winter after winter, and seeing the blanched bones lie on the bare earth, unburied, when summer melted the snow.  It made him unhappy, very unhappy; and what could he do, he a little boy keeping sheep?  He had as his wages two florins a year; that was all; but his heart rose high, and he had faith in God.  Little as he was, he said to himself, he would try and do something, so that year after year those poor lost travelers and beasts should not perish so.  He said nothing to anybody, but he took the few florins he had saved up, bade his master farewell, and went on his way begging—­a little fourteenth-century boy, with long, straight hair, and a girdled tunic, as you see them,” continued the priest, “in the miniatures in the black-letter missal that lies upon my desk.  No doubt heaven favored him very strongly, and the saints watched over him; still, without the boldness of his own courage and the faith in his own heart, they would not have done so.  I suppose, too, that when knights in their armor, and soldiers in their camps, saw such a little fellow all alone, they helped him, and perhaps struck some blows for him, and so sped him on his way, and protected him from robbers and from wild beasts.  Still, be sure that the real shield and the real reward that served Findelkind of Arlberg was the pure and noble purpose that armed him night and day.  Now, history does not tell us where Findelkind went, nor how he fared, nor how long he was about it; but history does tell us that the little barefooted, long-haired boy, knocking so loudly at castle gates and city walls in the name of Christ and Christ’s poor brethren, did so well succeed in his quest that before long he had returned to his mountain home with means to have a church and a rude dwelling built, where he lived with six other brave and charitable souls, dedicating themselves to St. Christopher, and going out night and day to the sound of the Angelus, seeking the lost and weary.  This is really what Findelkind of Arlberg did five centuries ago, and did so quickly that his fraternity of St. Christopher twenty years after numbered among its members archdukes, and prelates, and knights without number, and lasted as a great order down to the days of Joseph II.  This is what Findelkind in the fourteenth century did, I tell you.  Bear like faith in your hearts, my children; and though your generation is a harder one than this, because it is without faith, yet you shall move mountains, because Christ and St. Christopher will be with you.”

Then the good man, having said that, blessed them, and left them alone to their chestnuts and crabs, and went into his own oratory to prayer.  The other boys laughed and chattered; but Findelkind sat very quietly, thinking of his namesake, all the day after, and for many days and weeks and months this story haunted him.  A little boy had done all that; and this little boy had been called Findelkind; Findelkind, just like himself.

It was beautiful, and yet it tortured him.  If the good man had known how the history would root itself in the child’s mind, perhaps he would never have told it; for night and day it vexed Findelkind, and yet seemed beckoning to him and crying, “Go thou and do likewise!”