"'I wouldn't,' I remonstrated: 'some one may be in there.'

"'I am going to see: I must look into it. It is daylight, you know, and we sha'n't be much frightened. Help me to push away the bed.'

"'I won't do anything so absurd. This is a hotel, Annie, and there must be plenty of adjoining rooms in it. Suppose that room is now occupied by a boarder?'

"'If it is occupied they will lock the door on the other side, and I will try the latch softly to see; but I know it is not. Don't you see that the only entrance must be from here? There is the entry. opposite, and here is the court: now, how could any one get into it but through this room? It must be a small place, too, for here is the corner of the house, and it has been evidently planned to be kept concealed."

"'No matter: we have no right to any rooms but these we are in. Come away, and let well enough alone.'

"'It is not "well enough," as you call it. I am going to see into it, and why they hide it. I declare,' and she examined the door critically, 'it looks like the entrance to Bluebeard's chamber. Look at these queer marks, these dents and stains, as if there had been a struggle. It is our duty to investigate;' and her voice grew impressive. 'Perhaps we have been brought here for that very purpose, and, Jane, if there is a dead body in there, I shall inform the police.' Annie was very brave in daylight.

"'Fiddle-de-dee!' I replied to this fine speech. 'What you call duty, I call curiosity. I am ravenously hungry, and I wish you would finish dressing and let us get to breakfast.'

"'I will just tell you this,' she answered indignantly, and yet with a quiver in her voice, 'I never in my life felt as I did last night when I saw that door. It was quite like what people write of a mysterious influence, or the presence of some one unseen; and that whistle or voice or moan, as if a soul was calling, came from here; and you must help me to find out what it really was, for I can't go away without knowing.'

"I saw it was useless to try longer to dissuade her. The bed moved easily: she took my hand and led me behind it; then warily tried the latch. It rose, but she was obliged to lean all her weight against the door before it would give way, and finally it opened so unexpectedly that she almost fell forward.

"What did I see? At the first glimpse a faint light from a cobwebbed window, a narrow room and a floor—red. Was it blood? A sickening mouldy smell came forth, but as I forced myself to look again I saw that it was only red tiles that had startled me. There was an upright brick range in a corner, an old water-tank, some shelves and a cupboard. A missing pane of glass left a space through which the air had entered and moaned up the broad-mouthed flue that opened above the range. This was the ominous 'signal' we had heard in answer to the footsteps. The dust was thick over everything, and the only signs of life were the rat-tracks on the floor. We stood still for a few moments, overwhelmed at this solution of the occult 'influence' that had so subtly acted on Annie's nerves, and filled me with no less terror.

"The house had been built for a hotel garni; that is, a house with furnished rooms or apartments, something like a tenement-house in your country. This was the kitchen of the suite, and belonged to the two rooms we had taken. Being unused for its proper object, and too small for a bed-chamber, it had been closed, and appeared as if it had been unentered for years. I turned to Annie to see how she would bear this prosaic explanation of our alarm, but with the air of one who had expected nothing but this from the beginning, she remarked, 'Now you see how much better it is to look into such things. This room would have furnished me with bad dreams for the remainder of my life, and here I find it is only a commonplace kitchen. Think how ludicrous to have the horrors over a kitchen! Sha'n't I tell of your fright when we get home—how you didn't want to open the door, and wanted to 'let well enough alone'? The place might be haunted by the ghost of a chicken or a rabbit, but, my dear, you should not allow that to terrify you.'

"'Perhaps it was the ghost of a chicken that you feared last night, and that caused your presentiments this morning. I hope you will inform the police of what you have discovered here,' I remarked quietly.

"'A truce, a truce, good Jane! I will say no more. We were both boobies. But wouldn't it be 'cute to live here, you and me, and make our own breakfast? Look at the hole for charcoal, and the little cupboard, the nails for the pots and pans to hang on: everything is complete. That room could be for dining, the other a parlor, and—'

"'The only drawback would be that, except at the North Pole, the night comes once in twenty-four hours.'

"'Don't be mean, Jane! Do come in here a minute: it's a dear little place.'

"'You will certainly make a housekeeper if a kitchen gives you such ecstasy. Come out, I am so hungry. Put on your bonnet and leave this elysium: I have had enough of it.'

"'You come in for a second: it will shake the terror off and you won't dream of it. That is a cure my old nurse once gave me for laying ghosts.'

"'It may be a good plan to shake off the terror, but the dust on you will not be shaken off so easily.'

"'Suppose,' and she stamped her foot—'suppose that the floor should be hollow, and that this were only a pretended kitchen after all, or that there was a trap-door painted to resemble tiles, or a sliding panel.' Here she felt over the surface of the wall. 'Why should I feel so queer last night if this was really nothing but a kitchen?'

"'Because you are a goose,' I answered impatiently, 'and if you don't come I will leave you. If you like, you can engage boarding here for a week, and raise the tiles one by one with a knife and fork. As for me, I am going to breakfast.'

"'But don't you think it really has an uncanny look?' she asked, giving a last glance over her shoulder as she came out.

"'If you call dirt uncanny, there is plenty of that. Shut the door, and I will push back the bed.'

"'Jane,' she again remarked as she was trying on her bonnet before the crooked glass, 'if ever I tell of this night, I think I will say that there was a trap-door in the kitchen: you know there might be one and we not see it.'

"'Oh yes,' I answered as patiently as I could, 'I suppose a fib more or less will make but little difference in your lifetime. While you are at it, however, you may as well make a few more additions.'

"'Now you are unkind.'

"'A person is not accountable for temper when famishing. Take up your satchel.'

"We found the house a most every-day-looking house, seen by sunlight; but there had lain the difficulty. The clerk in the office did not particularly resemble a cutthroat, or even a cutpurse, and, strange to say, did not overcharge us: in fact, he behaved very civilly. We found we were not far from the station, and depositing our bags there, we walked down the beautiful Rue La Fayette.

"'It is a great deal pleasanter to travel alone in this way,' said Nan gayly, her spirits rising in the delightful air. 'When I was here before with all the family, it was not near so jolly; and I think we manage well, don't you? Oh, there is an omnibus not complet: let us get in. I am too hungry to walk.'

"After we were seated she continued: 'I wonder what will happen to us to-night. Suppose we find every place full, and have to sleep in a garden or on the steps of a church, or something? Isn't it delightful not to know in the least what is going to happen next?—just as in fairy-land. Don't you hope we may have an adventure every night?'

"'I should not call last night an adventure: it seems to me it was more like a panic,' I said drily.

"'You will never let anything be agreeable,' in a hurt tone: then recovering her good temper, she went on: 'Well, call it a panic if you like. Now, suppose we had one every night, and we stayed here two weeks, there would be fourteen panics before we go home. Wouldn't that be glorious?'

"'You did not appear to enjoy it so much last night.'

"'At the time I did not,' she admitted frankly. 'Weren't we frightened? But then, you know, how nice it will be to talk of it afterward!'

"We arrived at a restaurant in the Palais Royal, and found a seat by the window, and a breakfast. We had already finished the latter, and were playing with our fruit, when a party entered who attracted our attention by speaking English.

"'One of them is Miss Rodgers,' Annie whispered excitedly. 'I know her well: hadn't we better run away? What will she think of our being here alone?'

"'Nonsense! You had better ask her where she is staying. Remember, we are houseless as yet.'

"'I don't like to ask her.'

"'Introduce me: I will ask.' The idea of spending the night in a garden or on a church-step did not possess the same charms for me as for Nan. Thus prompted, she walked forward and spoke to her friend, afterward presenting me. We chatted a few minutes, when Miss Rodgers asked Annie where she was staying, and how her mamma was.

"'Mamma is not with us,' was Nan's embarrassed reply.

