Edgar took the printed sheet; he turned it over, there must be a word from Marie,but he found none. He seized Louise's hand and exclaimed:

"Now I may dare to say it! Dare I say it? I am yours. Will you share my humble fortunes with me?"

"Not now, not now, not here," cried Louise; she knew how from windows and balcony all eyes were. directed upon her. "I wish to go into the house."

Caspar was quickly at hand, but no second man was near; therefore he and Edgar car. ried Louise into the house in a sedan-chair. She met her father deep in his newspapers, and he cried out:

Louise shook her head. "You do not believe that they choose me again?"

"Not that, but I am chosen! And I choose,-here. Now," turning to Edgar, "I beg you to speak."

Edgar could hardly utter a word; the father embraced him and embraced his child. They sat happily together, while Edgar explained that he could offer to Louise a modest but comfortable living.

Her father smiled and described the beautiful studio on his estate, so well-suited for a real artist, and not for a dilettante only.

Louise could now stand and even walk

allow him to apply a single bandage more, then all would be well.

The old Councillor, whose acquaintance Mr. Merz had made, had for many years firmly refused to associate in any way with the strangers at the Hotel; he did not wish to have his quiet interrupted and he and his wife were perfectly satisfied with the peacefulness of their house and the refreshing air of their country retreat. But with Mr. Merz he had formed such friendly relations that he transgressed his old rule. The hotelpeople greeted him with great respect; he thanked them with an old-fashioned grace, praised the host and hostess, and Caspar also received a good word. He went to the room of Mr. Merz and after hearty congratulations, said:

"You are such a thorough citizen that it is not becoming for you and your child to celebrate a betrothal here, so half-way on the street, as it were, in a hotel. My wife bids me say that you must come to us."

The friendly invitation was gladly accepted. In the house of the Councillor, under the sympathizing eyes of the wife and the cordial words of the old gentleman, the betrothal was celebrated.

Louise wore the betrothal ring on her hand, and the arst thing which she undertook with this hand was to write a letter to Edgar's mother. Then leaning on his arm she returned through the village to the hotel.

The betrothal of Louise set the whole company into a fresh excitement, and again the melancholy invalid was the first to offer his congratulations. The oppression which burdened his spirits seemed to be vanishing amid cheerful society. Then came the children with flowers, the wives of the painters, the men, - all were full of rejoicing.

But Caspar dragged a small cannon up on the mountain, above the rock of the Legion of Honor; he directed the hostess to say they must not be frightened if they should hear shooting, and now the report was heard from the rock, and the rock resounded far out over the lake to the opposite moun

tains.

Louise went with her betrothed into the

*A. D.; ausser Dienst; out of the service.

their first meeting until now.

In the even

ing as the moon shone bright over the lake, they entered a boat and rowed out together, and far out on the water they sounded the jodel cry to each other in the calm night, till all who heard it felt their hearts stirred. But how happy were they alone there!

At the railroad depot in the mountain district of Central Germany stood again a carriage, but now a closed one. The leaves from the beech tree whirled in the air, a cold rain fell at intervals, now the clouds drawing wilfully as it were towards the mountains, then unexpectedly turning back again on their course.

On the platform not a person was to be seen; as the whistle sounded, the coachman descended, and held his hat in both hands.

The train rolled forward, the Inspector opened the door of a first-class car and bade Mr. Merz heartily welcome, congratulating him on his re-election. But he quickly added, "Excuse me, one has yet to congratulate you on the marriage of Miss Louise. May we inquire if she returns to us with her husband?"

The

Mr. Merz stood shivering and drawing his cloak closely around him. The approaching northern winter seemed to him, just arrived from the south, so much the sharper and severer. The baggage was soon removed, and the train rolled on; Mr. Merz wished himself to look after his effects. depot-master advised him not to do so on account of the cold wind, also the attendants said they would look carefully to the baggage; but Mr. Merz persisted he must himself attend to it; there was one package which must be handled with especial care.

"You have not played us such a trick as your daughter's friend, Miss Korneck, did once, taking a dog with her as an infant?"

"No, nothing of the kind! It is a picture painted by my son-in-law. Come and visit me some time and you shall see it."

"What does it represent? Mont Rosa, the Rigi, or the Jungfrau ?

"Nothing of that kind. A very obscure rocky eminence on the Vierwald Lake; no one knows it but ourselves. It was formerly called the Rock of the Legion of Honor, and now is named the Rock of Love."

