Page - 30 - in The Forest Farm - Tales of the Austrian Tyrol

will see Him and, if He wishes to stop with us, we can fit up the back room and the little altar for Him.” I lay in the cupboard-bedstead, beside father and mother, and I could not sleep. The night passed and He Whom I was expecting did not come. But, early in the morning, when the barn-door cock crowed the men and maids out of their beds and when the noisy working-day began in the yard outside, an old man—he was nicknamed Mushroom Moses—came to my father, brought him the piece of my jacket which I had given away and told how I had wantonly cut it the evening before and flung one half at his head as he was taking a rest on the sheep-walk after hunting for mushrooms. Thereupon my father came up softly to my bed, with one hand hidden behind his back. “Look here, lad, just you tell me what you’ve done with your new Sunday jacket!” That soft slinking with his hand behind his back at once struck me as suspicious; and my face fell; and, bursting into tears, I cried: “Oh, father, I thought I was giving it to God!” “Lord, lad, what a duffer—what an idiot you are!” cried my father. “You’re much too good for this world and yet quite too silly to die! What you want is to have your soul thrashed out of your skin with a stout besom.” And then, when the hand with the twisted birch-rod came in view, I raised a great hullabaloo. Mother came rushing up at once. As a rule, she seldom interfered when father was correcting me; but, this time, she caught hold of his hand and said: “I dare say I can sew the jacket together again, father. Come with me: I have something to tell you.” They both went out into the kitchen; I think they must have discussed the story of St. Martin. Presently, they came back to the room. Father said: “All right now, be quiet; there’s nothing going to be done to you.” And mother whispered in my ear: “It’s all right, your wanting to give your jacket to Our Lord; but it’ll be better still if we give it to the poor boy down in the valley. Our Lord lies hidden in every poor man. St. Martin knew that too, you see. So there. And now, lad, jump out of bed and get your breeches on; father’s not so very far