"I went to her rescue, and diverted the questions by asking some myself: 'Miss Rodgers, where are you staying? We do not like our hotel and want to change.'

"'There is not a room in our house that is unoccupied, and you won't find good accommodation anywhere. You had better not change if you have a place to lay your head. Paris is so crowded that everything has been taken up long ago. You can ask at a dozen hotels or boarding-houses and not find a garret to let. You have no idea of the difficulty.'

"Yes, we had an idea, and believed every word she said: in fact, we would rather have felt less convinced on the subject. Even Annie seemed to think that traveling alone might present some disagreeable features, and looked quite unhappy, notwithstanding her love of adventure. But before our mental anguish had time to become unbearable a young girl, a niece of Miss Rodgers, spoke: 'Auntie, if the young ladies would like, I know of just the place that would suit them.' Then turning to us, she continued: 'I am at school a few miles out of the city, and madame told me that if I knew of any one, she had room for a few parlor-boarders. It is a lovely spot, and no end of trains coming and going all day; so that it would be just as convenient as living here, and you would have excellent accommodation. Then, too, I could speak English to you sometimes. I am so tired of talking for ever without half knowing what I am saying.'

"I could have embraced the chatterbox on the spot for this opportune proposal, but controlled my feelings and looked at Nan to see if she approved. She was consenting with every one of her expressive features, and did not appear at all anxious to enjoy one of her fourteen delightful panics this evening if it could be avoided. Being spokesman, I said, 'I would willingly try the school on your recommendation, Miss Ada, if you think madame could be ready for us this evening.'

"'Of course she could: come out with me now and see her. I must go at one, and can show you the way. Will you meet me at the station? or shall we call for you at your hotel?'

"'We will meet at the station,' I replied, glad to settle it so quickly, 'if you are quite sure that your madame will like our unceremonious arrival.'

"'That will be all right, I know. She has several empty rooms, and will be happy to have them filled. You can leave your trunks until to-morrow if you don't like to come bag and baggage.'

"We needed no further pressing. Here was deliverance and safety, and we bade good-morning to the party with light hearts.

"We found the school all that Miss Ada had promised, and thus ended the nearest approach to an adventure that we had during the two weeks that we remained."

"And now tell me about the Exposition."

"Well, we saw it."

"Saw what?"

"Why, everything."

"Describe it to me."

"Certainly. In the first place, it was very big, and everybody was there, so it was crowded; and you met your friends and you talked; and—and you got fearfully tired; and it was wonderful; and there were ever so many restaurants, and a soda-water fountain, and queer things that you never expected to see there, like the Mexican techcatl and Russian horses; and everything was real—real lace and cashmeres and diamonds, and nothing but what was very nice. But, after all, I think you had better get a file of old newspapers and read about it, for I really have no talent for description—or, better still, go and see the one in Vienna this summer."

ITA ANIOL PROKOP.



SLAINS CASTLE.

In traveling over the old lands of Europe one is sometimes apt to think more of historical and genealogical traditions than of the natural beauties or peculiarities of the country. The old landmarks of a nation, whether monuments built by the hand of man or archives carefully preserved by him, tell us of its growth, just as the strata of the mountain tell of its progress to the geologist; and as every successive layer has some relation both to its predecessor and its successor, so the traditions of each generation have a perceptible influence upon the moral development of the generation following. Every nation is thus the growing fruit of its own history, and every visible step of the grand ladder of facts that has led up to the present result must needs have for a student of human nature an intrinsic interest.

This comes very clearly before my mind as I think of Slains Castle (Aberdeen), a massive crown of granite set on the brow of the rocks of the German Ocean, and the seat of one of those old Scottish families whose origin is hidden away among the suggestive mists of tradition.

Slains Castle stands alone, a giant watchman upon giant cliffs, built up only one story high, on account of the tremendous winds that prevail there in spring and autumn, and cased with the gray Aberdeen granite of the famous quarries near by. The surrounding country is as bare and uninviting as one could imagine; the road from Aberdeen (twenty miles) is bleak and stony; the young trees near the castle are stunted, and in many cases disfigured by the inroads of hungry cows among their lower branches, and a damp veil of mist hangs perpetually over the scene, softening the landscape, but sometimes depressing the spirits. As the hours pass the place grows on you: a weird beauty begins to loom up from among the mist-wreaths, the jagged rocks, the restless waves, and you forget the desolate moor, which in itself displays attractions you will realize later, in the grandeur of the desolate sea.

The original building is of the time of James VI. (of Scotland), and is due to Francis, earl of Erroll, whose more ancient castle, bearing the same name, was destroyed by the king to punish his vassal for the part he had taken in a rebellion. In the seventeenth century Earl Gilbert made great improvements in it, and early in the eighteenth Earl Charles added the front. In 1836 it was rebuilt by Earl William George, the father of the present owner, with the exception of the lower part of the original tower. In this there used to be in olden times an oubliette in which unhappy prisoners were let down. All at first appeared dark around them, but when they had thankfully assured themselves that they at last stood upon solid ground, they would look about them and presently descry a line of fitful light coming from a door ajar in their dungeon. The poor victims would then go in haste to this door, pull it open and, blinded by the sudden light, step out upon the green slope terminating quickly in a precipice, which went sheer down to the sea.

The rest of the house is built around a large covered piazza, intersected by corridors where pictures, armor and all kinds of old family relics decorate the walls. The drawing-room is on the very edge of the rock, and on stormy days the flocks of uneasy sea-gulls almost flap their wings against its window-panes, while the clouds of spray dash up against them in miniature waterfalls. The rocks in the immediate neighborhood of the castle are rugged in the extreme, here and there rent by a gigantic fissure reaching far inland, and up which the foaming waters gurgle continually as if in impatience of their narrow bounds, now jutting far into the sea like a Titanic staircase and thickly matted with coarse sea-weed, and again reared up on high, a sheer glistening wall, with not a cranny for the steadiest foot, and with Niagaras of spray for ever veiling its smooth, unchanging face. In wonderful hollows you will come upon pools of green water with sea-anemones, delicate sea-weed of pink, yellow or purple hue, and gem-like shells resting on a bottom of clearest sand; and while the waves are roaring on every side, and flinging their dampness into your very face, these fairy pools will lie at your feet without a breath or ripple on their surface.

