Page - 139 - in The Forest Farm - Tales of the Austrian Tyrol

XVII Forest-Lily in the Snow (A chapter from The Forest Schoolmaster) A LOAD is off our hearts. The storm has fallen. A soft wind came and gently relieved the trees of their burdens. There were a few mild days; then the snow settled and we can now go where we will with snow-shoes. Nevertheless, something has happened lately over in the Karwässer. Berthold, whose family increases from year to year, and from year to year has less to eat—Berthold has turned poacher. A wood-cutter is a better hand at this than any of us, who remain faint-hearted humbugs all our lives long.— Poor people need not marry, says the wood-cutter. Well, according to custom and practice, they have not married, but they have kneeled before me in the forest … and … and now they are all starving together. So Berthold has turned poacher. Wood-cutting brings in far too little for a roomful of children. I send them all the food I can, but it is not enough. He must have good, strong soup for the ailing wife and a piece of meat for the children; so he shoots the roe that comes his way. To this, then, has passion brought him, until Berthold, who once, as a herd, was such a good and jolly fellow, has, through poverty, pride, and the love of his own, grown into a pretty criminal. I have once already pleaded with the gamekeeper for God’s sake to be a little, just a little lenient with the poor husband and father: he was sure to mend his ways, I said, and I would go bail for him. Up to the present he has not mended his ways; but the events of these wild winter days have made him weep aloud, for he loves his Lily-of-the-Forest above everything. It happened on a murky winter evening. The little windows are walled up with moss; outside new flakes are falling on the old snow. Berthold is sitting up with the children and with his sick Aga, only waiting until the eldest girl, Lily, comes back with the milk which she has gone to beg of a neighbouring hermit on the Hinterkar. For the goats at home have been killed and eaten; and, if only Lily would return, Berthold means to go into the forest with his