That was the last time that Seppi and Squib sat together upon the knoll beside the fir trees, looking out across the valley at the great range of snow-peaks opposite.

When next Squib found his way there, no Seppi was to be seen. Three days had passed since they had held their talk together about leaving the green valley they both loved, and those three days had been full of interest to the little boy.

For Mr. Lorimer and his father had been making inquiries about the Ernsthausen family, and had established the identity of Seppi’s father with the guide who had served them so faithfully, and had saved Colonel Rutland’s life at the risk of his own. Squib’s story of little Seppi and his patience and goodness touched the heart of his mother very much. Lady Mary had heard much of Seppi during the past weeks; and ever since the storm, when she had been so alarmed for a couple of hours about her son, she had felt great gratitude to the little goat-herd who 239had so promptly taken him into shelter, and to the whole household in the humble home who had cared for him, and had sent to relieve her anxiety. She entered with much sympathy into Squib’s eager desire to help the family to set up for themselves in the way the father had long desired; and she told Squib that since his father had taken up the matter she was very sure it would all come right in the end.

“May I tell Seppi so?” asked Squib eagerly, and his mother said she thought he might, if Seppi could be trusted to keep the secret for a little while till things were more settled.

“Thank you,” said Squib, “I should like Seppi to have the pleasure of knowing about it and thinking about it beforehand. Mother dear, don’t you think a clever doctor might make Seppi well again? Uncle Ronald was soon made quite well when he came home ill.”

Lady Mary shook her head sorrowfully.

“I am afraid, my darling, from what I hear that poor little Seppi’s days are numbered. But you know that his crippled life here could not be such a very happy one. He would feel his lameness more and more as he grew older, and the Loving Shepherd knows what is best and happiest for His lambs.”

The tears sprang to Squib’s eyes as he heard those words, and he pressed up to his mother’s side.

“Did you feel like that, mother,” he whispered, “about my little brother when he died?”

240For that little brother whom he could not remember had always seemed to Squib to belong especially to himself, and his mother’s arms pressed him very close as she answered,—

“That is how I try to think of it now, darling. It was very hard to give him up at the time, but I am quite willing to believe that the Lord knows best, and by-and-by we shall understand all those things which seem so hard to bear now.”

“Yes,” answered Squib quickly and earnestly, “when the Lord comes to make all things new, and His Kingdom begins to come. Oh, how I wish it would come quickly!”

The mother looked earnestly into her child’s face and saw that the boy’s eyes were fixed intently upon the blue distance before them. Some new thought was struggling in his mind.

“Mother,” he said, “do you know that there is a little bit of this earth in glory now? I don’t quite know how to say it, but that’s just what it is. One little bit has been glorified and has its resurrection life already. Did you know?”

Lady Mary slightly shook her head.

“I do not quite know what you mean, dear child. I suppose it is something Herr Adler told you?”

“Seppi drew Squib’s hand down upon the head of Moor.”

Page 254.

241“Yes,” answered Squib; “it’s so beautiful and so interesting. Mother, it’s the Lord Himself who has been glorified. You know He rose out of the grave with the same body as He had on earth, which was made of the earth—only in resurrection it was different. But it was the same body, for there were the marks of the nails and the spear; and that body has been taken up to heaven and glorified, so that just a little bit of our earth is glorified in Heaven now. Mother, Herr Adler says that when the Lord has begun a promised work, it is a sure and certain pledge that He will finish it when the right time has come. And so we know that by-and-by we shall have resurrection bodies given us, and shall be glorified too. He says that that is what David meant when he said: ‘When I awake after Thy likeness, I shall be satisfied with it.’ You see he knew about it somehow, even though Jesus hadn’t come then.”

Lady Mary kissed her child lovingly.

“I am glad you had so many beautiful talks with Herr Adler,” she said. “Always try to remember what he taught you, dear.”

“I will,” answered Squib earnestly; “I think he is the goodest man I have ever seen.”

And having kissed his mother, Squib went off to find Seppi, but the knoll was not occupied to-day.

“He will be nearer home,” said Squib, preparing to descend, and sure enough he came upon his companion lower down the valley, but on the far side of the bridge.

The face raised to greet him was bright, although it looked very sharp and worn; and there was creeping over it, under the brown, a curious grey look.

242“Little Herr, I thought you would come to me. I tried to get to our knoll, but I couldn’t.”

“Why couldn’t you?” asked Squib with solicitude.

“I felt so queer, and all my breath went away. I had to sit down; but I thought if you came you would come down. I don’t seem to have any room to breathe if I go uphill.”

“Poor Seppi!” said Squib pitifully; “does it hurt much?”

“Oh no! I don’t have any pain. And I’m used to it at night. Generally I am pretty comfortable by day. Little Herr, we had a visit yesterday from a friend of father’s.”

