Page:Foreign Tales and Traditions (Volume 1).djvu/194

 THE BROTHERS

A SWISS STORY.

the centre of the border upon each other, lies a small hamlet consisting of seven cottages. Here in the bottom of a narrow ravine, code to dwelt small tribe of herdsmen, of simple but hospitable manners. It was seldom that any of these villagers crossed the mountains into the neighbouring Pays de Vaud, or the provinces of France; for all that they needed their own valley produced, and the artificial manners of their neighbours ill-accorded with their own simple and unsophisticated ideas of life.

They were under no rulers at the period of our story, for the sovereignty of their little district had been long disputed between France and the Canton de Vaud, and the matter still remained undecided, neither party being willing to renounce its claims, though the possession of the poor little hamlet was indeed hardly worth contesting.

In this village lived two brothers, Claude and Felix Lamont. They had lost their father in early life, and their mother was also dead; but they had grown up in cordial and undivided friendship. Felix was of a strong bodily and mental constitution, and cultivated their small field which lay up the ravine on the declivity of the mountain, while Claude tended the flock. In winter Felix carved children’s toys, which a Swiss pedlar yearly bought from him for a trifle; but Claude had the gift of song and music, and would then roam