Page - 101 - in The Forest Farm - Tales of the Austrian Tyrol

In the afternoon I came back to my parents’ house. I stood awhile rooted to the sandy ground behind the pines. What was going to happen next? My father came towards me with a clacking wheelbarrow. “Go in and eat,” he called to me, “and afterwards come out into the wood. We must cut down some wood for firing.” “Did you sleep at Zutrum last night?” asked my mother, as she set before me the dinner which had been saved for me. “Mother, Simmerl wouldn’t let go of me until I went home with him.” “It’s quite right, child. Just lately Mistress Zutrum was complaining to your father that you did not come to see your cousins and aunt and uncle. My mother and the mother of Mistress Zutrum were sisters.” The danger was quite over. Out in the forest I asked my father whether he knew the Zutrums’ old servant, Kickel, and what was the matter with him. “It isn’t the time for gossip now, it’s the time for cutting firewood,”—that was his answer. A few weeks later I was with my father in the cattle pasture. It was already dusk, and the oxen, who had been yoked to the plough all day, thrust their muzzles into the food and grazed busily. We stood by and waited until they were satisfied. It occurred to me that now was the time for gossip, and I asked him again about Kickel. “Child, let Kickel be,” answered my father. “He’s never harmed you—and may God Almighty preserve from all craziness! See—they won’t eat the grass —they’re not hungry any more.” Soon after, we led the oxen into the farmyard. If I had died at that time, reader, you would hardly ever have learnt anything about Kickel. Meanwhile, I grew into a thin, but sadly tall lad, too narrow for a peasant, but long enough for a town gentleman—well, you know all about that! And once on a time, in summer, as I was going to visit far-away Alpel again, in the forest on the way I overtook a peasant lad—a young, handsome but earnest fellow, in Sunday clothes although it was a work-day. He had an upright carriage, and moved his legs lightly and regularly in walking, so that I thought, “He has been a soldier, or is one still.” His auburn hair, too, was cut short and shaved behind in such fashion that his round, fresh-coloured neck was bare for a couple of inches down to his shirt-collar. The long face, with the somewhat thinly modelled nose, the very fair little moustache and the open, shrewd eyes, suggested that he was by no means one of the most foolish and simple of people. In those days I was as glad to have company on such a road as now I am to go alone. So I tried it on with him. My question was,