The most magnificent of these rocks is one called in Gaelic "Dun-Bug" ("Yellow Rock"), the favorite haunt of the white sea-gulls. It stands alone, as if torn from the land and hurled into the tossing waves by some giant hand. Two hundred feet in height and a thousand in circumference, it forms a natural arch, being pierced from its base upward by an opening that widens as it ascends. The waves dash through it with terrific violence, and the very sight of its grim splendor conjures up a vision of shipwreck and danger. Scott has made mention of it in The Antiquary, and Johnson in his Journey to the Hebrides, recalling the grandeur of the rocky coast of Slains, has said that though he could not wish for a storm, still as storms, whether wished for or not, will sometimes happen, he would prefer to look at them from Slains Castle. These rocks and the caves that alternate with them were once famous as a smuggling rendezvous, and as such Scott has again immortalized them in his Guy Mannering. The Crooked Mary, a noted lugger, had many an adventure along this coast during the last century. The skipper's arrival was eagerly looked for at certain stated times, the preconcerted signal was given by him, and the inhabitants bestirred themselves with commendable haste. All ordinary business was immediately suspended: men might be seen stealing along from house to house, or a fisher-girl, bareheaded and barefooted, would hurry to the neighboring village, and deliver a brief message which to a bystander would sound very like nonsense, but which nevertheless was well understood by the person to whom it was given. Soon after a plaid or blanket might be seen spread out, as if to dry, upon the top of a peat-stack. Other beacons, not calculated to draw general notice, but sufficiently understood by the initiated, soon made their appearance, telegraphing the news from place to place. As soon as the evening began to close in the Crooked Mary would be observed rapidly approaching the land, and occasionally giving out signals indicating the creek into which she meant to run. Both on sea and land hairbreadth escapes were the rule rather than the exception, and it is related of one of the Crooked Mary's confederates on shore, poor Philip Kennedy, that one night, while clearing the way for the cargo just landed from the contraband trader's hold, he was simply murdered by the excise-officers. The heavy cart laden with the cargo was yet some distance behind, and Kennedy with some dastardly companions was slowly going forward to ascertain if all was safe, when three officers of the customs suddenly made their unwelcome appearance. Brave as a lion, Kennedy attacked two of them, and actually succeeded for a time in keeping them down in his powerful grasp, while he called to his party to secure the third. They, however, thinking prudence the better part of valor, decamped ignominiously, and the enemy remained master of the brave man's life. Anderson, the third officer, was observed to hold up his sword to the moon, as if to ascertain if he were using the edge, and then to bring it down with accurate aim and tremendous force upon the smuggler's skull. Strange to say, Kennedy, streaming with blood, actually succeeded in reaching Kirkton of Slains, nearly a quarter of a mile away, but expired a few moments after his arrival. His last words were: "If all had been true as I was, the goods would have been safe, and I should not have been bleeding to death." The brave fellow was buried in the churchyard of Slains, where a plain stone marks his grave, and bears the simple inscription, "To the memory of Philip Kennedy, in Ward, who died the 19th of December, 1798. Aged 38."

My own earliest recollections of the grand, desolate old castle are derived, not from my first visit to it made in infancy, but from the descriptions of one whose home it was during a brief but intensely observant period of childhood. There came one day a storm such as seldom even on that coast lashes up the gray, livid ocean. The waves, as far out as sight could reach, were one mass of foam, and the ghastly lightning flashed upon the torn sails of a ship as near destruction as it well could be. Cries came up from below in the brief pauses of the storm, and above lanterns were quickly carried to and fro, while pale attendants hurriedly and silently obeyed the signals of a more collected master. The occupants of the castle hardly knew to what its chambers might be destined—whether to receive the dead or to afford rest to the saved. Beds, fires and cordials were in readiness, and strong men bore dread burdens up dizzy paths leading from beneath. The ship broke in pieces on the merciless rocks, and many a drowned sailor went down to meet the army of his fellow-victims of all times who no doubt lay sleeping in the submarine caves of Slains. Those who survived soon disappeared, full of gratitude for the timely relief offered them at the castle, but one old man remained. He was never known by any other name than "Monsieur," and was beloved by every individual member of the household. A French emigre of the old school, with the dainty, gallant ways of the ancien regime, he still clung to the dress of his earlier days, and wore a veritable queue, silk stockings and buckled shoes. For some time he remained a welcome guest in the "red chamber," where the host's little children would sometimes join him and play with his watch and jeweled baubles. But one day poor little "Monsieur" sickened, and the tiny feet that had made such haste to run to him, now trod the corridor softly and bore a baby-nurse to the gentle invalid. It was a high and coveted reward for the little girls to carry "Monsieur's" medicine to his bedside, and everything that kindness and hospitality could suggest was equally lavished on him; but his feeble life, which had no doubt received a shock from the shipwreck it had barely escaped, went out peacefully like the soft flame of a lamp.

Slains Castle had many gentle and pleasant memories about it, as well as its traditional horrors, and among these were many connected with the history of the old family that owned it. In one of the corridors hangs the picture of James, Lord Hay, a fair-haired, sunny-faced boy, tall and athletic, standing with a cricket-bat in his hand. He would have been earl of Erroll had he lived, but if we follow him in his short life from classic Eton to the field of Quatre-Bras, we shall find him again, on a bright June day in 1815, lying as if asleep, as fair and noble-looking as before, but silent in death. Simple Flemish peasants stand in a group around him, awed and admiring, asking each other if this beautiful youth is an angel fallen from heaven, or only a mortal man slain for the Honor of his country. His was a noble death, and worthy of the suggestive memento of his early boyhood before which we stood just now in the corridor of Slains Castle.

A little farther down this corridor, which to all intents and purposes is a family picture-gallery, we shall be forced to stop before the portrait of a dark woman, masculine and resolute, not beautiful nor like the handsome race of the Hays, of which she was yet the last direct representative. This is the famous Countess Mary, one of the central figures of the family traditions. The Hays were hereditary lords high constable of Scotland, and also one of the few Scottish families in which titles and offices, as well as lands, are transmitted through the female line. So this Countess Mary found herself, at the death of her brother, countess of Erroll in her own right and lord high constable of Scotland. In one of the two pictures of her at Slains, if I remember right, she is represented with the baton of her office, with which badge she also appeared at court before her marriage (after this it was borne by her husband in the character of her deputy). Her husband was a commoner, a Mr. Falconer of Dalgaty, whose reported history in connection with her is curious and deserves to be told, though the old tradition is moulded into so many different forms that it is very difficult to disentangle the truth from its manifold embellishments. Toward the beginning of the eighteenth century this intrepid and independent lady fell in love with Mr. Falconer, who at first did not seem eager to return or notice her affection. High-strung and chivalric by nature, she did not droop and pine under her disappointment, but vowed to herself that she would bring him to her feet. Mr. Falconer coner left the country after some time, and went to London. The Countess Mary also traveled south the same year, and no news of her was heard at Slains for some time. Meanwhile, she and Mr. Falconer met, but unknown to the latter, who about the same time became acquainted with a very dashing young cavalier, evidently a man of high birth and standing, but resolutely bent on mystifying his friends as to his origin. The two saw each other frequently, and were linked by that desultory companionship of London life which sometimes indeed ripens into friendship, but as often ends in a sudden quarrel. Such was the end of this acquaintance, and one day some trifling difference having occurred between the friends, a cartel reached Mr. Falconer couched in very haughty though perfectly courteous language. These things were every-day matters in such times, and very nonchalantly the challenged went in the early morning to the appointed place to meet the challenger. Here the versions of the story differ. Some say that Mr. Falconer and his antagonist fought, but without witnesses; that the former got the worst of the encounter, and remained at the other's mercy; that then, and not before, the Countess Mary made herself known to him and gave him his choice—a thrust from her sword or a speedy marriage with herself. Others say that it was before the duel that she astonished her lover by this discovery, and that the choice she gave him was between marriage and ridicule.[A]

The fact of her marriage, and that it proved a happy one, is certain. Mr. Falconer dropped his own name to assume that of Hay. The countess was a devoted Jacobite and an earnest churchwoman. When Presbyterianism had got the upper hand in Scotland, and was repaying church persecutions with terrible interest, a Mr. Keith was appointed to the Anglican parish of Deer. This was within the Erroll jurisdiction, and it was not long before the zealous Countess Mary came to the rescue of the congregation, who had assembled for some time in an old farmhouse. In 1719 or '20 she had the upper floor of a large granary fitted up for their accommodation, and this afforded them a grateful shelter for more than a quarter of a century. Of this same parish of Deer a curious story is told in the local annals, showing how conservative and tenacious of traditions the north of Scotland still was in 1711. The skirmish to which it relates goes by the quaint title of the "Rabbling of Deer," and is thus reported: "Some people of Aberdeen, in conjunction with the presbytry of Deer, to the number of seventy horse or thereby, assembled on the twenty-third of March, 1711, to force in a Presbyterian teacher in opposition to the parish; but the presbytry and their satellites were soundly beat off by the people, not without blood on both sides."

There was little of the martyr about the Scot of that warlike day, and most emphatically and literally did he show himself a "soldier of the Lord."

