been to school and what he had liked to study.

But the doctor beckoned to Elsbeth to come to him.

"Listen, my good woman," he began, "the words which you repeated made a
deep, penetrating impression on the boy's heart. Did he know the hymn
already?"

"Oh, my Lord," exclaimed Elsbeth, "many hundred times I have repeated it
beside his little bed, when he was very small, often with many tears, and
he would weep too, when he didn't know why."

"He wept because you wept, he suffered because you suffered," said the
doctor. "Now I understand how he was aroused by these words. With such
impressions in early childhood it is no wonder he became a quiet and
reserved boy. This explains to me much in the past."

Then the lady from Geneva came up for she wanted to talk with the mother.

"My dear, good woman, he certainly must not go up on the mountain again.
He is not fit for it," she said in great eagerness. "We must find
something different for him. Has he no taste for some other occupation?
But it must be light, for he is not strong and needs care."

"Oh, yes, he has a great desire to learn something," said his mother.
"From a little boy he has wished for it, but I hardly dare mention it."

"There, there, my good woman, tell me right away about it," said the lady
encouragingly, expecting something unheard-of.

"He wants so much to be a wood-carver, and has a good deal of talent for
it, but the cost of board and instruction together is more than eighty
francs."

"Is that all?" exclaimed the lady in the greatest surprise, "is that all?
Come, my boy," and she ran to Toni again, "would you really like to
become a wood-carver--better than anything else?"

The joy which shone in Toni's eyes, when he answered that he would, showed
the lady what she had to do. She had such a longing to help Toni, that she
wanted to act immediately that very hour.

"Would you like to learn at once, go to a teacher right away?" she asked
him.

Toni gladly replied that he would.

But now came a new thought. She turned to the doctor. "Perhaps he ought to
recover his health first?"

The doctor replied that he had been already thinking about that. The
mother had told him that she knew a very good master up in Frutigen. "Now
I think," he went on to say, "that carving is not a strenuous work, and
one of the most important things for Toni is to have for some time good,
nourishing food. In Frutigen there is a very good inn, if he only could--"