OUR TYROLESE TOUR.

BY M. M. R.

F we had been in a mood to be easily disheartened, our courage might well have failed us, as we looked up at the sky and down at the roads the next morning, and realized the fact that we must fare forth into the rain unless we could content ourselves to abide for the day in the cheerless little inn of Landeck. Our fellow-travellers, however, set us a good example; they had finished their breakfast before we commenced ours, and we looked up from our cups of coffee to see them drive by the window, the sun unbrellas of yesterday doing duty against the rain of to-day. In half an hour we were off, and, once fairly started, the weather became of no consequence whatever; in fact, we voted it delightful. Since there were no grand mountain panoramas to be shut off,the narrowing valley limiting us to itself,we were well-content to study the everchanging effects of mist and rain just about us, while the cool freshness of the air was enchanting.

For three hours it rained in torrents; then gradually ceased, and a faint suggestion of coming sunshine was in the sky as we again crossed the river, and having it now at our right, entered upon the gradual ascent of the great Finstermunz road. Four miles further on, we arrive at the crest of the pass, but from the point where we cross the river, the road forsakes the valley and commences its climb. One must stop and reflect that there was a time when no road at all existed here, no foot-path even, and the mountain side had all the abruptness and ruggedness which the neighboring mountains now exhibit so plainly to the eye, before one realizes the magnitude of the work that has been accomplished here. The road is now so perfect and so secure that it seems coeval with the eternal hills themselves.

But the clouds are breaking in every direction, and the great rain-curtains are withdrawn; bits of brilliant blue, and the loveliest fleecy white clouds intermingle. We emerge from our rugs and put away the umbrella. In the sunshine, the glorious landscape stands more fully revealed. How narrow the valley has grown, how high and steep the mountains. The river gives a name to the region of country, the Upper Inn valley, we say; but the mountains are so great and there are so many of them and the slope from their great shoulders down to the valley is so tremendous, that it constantly suggests itself to the mind-what a little thing the river is down there; just a thread of light and sparkle! One can fancy a vast stream-some European Amazon might flow in such a bed. After all, you say, the river is the one vital thing in the landscape, and, doubtless, in spring days it is no such trifling affair. Still it is but an accident first, the mountains, afterwards, the river. All the valley is but the palace floor, and the grand slopes sweeping backward from it and up to the skies, are the great kings in their state! Approaching the highest level of the road, we came to the tunnels which were blasted out of the rock when that came easier than to cut terraces into it. They are lined with masonry, but still they were damp and dripping as we passed through them. Looking back into one, it seemed like the mouth of a cave. High up on a projecting rock outside the road stands the figure of a chamois, cut in stone. It is well done, and you can easily fancy it the living animal. Who chipped it out and placed it there? I shall never know, I suppose, but it was a happy thought.

-

Just at noon, after five minutes on level ground, we turned abruptly to the left, around a corner, and came upon two houses and a little chapel. Here was to be our nooning-Hoch Finstermunz. A gentleman loitered about the little hostelry, a travelling carriage, from which the horses had been taken out, stood at one side of the door, and I well remember the splendid scarlet berries of a mountain ash just across the road.

Dinner was served us, after some delay, in the hall of the second floor. We sat down a party of four; two Englishmen who had just come from the Stelvio, we, who were

going thither. I confess our dinner was very bad, and the bunch of grapes with which I hoped to supplement it, was but deceitfully fair. Still, I coveted a residence of days at Hoch Finstermunz. To linger in such a place till one became fully possessed of the landscape, would be a gain for a life-time.

The turn of the road here to the left makes a corner balcony, so to speak, whence one can look both ways. Just under, far below, the bridge over the Inn, with its square tower, planned for defence, a little cluster of houses and a church; far in front, looking up the valley, ever mountains behind mountains, there is Switzerland, — thence comes our little river from many a mile away in the heart of the Engadine. Thither, alas! we do not go. Still leading to the left, our road runs under the archway of a fort, like a door into the mountain, and comes out into wide, open country beyond.