“Did you?”

“Yes, and he says father is rather disturbed, because he has heard that somebody has been talking about buying the piece of ground he wants so much for the hotel he has been thinking of so long. He has heard that a gentleman has been inquiring about it.”

Squib’s face beamed all over.

“That’s my father,” he said in an important whisper. “My father has such good ideas. He set somebody to ask about the land before he came back here. I suppose that is what your father has heard of. But he need not really mind; for if my father buys the bit of land, he will give it to your father, I know.”

“O little Herr! It seems too good to be true!”

“Oh no; only one of those nice things that grown-up people can do. That’s what I should 243like to be grown-up for—I should have so many nice plans.”

The boys sat thinking each his own thoughts, and then Squib said,—

“I suppose your mother told you about it, then, because you didn’t know much the other day.”

“Yes, she told me in the night, when I couldn’t go to sleep. We had a nice long talk about lots of things. She talked about father’s plan; but I didn’t tell her what you had told me. I thought it was a secret.”

“I think it is just now, till something has been settled. O Seppi! I wish you and I could go together to see the valley, and make plans about your new home there.”

Seppi looked all round him, up and down his own valley, and away towards the Silent Watchers guarding it on either hand, and said,—

“I think I like this one best. I don’t think I want to go to the other, though I like to think of them there. Little Herr, will you ever go to see it some day, when you are a man?”

“Oh yes!” cried Squib eagerly. “When I’m a man I shall do lots and lots of things. I mean to be a mountaineer for one thing, like Mr. Lorimer, and climb all the mountains that can be climbed, and I shall have your father for my guide, and I shall stay at his hotel, and we shall be great friends. You know he was very brave, and saved my father’s 244life. I shall never forget that. It’s not the sort of thing one ever does forget.”

Seppi looked very pleased and happy.

“I think father is a very brave man,” he said, “though he never talks about the brave things he does.”

“I don’t think really brave men do,” answered Squib, with decision. “The boys at school say that it’s always the cowards and the bullies who do the bragging and the boasting; the really brave boys don’t have to be always telling of themselves.”

Seppi quite agreed in this, and told a few stories he had heard from others of his father’s prowess, and they drew many happy fancy pictures of the days to come when Squib should become a great mountain climber, and Ernsthausen should go with him right up into the land of cloud and snow, across the blue mysterious glaciers, and ever upwards and onwards to the soaring peaks beyond. Squib’s face flushed with delighted anticipation as he lifted it towards the eternal snows and thought of all the triumphs that lay before him; but presently his expression changed, and putting out his hand he took Seppi’s gently in it, and said,—

“I wish you could go too!”

Seppi smiled without any sadness.

“But, little Herr, I never could climb, you know,” and he looked at his poor, little, shrunken limb.

“I know,” answered Squib quickly, “but I mean I wish that that hadn’t happened to you.”

245The little goat-herd looked thoughtfully out before him.

“I’m not sure that I do,” he said.

“O Seppi! what do you mean?”

“I was thinking,” answered Seppi dreamily, “that if I had been strong and active like Peter, perhaps I should not have had the goats to mind. I think Ann-Katherin would have taken them, and I should have worked at home with mother and Peter; and then, you see, I should not have had all those talks with Herr Adler, and I should not have had my drawing; and I should not have had you, little Herr!”

“O Seppi! but to have been strong and well would have made up for that,” said Squib, whose active spirit could not imagine a more terrible loss than that of the power of locomotion.

“I don’t know,” answered Seppi. “I think I am happier than Peter, who is strong and big. I don’t think I want to be anybody else. It’s just as Herr Adler said it would be.”

“What did he say?” asked Squib, with interest.

“It was the first time he came; at least, the first time I can remember about. I was out with the goats. I had not been lame long, and I was often unhappy. I missed the things I had been used to do, and I wanted to do them again. I was crying about it one day, and he saw me, and came and sat down by me and talked. He said such beautiful things.”

246“Tell me what they were.”

“Yes; but I can’t make them sound as he does, you know. He first told me about how God had taken care of me down in the ice, and had helped father to get me up safe again; and he said I must not think any more about its being the ice-maidens, because that was nothing but the fancy of people who lived amongst mountains, and that God would never let His children be subject to such beings, even if they had any existence; but when I cried again about being lame, he was kinder still, and told me that it was perhaps because the Lord loved me that He had laid His hand upon me, because it says somewhere that whom He loveth He chasteneth—it is in the Bible.”

Squib nodded his head.

“Yes, I know. I came upon it reading once with mother. I said it seemed like you.”

Seppi’s face flushed with pleasure and gratitude.

“Did you? How kind to think of me, little Herr! Well, I won’t tell you the things of that sort which he said. I expect you know them all yourself; but he told me other things that I had never thought about before. ............