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Silent as a drifting cloud, for all his size, Caesar left Franz and set a course that would intercept the fleeing goat. He came in front of the escaping animal. The goat halted and stamped a threatening hoof.

Franz almost saw Caesar grin. The mighty dog could break this silly animal's spine with one chop of his jaws, if he wished to do so, but he was no killer. He advanced on the goat, that tried and failed to break around him. Then he began edging it back toward the paddock. When the goat squeezed under the dog leaped over and continued to herd the escapee toward the pen.

Laughing, Franz ran forward and arrived at the goat pen just in time to meet the Widow Geiser, who came from her chalet.

Despite the man's work she had been doing, the Widow Geiser was still attractive enough to furnish a lively subject for discussion among Dornblatt's unattached bachelors. If the fact that she was also proprietress of a good farm detracted nothing from her charms, that was natural enough.

Now she asked, "What's the matter, Franz?"

"Caesar and I were walking in the forest when we saw one of your goats trying to escape. I ordered Caesar to drive it back."

"Thank you, Franz. Hereafter I must keep that one tethered. She has tried to run away so many times. Won't you come in for some bread and milk?"

"I thank you, but the hour grows late and I must turn homeward."

"The sun is lowering," the Widow Geiser agreed. "Thank you again, Franz, and come again."

"I shall look forward to it."

With Caesar padding beside him, Franz started down the gulley toward Dornblatt and as he did so, his uneasiness mounted. He had delayed meeting his father for as long as possible, and now he admitted to himself that he feared to face him. But the meeting could no longer be postponed.

Franz made his way through Dornblatt to his father's house. Caesar, who preferred to remain outside, regardless of the weather, curled up in front of the cattle shed. Franz tried to be resolute as he climbed the stairs to the living quarters, but, once at the door, he halted uncertainly.

Then, taking his courage in both hands, he entered the single room that served the Halles as living-dining-bedroom. The ceiling and wall boards were scrubbed until they shone; the floor was of red tile. There was a big fireplace with a wooden chimney and a great, gleaming-white porcelain stove bound by brass rings. Spotless pots and pans hung from wooden pegs. A table and seven straight-backed wooden chairs occupied the center of the room. At the far end, where lowered curtains might separate them, were the beds where slept Franz's father and mother, his four young sisters and himself.

Franz's mother sat silently in the chimney corner, and the fact that she was not doing something with her hands was all that was necessary to prove that much was amiss. His four overawed sisters hovered at the far end, near the beds.

Franz Halle the elder met his son. Six-feet-two, storm and wind and the mountains that hemmed him in had written their own tales on his wrinkled face. By the same token, the very vigor of the life he'd led had left him straight as a sapling and endowed him with iron muscles. His clear blue eyes, gentle for the most part, now glinted like the sun slanting from glacier ice.

He said, "Professor Luttman came to see me!"

"Yes, sir," Franz answered meekly.

His father demanded, "Have you nothing else to say?"

"I'm sorry," Franz answered in a low voice.

"Once I hoped you would be a farmer," the elder Halle said, "so I set you to plowing. I found the plow abandoned and the oxen standing in their yokes while you chased butterflies. Then I thought you would be a herdsman, but I found the cattle lowing to be milked while you roamed the forest with your dog. I apprenticed you to a cobbler, and you attached the heels where the soles should have been. I asked a lacemaker to teach you his trade, and in one day you ruined enough material to do away with a week's profit. I decided you must surely be a scholar, and now this!"

Franz said humbly, "I think I am not meant to be a scholar."

"Is there anything you are meant to be? The one task you do, and do well, is chop wood with your ax."

Franz brightened a little. "I like to chop wood."

"May a chopper of wood be a future family man of Dornblatt, where everyone chops his own?" his father demanded. "Think, Franz!"

"Yes, sir," Franz said.

There was a knock at the door and the elder Halle opened it to admit Father Paul. For all his lack of stature, the little priest somehow took instant command.

"I have come to help," he said, "for I, too, have heard."

"It is past your help," the elder Halle told him sadly. "My only son seems destined to become a nobody."

Father Paul smiled. "Despair not, my friend. You'll feel better in the morning. I think the boy has not yet been guided into the way he should go and I have a suggestion. At the very summit of St. Bernard Pass there is a hospice. It was erected by the revered Bernard de Menthon, many centuries past, and its sole purpose is to succor distressed travelers who must cross the Alps. I think I may very well find a place there for Franz."

"As a novice of the Augustinian Order?" the elder Halle asked doubtfully.

"Not quite." Father Paul smiled again, at Franz this time. "Novices must clutter their minds with Latin and any number of similar subjects. He may be a lay worker, or maronnier. Would you like that, Franz?"

"Oh, yes!" Franz's soaring imagination sped him out of Dornblatt to the fabled Hospice of St. Bernard.

"Will he go now?" the elder Halle asked.

"Hardly," Father Paul replied, "for it takes time to arrange such matters. He may very well go next summer. Meanwhile, I know you will find some useful occupation for him."

Franz's father said, "He can cut wood."

3: THE
GREEDY
VILLAGER

Franz sank his razor-sharp ax in the raw stump of a new-cut birch and used both hands to close his jacket against an icy wind that whistled down from the heights. He looked up at the cloud-stabbing peak of Little Sister and smiled. Yesterday, the snow line had been exactly even with a pile of tumbled boulders that, according to some of the more imaginative residents of Dornblatt, resembled an old man with a pipe in his mouth. Today, it was a full fifty yards farther down the mountain.

Caesar, who never cared how cold it was, sat on his haunches and, disdaining even to curl his tail around his paws, faced the wind without blinking. Franz ruffled the big dog's ears with an affectionate hand and Caesar beamed his delight. Franz spoke to him.

"Winter soon, Caesar, and it is by far the very finest time of all the year. Let the children and old people enjoy their spring and summer. Winter in the Alps is for the strong who can face it, and for them it is wonderful indeed."

Caesar offered a canine grin, wagged his tail and flattened his ears, as though he understood every word, and Franz was by no means certain that he did not. The dog understood almost everything else.

Franz wrenched his ax from the birch stump, and, dangling it from one hand so that the blade pointed away from his foot, he went on. As his father had said, nobody in Dornblatt could hope to live by