Page - 54 - in The Forest Farm - Tales of the Austrian Tyrol

you it will be respected, I know, and you’ll think of old Frau Drachenbinder in sacred moments, when you’re saying your prayers.” And she gave me the little church as it stood. And that was the greatest bliss of all my childhood. I dearly wanted to take it on my shoulders at once and carry it away over the hills to my home. But she said, “You dear little goose, that’s impossible. When the man’s back, he’ll contrive something for you.” And sure enough, when the man was back again and had eaten the midday meal with us, he knew what to do. He bound the little church on to my back with a string, then stooped down in front of the wood block, and said, “Now, boy, mount again!” So for the second time I got up on his back, thrust my feet in his breeches pockets, and clung with my hands round his neck. The old woman held the waking child so that it might put out its little hand to me, uttered more thanks, and then dived behind the stove and crowed as before. I rode away from the place, and with every movement the saints in the church kept tapping behind my back and the bells in the towers kept tinkling. When the man had climbed with me as far as the heights of the Bürstling, and there again bound the snow-shoes fast to his feet, I asked him why Frau Drachenbinder was continually screaming for joy and laughing. “That’s not screaming nor yet laughing neither,” said my horse; “Frau Drachenbinder has a lot of suffering to bear. For some years she used to have a sort of catch in the breath—such as you may get through a chill or the like: she didn’t take any notice of it, let it just go its own way, and so, little by little, the barber says, that cramp-crowing and cramp-laughing came on. Her inside just twists itself up together, and when she gets excited the fits come on strong. She can hardly touch any food, and she’s face to face with death all the time.” I said nothing. I looked up at the snow-white heights, at the twilight forests, and saw we were gradually climbing down towards my home in the clear Sunday afternoon. I was thinking about the little church I had got as a legacy —how I would set it up in the living-room and hold a service in it, and how my father and mother would now no longer have to trudge all that long way to the parish church. My good horse trotted patiently on, and behind me all the way the little bells in the towers kept on chiming. What were they saying?… Old Frau Drachenbinder died soon after that. Footnote: [6] With these small torches the peasants light their rooms.