Chapter 1. The First Mass
_ Translator: Charles Goepp.
One Saturday afternoon the busy sound of the hammer and of the adze was heard on the green hill-top which served the good folks of Nordstetten as their public gathering-place in the open air. Valentine the carpenter, with his two sons, was making a scaffolding designed to serve no less a purpose than that of an altar and a pulpit. Christian the tailor‘s son Gregory was to officiate at his first mass and to preach his first sermon.
Ivo, Valentine‘s youngest son, a child of six years of age, assisted his father with a mien which betokened that he considered his services indispensable. With his bare head and feet he ran up and down the timbers nimbly as a squirrel. When a beam was being lifted, he cried, "Pry under!" as lustily as any one, put his shoulder to the crowbar, and puffed as if nine-tenths of the weight fell upon him. Valentine liked to see his little boy employed. He would tell him to wind the twine on the reel

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