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After a little while I awoke again and called to him. No answer. I stood up and toddled in my little shirt to the hut and all round the byre, and called, shrieked! No father to be seen. Now I felt sure that he had gone home to mother. So in haste I pulled on my breeches, put my neckerchief over my head and ran, in the pitch-dark rainy night, across the broad meadow that lay nearby. At the end of this a swift-flowing stream ran through a gully. I could not find the path, so I tried without more ado to go straight ahead towards Näbis, but at a place where felled timber was let down into the stream, I slipped and the water came near to seizing hold of me. By exerting my childish strength to the utmost I came out of it safely. I crept further on all fours through bushes and thorns up to the meadow again, and there I was, wandering hither and thither, unable to find the byre again - when suddenly, against a break in the clouds, I caught sight of two men in a tree, stealing apples or pears. I called to them to help me find my way. But there was no answer, perhaps they took me for some apparition, and may have trembled more fearfully up in their treetop than I, poor lad, down in the dirt.

Meanwhile my father, who as I slept had gone to fetch something from a house some distance away, returned. When he missed me he searched in every nook and cranny that I might have crept into, struck lights everywhere, even over the boiling saltpetre-kettle, and at last heard my cries and following the sound soon came upon me. How he hugged and kissed me, weeping tears of joy and thanking God. Then as soon as we came back to the byre he made me clean and dry again, for I was wet as a drowned rat and covered with dirt to my eyebrows, and moreover had soiled my breeches in my fright.

Next day in the morning he led me by the hand to the meadow and bade me show him the place where I had tumbled down. I could not find it. At last he made it out by the marks I had made as I slithered down; he threw up both hands in dismay at the danger that had surrounded me, and in praise of the wondrous hand of God that alone could save me. "Do you see?" he said, "only a few steps further, the stream falls over the crags. If the water had carried you away, you would be down there now, dead and battered to pieces!" Of all this I understood not one word at the time. I knew only that I had been afraid, nothing of the danger. The men in the tree, however, came before my mind's eye for many years, when any chance word recalled this event. [...]

6. Our neighbours in Näbis:

Näbis lies on the hillside above Scheftenau. From there one can hear the sound of the bells ringing at Kappel. There are only two houses. The rising sun shines directly into their windows. My grandmother and the woman in the other house were sisters, pious old dames who were often visited by other devout women in the neighbourhood. At that time there were many Pietists in those parts. My father and grandfather and other men, to be sure, did not approve but could not say anything for fear they should put themselves in the wrong. One Beele the Prayers was their teacher (he had a brother who was known as Beele the Curses), a great tall man who made his living by spinning waste flax, and also at times from receiving alms. In almost every house in Scheftenau there was one of his followers. My grandmother often took me with her to these assemblies. What exactly took place there, I cannot now say, except that it bored me to distraction. I had to sit, or even kneel, as quiet as a mouse. Then there were endless admonishings and reprovings from all the old biddies, of which I understood less than the cat.

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