The aisle of the old church of Slains contains the graves of Countess Mary and her husband, with an epitaph in Latin, of which the following is a translation: "Beneath this tombstone there are buried neither gold nor silver, nor treasures of any kind, but the bodies of the most chaste wedded pair, Mary, countess of Erroll, and Alexander Hay of Dalgaty, who lived peaceably and lovingly in matrimony for twenty-seven years. They wished to be buried here beside each other, and pray that this stone may not be moved nor their remains disturbed, but that these be allowed to rest in the Lord until He shall call them to the happy resurrection of that life which they expect from the mercy of God and the merits of the Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ."

The central figure, however, in the history of the Hays of Erroll, and that which no one who bears the name of Hay can think of without a thrill of pride, is the Lord Kilmarnock who fell, in 1746, a victim to the last unsuccessful but heroic rising in favor of the Stuarts. I have heard it whispered as an instance of "second sight" that some years before he had any reason to anticipate such a death he was once startled by the ghostly opening of a door in the apartment where he was sitting alone, and by the apparition, horribly distinct and realistic, of a bloody head rolling slowly toward him across the room; till it rested at his feet. The glassy eyes were upturned to his, and the bonny locks were clotted with blood: it was as if it had just rolled from under the axe of the executioner; and the features, plainly discerned, were his own!

His part in the rising of 1745 belongs to history, but his personal demeanor concerns my narrative more closely. All the contemporary accounts are loud in praise of his beauty and elegance of person, his refinement of manner, his variety of accomplishments; and Scott, in his Tales of a Grandfather, relates a curious circumstance concerning his fine presence at the moment of his execution. A lady of fashion who had never seen him before, and who was herself, I believe, the wife of one who had much to do with Lord Kilmarnock's death-warrant, seeing him pass on his way to the block, formed a most violent attachment for his person, "which in a less serious affair would have, been little less than a ludicrous frenzy."

The grace and dignity of his appearance, together with the resignation and mildness of his address, melted all the spectators to tears as they gathered round the fatal Tower prison to witness his death: the chaplain who attended him says his behavior was so humble and resigned that even the executioner burst into tears, and was obliged to use strong cordials to support him in his terrible duty. Lord Kilmarnock himself was deeply impressed by the sight of the block draped in funereal black, the plain coffin placed just beside it, the sawdust that was so disposed as speedily to suck up the bloody traces of the execution, and the sea of faces surrounding the open enclosure kept for this his last earthly ordeal. It was certainly not from fear that he recoiled, but his proud, sensitive, melancholy nature was thrilled through every nerve by this dread publicity, and we cannot wonder that, leaning heavily on the arm of a trusty friend, he should have whispered, almost with his last breath, the simple words, "Home, this is dreadful!"

One who was the lineal descendant of this earl of Kilmarnock, and whose only brother long bore the same blood-stained and laurel-wreathed title, has often told me of the strange link that bridged the chasm of four generations from 1746 to 1829, and bound her recollections to those of a living witness of the scene. She was so young as not to have any distinct impression of other events that happened at the same time, but this lived in her mind because of the importance and solemnity with which her own parents had purposely invested it in her eyes. One day, at Brighton, this little great-great-grand-daughter of the Lord Kilmarnock of 1745 was brought down from the nursery to see an old, more than octogenarian, soldier who had distinguished himself in recent wars, and reached the rank of general. This tottering old man, more than fourscore years of age, took the wee maiden of hardly four upon his knee, and told her in simple words the story she was never to forget—how he had been a tiny boy running to school on the day of the execution of the "rebel lords," and how, seeing a vast, eager crowd all setting toward the Tower quarter, he was tempted to play truant, and flinging his satchel of books over his shoulder, had pushed his way as far as the great state prison. Then of his frantic efforts to secure a point of vantage whence to see the great death-pageant—of his childish admiration for the handsome, manly form of Lord Kilmarnock, of his enthusiasm when Lord Balmerino, the other victim, had cried in a loud voice, "Long live the king!" and of the fascination he could not resist which led his eyes from the shining axe and the draped block to the auburn locks of the prisoner, and soon after to his bleeding head laid low in the sawdust around the coffin. All this the old veteran told thrillingly, the shadow of a boy's awed recollection mingling with his Scottish exultation as a compatriot of the victim, and even with a touch of humor as he recalled the domestic scolding which marked the truant's return.

In the charter-room at Slains Castle, where the records, genealogies, private journals, official deeds, etc. of the family are kept, one might find ample material for curious investigation of our forefathers' way of living. Among other papers is a kind of inventory headed, "My Ladies Petition anent the Plenissing within Logg and Slanis." The list of things wanted for Slains speaks chiefly of brass pots, pewter pans and oil barrels, but, the "plenissing" of Logg (another residence of the Errolls), "quhilk my Ladie desyris as eftir followis, quhilk extendis skantlie (scantily) to the half," contains an ample list of curtains of purple velvet, green serge, green-and-red drugget and other stuffs hardly translatable to the modern understanding, and shows that in those days women were not more backward than now in plaguing their liege lords about upholstery and millinery. But the most amusing and natural touch of all is in the endorsement, hardly gallant, but very conjugal, made by the fair petitioner's husband: "To my Ladyes gredie (greedy) and vnressonable (unreasonable) desyris it is answerit...." Here follows a distinct admission that the furniture of both houses, put together, is too little to furnish the half of each of them, and therefore nothing can be spared from Logie to "pleniss" Slains.

The family coat-of-arms commemorates to this day the poetical genealogy of the Hays. Its supporters are two tall, naked peasants bearing plough-yokes on their shoulders: the crest is a falcon, while the motto is also significant—"Serva jugum." Scottish tradition tells us that in 980, when the Danes had shamefully routed the Scots at Loncarty, a little village near Perth, and were pursuing the fugitives, an old man and his two stalwart sons, who were ploughing in a field close by, were seized with indignation, and, shouldering their plough-yokes, placed themselves resolutely in a narrow defile through which their countrymen must pass to evade a second slaughter by the victors. As the Scots came on the three patriots opposed their passage, crying shame upon them for cowards and no men, and exhorting them thus: "Why! would ye rather be certainly killed by the heathen Danes than die in arms for your own land?" Ashamed, and yet encouraged, the fugitives rallied, and with the three dauntless peasants at their head fell upon their astonished pursuers, and fought with such desperation that they turned defeat into victory. Kenneth III., the Scottish king, instantly sent for the saviors of his army, gave them a large share of the enemy's spoils, and made them march in triumph into Perth with their bloody plough-yokes on their shoulders. More than that, he ennobled them, and gave them a fair tract of land, to be measured, according to the fashion of that day, by the flight of a falcon. From the name of this land the Hays came to be called; lords of Erroll, and it is said that the Hawk Stone at St. Madoes, Perthshire, which stands upon what is known to have been the ancient boundary of the possessions of the Hays, is the identical stone from which the lucky falcon started. It was left standing as a special memorial of the defeat of the Danes at Loncarty. Another stone famous in the Hay annals, and conspicuously placed in front of the entrance to Slains Castle, is said to be the same on which the peasant general rested after his toilsome leadership in the battle.

Our walks over the bleak moors on one side, with the heather in bloom and the blackberries in low—lying purple clusters fringing the granite rocks, were sometimes rendered more interesting, though more dangerous, by the sudden falling of a thick white mist. Slowly it would come at first, gathering little filmy clouds together as it were, and hovering over the gray sea in curling tufts, and then, growing strong and dense, would swoop down irresistibly, till what was clear five minutes before was impenetrably walled off, and one seemed to stand alone in a silent world of ghosts. Or again, our walks would take us on the other side, over the Sands of Forvie, a desolate tract where nothing grows save the coarse grass called bent by the Scotch, and where the wearied eye rests on nothing but mounds of shifting sand, drearily shaped into the semblance of graves by the keen winds that blow from over the German Ocean.