As

Few things could be more surprising than this fortification here in this mountain solitude. It grows out of the rocks like a fungus. One white-coated sentry paced solemnly up and down,-no doubt paces there still; he must find it hard in the rainy nights of autumn, or amid the winter snows. usual, a few soldiers were loitering idly about. The officers we did not see, but we gave a sigh of sympathy at the thought of their forlorn condition. It must come hard to them after Vienna! What sort of carnival balls can they have in the fort of Hoch Finstermunz! The point is regarded of high military importance. The traveller must by no means sketch it, and even curious examining is forbidden, but I am not aware that any attack has been made here since the fortifications were erected.

Emerging from the pass, we drove southward in the quiet afternoon sunshine. Here I first saw the greenish gray glacier water so peculiar and so characteristic of the High Alps. Mountain brooks are by right "clear," "pellucid," and the like. Poetry has certified this in endless repetition. But those which are, par excellence, the streams of the mountains, steal away from under the glacier, gray and turbid, and run for miles without depositing their sediment, even carrying their troubled flood into a clear blue river, and keeping it distinct from the body of

water which they join. This brook ran northward, and was making its way through steep ravines down to the Inn. Further on, a bright, clear, little brook crossed our road then kept beside it with a dyke on each side, racing along, though the ground was nearly level, finally sing itself in a wide lonesome pond, whence it presently emerged, having lost both speed and sparkle. Later, the road becomes less interesting, we pass through two or three dismal little villages, alike in their forlorn stone houses, their narrow and crooked streets, and their air of extreme poverty, and at last came out upon the famous Malser Heath, a wide, level, desolate region, whence, for a little space, the mountains seem to have retreated, and two more lonesome ponds added to the melancholy of the

scene.

I think a wide, gray moorland, seen late in the afternoon, readily takes on an air of sadness. It requires but the least tinge of pensiveness in the eye of the beholder to deepen almost into gloom. I remember we passed some students of the Jesuit College, not far from Wales. Young men of the nineteenth century, doubtless, yet removed by a period of ages from their equals in Paris, for instance, or New York. They looked at us sadly, it seemed to me; pitying our worldliness, perhaps, as we their seclusion. But if it looked so sad to us then, just after sunset on a grayish August afternoon, what, think you, must it be when the snow drifts in heaps across that desolate open ground, and the winds of winter howl from the mountains.

In a half hour, we came to the gate of Mals, and the scene changed utterly. I do not use a familiar figure of speech when I say "the gate" of Mals. Though there are not any walls to the little town, there is a gate; that is to say, an old archway spanning the street where the post-road turns into the town. And at the moment as we were driving in, coming from the right, such a merry flock of goats came skipping, running, each one shaking his little bell, down from a steep path at the left, and went in with us. There must have been more than a hundred, and their merry capers, with the musical chime of so many bells, brightened us up in a minute, as much as the melancholy stu

VOL. XLIV.-12

dents, in their long, black coats and the sombre level of the Malser Heath, haunted by the ghosts from the great Swiss-Austrian battle fought there so long ago, had saddened us. Among the goats were a few very mild cows, but they and our steady old horse walked gravely along, much like sober, elderly people among a crowd of children. They kept about us all the way down the street into the village, except when here and there some woman standing at her house door, as they passed, made a foray among them and capturing her own property, though how she recognized it I cannot tell,— dragged it into the house with her.

In the centre of the town, we found the hotel, and, after ordering supper, while the sunset glow had not yet faded off the hills, and the sky overhead was growing clearer, we walked out to find the "Roman Tower." At this point in South Tyrol, the Roman relics commence, and all along the road to Botzen, the valley of the Adige, contains many a trace of the long-vanished conquerors. After a few minutes' walk we came to the object of our search. On a little level island, just large enough for a good-sized playground, is this river which is about as broad as a canal; a high, solid, round tower, a little broken at the top, stands as it stood in the days when the Roman eagles were carried forward through these mountain. highways, and Germanicus and Drusus were living men. Without any possibility of mistake, it is a Roman tower; of its age, no man can tell, not even any legends attach to its building, and the hands that squared those exact stones have been dust, perhaps, two thousand years. Both sides of it runs the hurrying little river, alive with the speed it brought from its mountain plunges, though. as far as the eye can see, it now flows level as a floor. The minute island, in this bit of a river, is green and soft with velvet turf, where, the night we saw it, a very peaceful cow was feeding, while solemnly this dark, gray tower stood out against the blue, a monument of a dead empire. How they planned and built it, those Roman soldiers, a safe defence against the barbarians! How often they have been attacked there, - how many a time have they sallied out and brought destruction with them! How they