“Will you be able to help the poor young boy?” asked the lady from Geneva.

“If I can only bring out the right emotion in him,” he replied, “so that the spell, which holds him imprisoned, can be broken.  Now everything in him is numbed and lifeless.”

“Oh, do help him!  Do help him!” begged the sick lady imploringly.  “Oh, if I could do something for him!” And she walked to and fro thinking about a way to help, for Toni’s condition went deeply to her heart.

It was the second week of August, when Toni came to the sanitarium.  Day after day, week after week passed and the doctor could only bring the same sad news to the two women, who every morning awaited his report with great anxiety.  Not the slightest change was noticed.  Every means was tried to amuse the boy, to see if he would perhaps laugh.  Other attempts were devised to disturb him, to make him cry.  They performed all kinds of tricks to attract his attention.  All, all were in vain; no trace of interest or emotion was aroused in Toni.

“If he could only be made to laugh or to cry once!” repeated the doctor over and over again.

When he had been four weeks in the sanitarium all hope disappeared, for the doctor had exhausted every means.

“Now I will try one thing more,” he said one morning to his wife.  “I have written to my friend, the Pastor, and asked him if the boy was very much attached to his mother, and if so, to send for her right away.  Perhaps to see her again would make an impression on him.”

The two women looked forward in great suspense to Elsbeth’s arrival.

In the first week of September the last guests left the hotel in Interlaken where Elsbeth had spent the summer.  She immediately started on her way home, for she wanted to get everything in order before Toni came down from the mountain.  She never thought but that he was still up there, and had no suspicion of all that had happened.  When she reached home, she went at once to the Matten farm to enquire for Toni and to bring the goat home.

The farmer was very friendly, and thought her goat was now by far one of the finest, because she had had good fodder so long.  But when Elsbeth asked after her Toni, he broke off abruptly and said he had so much to do, she must go to the Pastor, for he would have the best knowledge about the boy.  It immediately seemed to Elsbeth that it was a little strange for the Pastor to know best what happened up on the mountain and while she was leading home the goat, and thinking about the matter, a feeling of anxiety came over her and grew stronger and stronger.  As soon as she reached home, she quickly tied the goat, without going into the cottage at all, and ran back the same way she had come, down again to Kandergrund.

The Pastor told her with great consideration, how Toni had not borne the life on the mountain very well and they had been obliged to bring him down, and since it seemed best for him that he should go at once to a good physician for the right care, he had sent the boy immediately to Bern.