This miniature desert, tradition says, was an Eden four hundred years ago, but a wicked guardian robbed the helpless orphan heiresses of it by fraud and violence, and the maidens threw a spell or weird upon it in these terms:

"Yf evyr maydens malysone Did licht upon drye lande, Let nocht bee funde in Furvye's glebys Bot thystl, bente and sande."

I must not forget the "Bullers," a natural curiosity which is the boast of the neighborhood of Slains, and is moreover connected with a feat performed by a former guest and friend of one of the lords of Erroll. We drove there in a large party, and passed through an untidy, picturesque little fishing-hamlet on our way, where the women talked to each other in Gaelic as they stood barefooted at the doors of their cabins, and where the children looked so hardy, fearless and determined that the wildest dreams of future possible achievement seemed hardly unlikely of realization in connection with any one of them.

"The Pot," as it is locally called, is a huge rocky cavern, irregularly circular and open to the sky, into which the sea rushes through a natural archway. A narrow pathway is left quite round the basin, from which one looks down a sheer descent of more than a hundred feet; but this is so dangerous, the earth and coarse grass that carpet it so deceptive and loose, and the wind almost always so high on this spot, that only the most foolhardy or youngest of visitors would dare in broad daylight to attempt to walk round it. Yet it is on record that the duke of Richmond, some sixty or seventy years ago, made a bet at Lord Erroll's dinner-table that he would ride round it after dark. He accomplished the feat in safety. His picture, life-size, hangs in the dining-room to this day, and as he is represented standing in all the pride of a vigorous manhood by the side of his beautiful charger, he does not seem to belie the reputation which this incident created for him in the old district of Buchan.

The peasants of this wild and primitive neighborhood, though to some extent slightly infected by modernization, are yet very fair specimens of the hardy, trusty clansmen of Scottish history, and the present owners of Slains certainly give them every reason to keep up the old bonds of affectionate interest with every one and everything belonging to "the family." To my own observation of the ancient seat of the Hays I owe one of the most delightful recollections of my life, that of a Christian home. Not only the outward observances, but the inner spiritual vitality of religion, were there, while unselfish devotion to all within the range of her influence or authority marked the character of her who was at the head of this little family kingdom. The present head of the house, a Hay to the backbone, has triumphantly carried on the martial traditions of his ancestry, and on the roll of England's victorious sons at the battle of the Alma his name is to be found. He was there disabled by a wound that shattered his right arm and cut short his military career. Domestic happiness, however, is no bad substitute for a brilliant public life, and there are duties, higher yet than a soldier's, that go far toward making up that background of rural prosperity which alone ensures the grand effect of military successes. After having done one's duty in the field, it is to the full as noble, and perhaps more patriotic, to turn to the duties of the glebe, thereby finishing as a landlord the work begun as a soldier.

It is a touching custom, hardly yet obliterated in the district over which my reminiscences have led me, for one peasant, when coming upon another employed in his lawful calling, thus to salute him: "Guid speed the wark!" the rejoinder being, in the same broad Buchan dialect, "Thank ye: I wish ye weel."

I can end these pages with no more fitting sentiment. As a tribute of grateful recollection to those who made my days at Slains a happiness to me, and in the first fresh sorrow of a deep bereavement offered me distractions the more alluring because the more associated with Nature's changeless, silent grandeur, I pen these lines, crowning them with the homely Scottish wish that wherever they are and whatever they do, "Guid speed the wark!"

LADY BLANCHE MURPHY.

[Footnote A: There is another version of her courtship, and this a metrical one. This old ballad was not much known beyond the district round Slains, and the old servants and farmers on the estate were the chief depositaries of the tradition. I have failed to secure more than a very small fragment of it, which is itself only written down from memory by one of these old women. The rhyme and rhythm are both original:

Lady Mary Hay went to a wedding Near the famous town of Reading: There a gentleman she saw That belonged to the law....

Here evidently there occurs a hiatus, during which some account is probably begun of her unreturned attachment, for a little later we find in the very primitive manuscript from which we quote these words of the countess:

I that have so many slighted, I am at last—(unrequited?)

The story is now carried on in prose (my informant having forgotten the text of the ballad), and says that "Lady Mary wanted or challenged him to meet her in a masquerade" (probably meaning a duel in disguise), "and that his father told him to go." Neither father nor son seems to have known the fair challenger's rank, though the following words point to their being aware of her sex, for the elder Falconer is represented as saying,

If she is rich she will raise your fame, And if poor you are the same. ]



OUR HOME IN THE TYROL

CHAPTER III.

We were soon comfortably settled in the old Hof. The spacious rooms, always deliciously cool, were fragrant with rare and delicate blossoms—Alpine roses from the rocks, white lilies from Moidel's special little garden-plot, grasses and nodding flowers, campanulas, veronicas, melisot, potentillas and lady's bedstraw, which, according to Anton, no cattle would touch, whilst the roots of others were good for man or beast, their various qualities being all known to him. But soon the waving flowers bent beneath the scythe. It was the eve of St. Peter and St. Paul's Day, a festival when all work must cease, and the Hofbauer, whose word was law, had given orders that the hay in the wood-meadow must be carried that evening. Seeing, therefore, that the more hands there were the better, the two Margarets seized each a rake and worked as hard as any woman in the field.

On we labored, the golden evening sun glinting down upon our picturesque row of haymakers, nor did we cease until the angelus sounded from the village spire. Then Anton, Jakob, Moidel, their men and maids, fell devoutly upon their knees and thanked God that Christ Jesus had been born. These humble Tyrolese remember thrice daily to praise the Lord, as David did. With a hushed, subdued look upon their honest faces, they arose, and we joining them the fresh, fragrant hay was carted triumphantly home. The hay is cut long before we should consider it ready, and is housed whilst still green and moist. The newer the hay the richer the cream, they say. The Hofbauer has three crops yearly, but his neighbors, who lie higher, have only two, and sometimes but one.

The good old Kathi stood at the door cooling a gigantic pan of buckwheat polenta, and when she had set down this dish, intended for the haymakers' supper, she brought us each, as our pay, a couple of krapfen, which are oblong dough-cakes fried in butter.

Although the haymakers were worn out and weary with a long day's work of twelve hours, still Rosenkranz sounded in the chapel like the humming of bees in lime trees. This pious custom duly impressed us, until on the very next day, as we walked up our village street on the evening of the festival, our solemn feelings received a great check. We observed that the prayer-leaders, who knelt at the open windows of each separate house, followed our every movement with their eyes, whilst their mouths mechanically repeated sonorous Ave Marias and Paternosters. Nay, there was our own pious Moidel watching us from the kitchen window, her Hail Marys mingling with her friendly greetings; but then Moidel was waiting upon us and our supper whilst her family were on their knees in the chapel. Still, we soon learnt to perceive that Rosenkranz was considered quite as efficacious if merely uttered by the tongue, whilst the mind was far away. This being a festival, and no one tired with work, the household trooped into the old pleasaunce after supper. The elders sat together in a row, whilst the younger members congregated on a second long stone bench and struck up singing, Moidel and her elder brother beginning with a duet:

Green, green is the clover On the hills as I go, And my maiden as fresh is As spring water's flow.

And the chorus joined in—

As spring water's flow,

winding up with a jodel.

Nanni, the chief maid, next sang in a clear, flexible voice, which trembled no little when she perceived that the Herrschaft now formed part of the audience in the balcony—

A WEEK'S SORROW.

