep could not climb so high as the goats—and he knew too that little Stefan could not climb so high as he. So he began his search low down upon Martinswand.
After midnight the cold increased: there were snow-clouds hanging near, and they opened over his head, and the soft snow came flying along. For himself he did not mind it, but alas for the lambs! If it covered them, how would he find them? And if they slept in it they were dead.
It was bleak and bare on the mountain-side, though there were still patches of grass, such as the flocks liked, that had grown since the hay was cut. The frost of the night made the stone slippery, and even the irons gripped it with difficulty, and there was a strong wind rising like a giant's breath, and blowing his small horn lantern to and fro. Now and then he quaked a little with fear—not fear of the night or the mountains, but of strange spirits and dwarfs and goblins of ill repute, said to haunt Martinswand after nightfall. Old women had told him of such things, though the priest always said that they were only foolish tales, there being nothing on God's earth wicked save men and women who had not clean hearts and hands. Findelkind believed the priest; still, all alone on the side of the mountain, with the snowflakes flying round him, he felt a nervous thrill that made him tremble and almost turn backward. Almost, but not quite, for he thought of Katte and the poor little lambs lost—and perhaps dead—through his fault.
The path went zigzag and was very steep; the Siberian pines swayed their boughs in his face; stones that lay in his path, unseen in the gloom, made him stumble. Now and then a large bird of the night flew by with a rushing sound: the air grew so cold that all Martinswand might have been turning to one huge glacier. All at once he heard through the stillness—for there is nothing so still as a mountain-side in snow—a little pitiful bleat. All his terrors vanished, all his memories of ghost-tales passed away; his heart gave a leap of joy; he was sure it was the cry of the lambs. He stopped to listen more surely. He was now many score of feet above the level of his home and of Zirl: he was, as nearly as he could judge, halfway as high as where the cross in the cavern marks the spot of the kaiser's peril. The little bleat sounded above him, and it was very feeble and faint.
Findelkind set his lantern down, braced himself up by drawing tighter his old leathern girdle, set his sheepskin cap firm on his forehead, and went toward the sound as far as he could judge that it might be. He was out of the woods now: there were only a few straggling pines rooted here and there in a mass of loose-lying rock and slate. So much he could tell by the light of the lantern, and the lambs, by the bleating, seemed still above him.