He was a strong and healthy
little fellow, fed on the free mountain air, and he was very happy,
and loved his family devotedly, and was as active as a squirrel and as
playful as a hare; but he kept his thoughts to himself, and some of
them went a very long way for a little boy who was only one among
many, and to whom nobody had ever paid any attention except to teach
him his letters and tell him to fear God. August in winter was only a
little, hungry schoolboy, trotting to be catechised by the priest, or
to bring the loaves from the bake-house, or to carry his father's
boots to the cobbler; and in summer he was only one of hundreds of
cow-boys, who drove the poor, half-blind, blinking, stumbling cattle,
ringing their throat-bells, out into the sweet intoxication of the
sudden sunlight, and lived up with them in the heights among the
Alpine roses, with only the clouds and the snow-summits near. But he
was always thinking, thinking, thinking, for all that; and under his
little sheepskin winter coat and his rough hempen summer shirt his
heart had as much courage in it as Hofer's ever had--great Hofer, who
is a household word in all the Innthal, and whom August always
reverently remembered when he went to the city of Innspruck and ran
out by the foaming water-mill and under the wooded height of Berg
Isel.
August lay now in the warmth of the stove and told the children
stories, his own little brown face growing red with excitement as his
imagination glowed to fever heat.
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