On Sunday I cried, for my heart was so sore, Like a poor little child outside the church door; On Monday I felt so afeard and alone, And thought, Were I a swallow, I'd quickly begone: Woe's me! were I but a swallow, were I but a swallow!

On Tuesday, and nothing could please me all day, For him that I love best is far, far away; On Wednesday whatever I did, I did ill, For when the heart's heavy the hand has no skill; On Thursday I was weary and sleepy all day; On Friday, and one of the cows went astray; On Saturday down poured my tears like the rain, As though I should never be happy again. Woe's me! never be happy again; woe's me! never again.

In order to catch the meaning of the words, which were sung in strong dialect, Margaret and I had descended to the garden. The Hofbauer looked sad when he saw us approach, and quietly brushed a tear away with his shirt-sleeve. We consequently asked Moidel when we stood alone with her whether anything were troubling her father.

"It strikes me not," she said. "I fancy that it is but the music. Father and uncle may both seem quiet and dull now, yet they have been celebrated singers; only when my mother died father left off singing, and so did uncle after Uncle Jakob's death."

"Ah yes!" said the aunt, who had also joined us, "they were the three handsomest, best—grown men in the parish, living happily together without an ill word, until four years ago Jakob was trampled upon by a yoke of vicious oxen, and in three days he was dead. Yes, that was a sorrow almost as cutting as the death of the Hofbauerin, so young when she died. Only married five years, and leaving four little children, not one of whom ever knew her! Yes, Moidel is a good girl, and is wearing her linen now, but she can never come up in looks to her mother. Ah ja! and now the trouble is about Jakob."

"About Jakob?" asked we in a low, astonished voice.

"Why yes, that he has been drawn for the Landwehr. Ah, I thought you knew. It was last autumn that he was drawn. The Hofbauer would have sold his best acres to release him, but the recruiting-officer would have no nay: Jakobi was a fine, well-behaved young fellow, and such were needed in the army. He had to serve two months this spring, and with his comrades day by day had to run up the face of mountains some four thousand feet. It quite wore Jakob out, though he is so good-tempered. He declared that he was used, to be sure, at the Olm to climb up to the glaciers of the Hoch Gall after his goats, often bringing the kids in his arms down the precipices, but to have his back broken and his feet blistered in order to know how to shed human blood was what he hated. Yet he bore it so well, doing his best, that when the other recruits could return to their homes, Jakob, being so clever and well-behaved, had to stay a fortnight longer to brush, fold up and put away all the regimentals. However, the under-officer did have him to dine with him every day."

"Yes, and Jakob will in his turn be an officer," we replied, trying to reassure her.

"Oh, na, na, that can never be: eleven more long years must he serve, and always as a private. I thought like you, until the Hofbauer explained to me that all the officers were foreigners—Saxons, Bavarians, Wuertembergers, put in by the Austrian ministry, who are tyrants to Tyrol. Ah, if the good emperor would only interfere, for he loves Tyrol! but he leaves everything to the ministry. Austria may itself be overthrown in these unrighteous days before my Jakobi is free." Now it was the good soul's turn to wipe her eye with the corner of her ample blue apron.

We were venturing some fresh attempt at consolation when fortunately an event occurred which drew her thoughts from the deep shadow which we had just discovered hung over the peaceful Hof. Jodokus, the village schoolmaster in the winter, when the children had time to learn, but during the busy summer months one of the men, had challenged Jakobi to a wrestling-match. Hardly had the two antagonists encountered each other on the grass in a stout set-to, when the sound of the goatherd's whip was heard on the hilly common above, sending forth a succession of reports like those of a pistol, becoming stronger and louder when the game and the assembled company were seen. At last the young "whipper-snapper," as we called him, made one long final succession of cracks and reports, and springing over the wall, and casting his instrument of torture on one side, he boldly challenged Anton.

The young man, whose skill and strength were well known, smiled, half amused, half incredulous, on his antagonist. The younger athlete, a lad of thirteen, firmly built and agile, mistook the look for a sneer, and the blood ran fast and hot into his face. So, Anton accepting the challenge, they immediately began to spar. They first fearlessly regarded each other, then bowing their heads they rushed forward, butting like rams. The lad, with his head fixed firm in Anton's chest, tried to find his adversary's weakest point, and with his arms round his waist endeavored cunningly to make him slip; but it was soon the young champion who was tripped up, and who in playful, half-serious anger dealt blows and tugs right and left, almost managing to bring Anton sprawling to the ground. The lad, however, suddenly stopped: he had lost a little tin ring off his finger and a four-kreuzer piece from his pocket—too great a loss for a shepherd-boy. The combat therefore was speedily closed, both antagonists and their partisans hunting in the unmowed grass until the treasures were again trove.

At the same time an elderly man approached and opened the gate—a peasant evidently, although, instead of the usual long white apron and bib, he wore one of new green linen, shining as satin—a man of a strong although delicate make, the head slightly stooping forward, and a face that beamed with genuine pleasure as half a dozen voices simultaneously burst forth with a "God greet you, Alois!"

This then was Schuster (or Shoe-maker) Alois, in preparation of whose advent the good aunt had scrubbed a bed-room, and Moidel had beautified the window with pots of blooming geraniums. The room was a large chamber, set apart for the different ambulatory work-people who came to the Hof in the course of the year. The weaver, who arrived in the spring to weave the flax which the busy womankind had spun through the winter, had been the last occupant of the room, and had woven no less than two hundred and ninety-three ells of linen, which now in long symmetrical lines were carefully pegged down on the turf of the pleasaunce by Moidel, who walked over them daily with her bare feet, busily watering until the gray threads were turning snowy white.

Later on in the year the sewing-woman would appear, and then the tailor, to make the clothing for this large household, the servants, according to an old custom long since extinct in most countries, being chiefly paid in kind. Schuster Alois had now come to make the boots for Jakob and the Senner Franz preparatory to their going with the cattle to the Alpine pastures.

I greatly doubt whether the tailor or the weaver was so well waited upon as the shoemaker: I fancy they were left more to the maids. Passing the open door of the family house-place, aunt and niece might now be seen sitting hour after hour, the elder lining the soles of Jakob's stockings with pieces of strong woolen to prevent mending on the Alp, or attending to other needs of his homely toilet; the younger at her paste-board or kneading-trough, whilst Schuster Alois sat between them in the sunny oriel window, and while he steadily plied his awl appeared to be either telling them tales or reciting poetry.

The Alp, or Olm (to use the provincial word), lay at the distance of about six hours, and the Hofbauer went up to examine the state of the pasturage before his son and the cattle finally started. In two days he returned. "The going up of the cattle must be postponed at least a week," he said, "for snow had fallen at the huts the depth of a man; and the river had swollen to such a height that it had carried two houses away in St. Wolfgang, the highest mountain-village; and even life had been lost."

This delay caused a respite from hard work. The next morning Alois's arms did not move like unwearying machinery, and, the ten o'clock-dinner being over, we saw him seated at his ease on the adjoining hillside. Should we go and speak to him? He appeared different from the ordinary run of his class (though cobblers are often clever men enough), and moreover of a decidedly friendly turn of mind. We determined that we would. We joined Alois on the stony, waste hillside, crowned by two trees with a crucifix in the centre, which formed from the house, with its background of mountains, ever a melancholy, soul-touching little poem.

"You have not quite such hard work to-day, Schuster?"

He smiled and said, "Do your work betimes, and then rest; and where better than under the shadow of the cross?"

"Yes, and the crucifix which you have chosen is more pleasing than the generality which are sown broadcast over the fields of the Tyrol. Why are they made so hideous and revolting?"

