It was bleak and bare on the mountainside, 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 Arolla 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 mountainside 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 towards 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.

It does not, perhaps, seem very hard labor to hunt about by a dusky light upon a desolate mountainside; but when the snow is falling fast,—­when the light is only a small circle, wavering, yellowish on the white,—­when around is a wilderness of loose stones and yawning clefts,—­when the air is ice and the hour is past midnight,—­the task is not a light one for a man; and Findelkind was a child, like that Findelkind that was in heaven.

Long, very long, was his search; he grew hot and forgot all fear, except a spasm of terror lest his light should burn low and die out.  The bleating had quite ceased now, and there was not even a sigh to guide him; but he knew that near him the lambs must be, and he did not waver or despair.