Animated and cheerful as the scene is by day, alive with all the instincts and sounds of happy labour, I like bettor to look upon it by night, when all is calm and still, and nothing but the plash of the waterfall stirs the air--to see these quaint old houses, with their sculptured pinnacles and deep-shadowing eaves sleeping in the mellow moonlight--mill and miller sunk in slumber--not a footstep nor a voice to be heard, save one, the village watchman, going his nightly round, chanting his little verse of assuring comfort to the waking ear, and making the sleeper's dream a peaceful one.
See how he moves along, followed by his little dog, sleepy-looking and drowsy as its master! He stands in front of that cottage--it belongs to the Vorsteher, or ruler of the Dorf. Power has its privileges even here, and the great man should know how the weather fares, and what the hour is, if, perchance, the cares of state have kept him waking, as Homer tells us that they can. Now he has ended his little song, and he wends his way over the bridge of a single plank that spans the torrent; he slowly descends the flight of stone steps, slippery with falling spray, and, guided by the wooden railing, he treads the narrow path along the edge of the cliff, which, nearly perpendicular, stands over the valley of the Inn. There is a little hut here--a very poor and humble one, the very poorest of the whole village--and yet it is before the door of this lowly dwelling that the "Nachtwachter" stands at midnight each night throughout the year, and then, as he calls the hour, he cries, "Hans Jörgle, good night!--rest soundly, Hans Jörgle!"
Who can be this Hans Jörgle, for whose peaceful slumber authority is watchful? If you care for the answer of the question, you must listen to a story--if I dare to call by so imposing a name the following little narrative--which, for want of better, I shall call
Something short of forty years ago, there came to dwell at the Kletscher a poor widow with one child, a boy of about nine years old. She never told much of her history to the neighbours, and merely accounted for her choice of this secluded spot from the circumstance that she had known it when a child, her grandfather having been many years an inhabitant of the "Dorf;" and that, from dwelling on the pleasant days she had known there once, and talking over them so often with her little Hans, she at last determined to gratify him and herself by revisiting the cherished spot, hoping to end her days there in peace.