We spoke out freely, because the unusually intelligent face before us evidently belonged to a thinker. Candor of speech pleased him. Nevertheless, he answered as if musing, "They appear ugly to you: well they may be. Ja, but the most who look upon them are men and women acquainted with many sorrows—sudden deaths by falls from precipices, destruction of house and home by lightning, floods, avalanches, failure of crops, and many another visitation—and it soothes their perhaps selfish natures to see these anguished features, these blood-stained limbs—signs of still greater suffering—whilst they pray that only such crosses may be laid on them as will keep them in obedience to His will. Just before you came up the hill I was thinking of a strange history connected with a crucifix—one that I read only ten days ago in the house of a Hochmair himself."

It merely needed silence for Schuster Alois to repeat the tale, and he soon began: "It is the Tyroler Adolph Pichler who narrates it. He says that once in his rambles he came to a little chapel, over which hung a blasted larch—such a desolate wreck of a tree that he naturally asked the guide he had with him why it was not cut down. Now, the guide was an old man who knew every, tradition and legend, besides all the family histories in that part of the Tyrol. 'That tree,' said he, 'is left there purposely, as the reminder of a great crime, and nobody would think of touching it. If you look into the chapel, you'll see a Christ on the cross which has been shot through the breast. That was once a crucifix under this very tree.' Then the guide made a remark which had often struck myself—that there are some families in which everything that is strange and dreadful happens, whilst there are others that go on for generations and are no more distinguishable than the very weeds themselves. In that valley were the Hochmairs, and they were of this prominent sort, and odd enough, as I said before, it was at a Hochmair's house that I read this account. Well, some generations back there was a Hochmair who was a regular ruffian. He cared no more for the life of a man than that of a chamois. The government kept the game strictly on the mountains, and he was suspected of having put more than one of their keepers out of the way. In short, he had such a bad character that when he went to confession the priest would not give him absolution. This put him in a great rage, and it is remarkable that from that day his luck in hunting forsook him. He could not take aim—a sort of mist was ever before his eyes, his hand trembled. People believed that he was perpetually haunted by the ghost of a young man whom, after he had shot, he had beaten to death with his gunstock, and then flung down a crevasse. Be that as it may, he would be absent for weeks in the mountains. He did no good, and the little he possessed fell into ruin.

"His creditors were about to sell him up, stick and stone, when he put, as one may say, the finishing stroke to everything himself. It was Corpus Christi Day: the bells were ringing and the procession moving through the fields, the holy banners waving, the choir-boys singing the sanctus, when just as the priest lifted the Host in the golden monstrance, a shot was fired from the bushes in front of a crucifix. Lightning flashed from heaven, and the house of the wicked Hochmair, which was at no great distance, burst into flames. An awful cry rang from the bushes: the procession rushed forward, the priest only remaining with the Host and a few attendants. And what did they see? There was the image of the crucified Saviour pierced by a bullet, and out in the road stood the wretched Hochmair, with his hands clasped on the lock of his gun and his eyes rolling in frenzy. Everybody perceived the crime he had committed, and remained motionless, whilst he beckoned wildly to the priest, who came up in gloomy silence. After they had talked together alone for some time, the priest went into the church, where he remained all night in prayer. The wretched man, whom nobody dared to touch, disappeared into the thicket, and all trace was lost of him. In the mean while the injured image of the Saviour was removed into the church. So years went on, and then one Sunday after service the priest announced from the pulpit that the former sinner Hochmair was dead, but that after years of penitence he had received the forgiveness of the Church and of God. 'Therefore,' said the good man, 'let all forgive him, and remember only their own sins, and pray Christ to be merciful to them.' After that it was known that he had become possessed with the crazy notion that if he fired into the breast of the Saviour on Corpus Christi Day, just when the Host was being elevated and the benediction spoken, it would make his gun unerring. He fired therefore, and at the same moment the Saviour on the cross raised His head and, fixing on him His eyes full of tears, gave him a look which pierced him to the very marrow, and that terrified him far more than the lightning which, flashing from his forehead, set fire to his house, whilst the thorn-crowned countenance seemed to float before him, and he knew that this was his punishment. Such was his confession at the time to the priest who laid the penance of the Church upon him. So he went out into the world like another Cain, and God in His own time was merciful to him. Still, the wounded effigy of the Saviour and the blasted larch tree remain as witnesses on earth against him.

"And," continued Schuster Alois, "that is only one tale amongst the hundreds which could be related concerning these crucifixes. Ah, there is many an old, bleached, weather-beaten crucifix on crag or highway-side from which the anguished face of the Saviour has both smitten and healed the sinner. Crucifixes cut deeper into most Tyrolese hearts than shrines, some way."

"Strange," we replied, "for these old shrines are not only quaint, but often beautiful, as, for instance, the one on the roadside turning into town."

"Ah, I am glad you like it," said Alois, "for there are those who would wish it pulled down and a lofty wooden cross, as a landmark, placed there instead. The Capuchins in the adjoining monastery are opposed to it, however, and no wonder. Have you ever remarked," he continued, becoming quite aglow, "that although it is greatly injured and many of the figures lost, still there are others who look at you so calmly and seriously with their marred, dilapidated countenances that you feel a peace steal into your heart? And whoever the painter was, he must have loved his work, for Saint Gregory could never have been more dignified in real life than he looks in the shrine."

"Are you a painter?" we asked, almost without knowing what we were saying, for it was hardly probable.

"Oh, I only touch colors now and then, when there's a purpose in it or I can serve the Church," he returned. He became embarrassed, and explained that it was time to return to his work.

We afterward learnt from Moidel that Alois bore in the neighborhood far and wide the reputation of an artist, although he did not consider himself such, seeing he could not paint saints and angels. It was, however, a great source of pleasure to him to paint mottoes and devices and to arrange floral decorations, especially when they could serve as a surprise for some private name-day or church festival.

One afternoon we were told that the boots were made, that Anton had brought the flour from the mill, that two hundred loaves of rye bread were baked, and, the weather being sufficiently fine and all the preparations being completed, the cattle would now start for the Olm. First, Anton and the Senner Franz set off at four o'clock in the afternoon, with the calves in advance, the young things being unable to keep up with the cattle. Then a leiterwagen which had been drawn into the lower corridor and filled with sacks of flour, meal, salt and the two hundred loaves, was driven by the Hofbauer as far as Taufers, whence the supplies for the Alpine residents would be borne on men's backs up to the huts.

In the evening Jakob came into the grand old sitting-room to bid us good-bye. He appeared in his shirt-sleeves and the indispensable white apron, and with the utmost self-possession and refinement of manner he presented us with a little bouquet of edelweiss, promising to send us down a larger supply by his brother. We talked with him about the Olm, and found him enthusiastic on the subject, his one regret being that, as he must return for several weeks of drilling on August 22d, his stay there this summer would be greatly curtailed. The Olm was very extensive, lying on a mountain-platform which was only bare of snow for about three months in the year. When, however, the snow was off, the flowers came up by thousands, the grass sprang up by magic, all the mountains were filled with the rushing and roaring sound of waters, which came down in foaming cascades, often of wonderful beauty, amongst the rocks and the pine woods which clothed the steeper mountain-sides. Nor was the life at all solitary, for various farmers were sending up their cattle to other Olms about the same time, so that no one was without neighbors, although they might be at a considerable distance apart.

Jakob spoke on until we became wild to go up to the Olm too. "Could we go thither," we asked, "and pay him a visit?"

"That we could," he replied, "if we did not mind sleeping in the hay. Only we had better wait for settled weather in August."

There was now no talk of our leaving the Hof at St. Jakobi. The Hofbauer had declared that the house was at our disposal until Martinmas—longer if we wanted it. He also fell into the scheme of our visiting his Olm, where he intimated his desire to be host, saying that all the dairy produce would be at our service.

