Page:Hyperion, a romance.djvu/22

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18
Hyperion

through the mist and rain, and a great shadow on the house opposite. And then somebody came down from the top of her house by a ladder, and had a lantern in his hand; and he took the ladder on his shoulder and passed down the street. But she could not see clearly, because the window was streaked with rain. And in the morning the old broken tiles were found scattered about the street, and there were new ones on the roof, and the old house has never leaked to this blessed day.

“As soon as mass was over, Frau Martha told the priest what had happened, and he said it was not Pelz-Nickel, but, without doubt, St. Castor or St. Florian. Then she went to the market and told Frau Bridget all about it; and Frau Bridget said, that, two nights before, Hans Claus, the cooper, had heard a great pounding in his shop, and in the morning found new hoops on all his hogsheads; and that a man with a lantern and a ladder had been seen riding out of town at midnight on a donkey; and that the same night the old windmill, at Kloster St. Thomas, had been mended, and the old gate of the churchyard at Feldkirche made as good as new, though nobody knew how the man got across the