In the night, exactly at one o'clock, Jakob and Jodokus started: we heard them go, the cattle-bells ringing and the "Leben Sie wohl!" "Behuet Euch Gott!" shouted lovingly after them from the open door and the lower windows of the silent old mansion. Six and twenty head of cattle: the goats, pigs and sheep were to follow later. It was a calm and beautiful night, the three-quarters moon just dropping behind the mountains, and the stars shining out brightly from the dark cloudless sky.



CHAPTER IV.

The Alpine caravansary was hardly settled at the Olm when the air became intensely hot and oppressive. Day by day black thunder-clouds gathered on the horizon. They crested the mountains in three directions, at times appearing to repel each other, at others marching fiercely on to conflict, when, the zenith becoming pitch-dark, they flung out long spears of lightning and exploded in overwhelming thunder. Very terrible were these perpetual storms. With the first peal the church-bells along the valley began solemnly to toll. It mattered not whether by night or day, the faithful bellringer was at his post, and with rain pouring down outside and fiery, vivid lightning playing around him, he still went tolling on, for evil spirits must be driven away, and people reminded to make the sign of the cross and pray God to protect them.

At length, to use an expression of Alois's, "Saint Florian had left off playing at skittles, and Saint Leonhard had driven his hay over the heavenly bridge." The warring elements were still, but the earth seemed smouldering with heat, and we panted and gasped after the lofty mountain-slopes which lay on all sides. At the same time it came most opportunely to our knowledge that the Tyrol was rich in baths—primitive establishments most of them, but dotted over mountain and valley, so that each village had half a dozen to choose from, where every peasant, be he ever so poor, could at least dip and soak for an eight-days' sommerfrisch. Why, then, should not the two Margarets, they being the most desirous of a change, have at least a sommerfrisch?

But which amongst all these baths was the one to choose? Good Kathi recommended her baths at Innichen. She herself evidently did not derive much pleasure from her yearly visits there. Still, we, being ladies, would find more people to talk to, and the bath-house, which was always full to overflowing, stood in a wood, and we liked trees. Schuster Alois—for the conversation took place before he left—said that most gentlefolks went to Maistall. There was not only luxus, but a great deal of life and spirit there. His Majesty Emperor Max as early as 1511 took up his quarters at Maistall during his campaign against the Venetians, and he had heard say that in the last century the visitors formed a society and made it a rule that none but the purest German should be spoken. Every fault of pronunciation cost a kreuzer to the offender: the money went to the chapel, and amounted one season to twenty-one florins six kreuzers.

But one Margaret decidedly objected to going to a place where there was the faintest chance of her loiter wagon for leiterwagen, her pison for speisen, her vulgarborn for wohlgeboren, being fined by a gazel-schaft (gesellschaft). Besides, these places sounded too grand: we did not want a Gastein, but a Wildbad, if one could be found that did not belie its name. So the peasant-baths of St. Vigil, Muehlbach and Scharst were named to us, and the lot fell upon Scharst, we having heard that all the school-children in town had just been taken there for a long day's holiday, and had returned to their proud and happy parents, who waited for them in double ranks below, radiant with pleasure, waving their banners and Alpine roses.

It was accordingly arranged that on the following Sunday Anton should drive us to Reischach, where there was to be a great festival, with candles in the church as big as a man's arm: so said a woman from Reischach. Anton was of a retiring nature, and did not like crowds, but he would gladly drive the ladies over. And at Reischach we should be sure to find some peasant returning that evening by Scharst, who could carry our belongings.

Imagine us, therefore, at Reischach, the church-bell ringing for vespers, which begin at one o'clock. We wear bouquets of carnations and rosemary, presented to us by the family at the Hof, as correct decorations for a festival. And Anton!—how to present him to you as he deserves to be presented? His truthful, guileless face is his best ornament: nevertheless, he too wears carnations and rosemary caught in the silver cord and vieing with the silver tassels of his broad-brimmed, low-crowned beaver hat. His rough jacket, made by the tailor last autumn, and therefore too new to be worn on a less special occasion, is short and loose enough to leave ample space for the display of his rauge, or broad leather belt of softest chamois-skin, worked in scrolls surrounding his name, with split peacock quills, no little resembling Indian handicraft. His snow-white knees appear between his short leather breeches and his bright blue knitted stockings. These Nature's garters, when perfectly white, are regarded as a mark of great distinction amongst the dandies, and those of our Anton may be considered the very knee plus ultra.

A parliament of men—a few still in breeches with Hessian boots, which appeared a characteristic of Reischach, but the majority, having succumbed to modern ideas, wearing trowsers—were seated in the shadow of a comfortable house, discussing the different stages of their rye and flax crops. Their wives and daughters, following their natural impulse, were already kneeling in church, confiding their cares of kitchen and farmyard to the ever-ready ear of Mutter Gottes—one dense mass of simple, believing women, in broad-brimmed beaver hats, with here and there a conical woolen beehive as a contrast.

The church in itself, although it lacked the candles as big as a man's arm, must truly have shone like the gate of heaven to peasant eyes. Many of the more substantial families had lent their private saints for the occasion. They had brought Holy Nothburgs and Saint Leonhards and Virgins, generally preserved in wardrobes at home, but now brought to participate in the festival, besides adding to its great solemnity. It was Scapulary Sunday, we were told, and although the words conveyed no clear idea to us, we were soon to learn their significance. A Tyrolese anthem having been sung by some invisible voices, in which jodels leapt up and smothered Gregorians, a middle-aged Capuchin took his stand in the pulpit, and having greeted the congregation, promised to explain to them the mystery and the advantage of the Holy Scapulary.

"My beloved," he began, "there are some who think too little of the scapulary, and there are others who lay too great a stress on this aid to faith. Let us meditate on both these conditions. But first, how must we ourselves regard the scapulary? Now, we are told not to love the world nor the things of the world. The scapulary, with its sacred image of Mary worn next the heart, is a great shield against this love of the world. It places you under the especial protection of the Queen of Heaven: you are as much her servant as those who serve king or kaiser, and equally wear her livery. Some think too little of the scapulary. Yet what incidents can be told of its efficacy! Let one suffice. In the year 1866, when the war raged between Austria and Prussia, the Catholic soldiers of the latter country immediately before the war entered by hundreds into the Society of the Scapulary. Wearing this sacred charm upon their hearts, they went into the battle-field, and the cannons roared and the bullets whizzed thick and fast around them, and not one of them fell, for they wore the scapulary. Indeed, their miraculous preservation created so much excitement that Lutherans marveled over it, and asked the Catholics how it came that they were no whit hurt. And they answered, 'We wear the scapulary of Mary, and she saves us.' Then many Lutherans said, 'Come, we will have scapularies,' and wrote their names down in the society. And now hark ye, my brethren. There was a Catholic soldier, and there was a Lutheran, and the latter said, 'Lend me thy scapulary for this one day only, and see, here is a thaler for thee.' Then the foolish Catholic drew the scapulary off his neck, handed it to the Lutheran, took the thaler, went into battle: whiz went the bullets round him, and he fell."

We could stand no more. The church, now crowded with men as well as women, reeked with perspiration, the sermon oppressed us, and thus our sense and senses drove us out into the open air. Here the fresh breeze came across from the Ziller snow-fields, health-giving as a breath from heaven. Peasant-women who were too late to squeeze into church were seated amongst the iron crosses of the graves. The more serious-minded had managed to cluster together round a side-door which, being adjacent to the pulpit, proved an advantageous spot for hearing. The less particular sat in the shade, feeling it sufficient to be in holy ground and to pass their beads through their fingers whilst they studied up our novel attire. Approaching the more attentive members, we found that the Capuchin had reached the second part of his discourse, and was dilating on those who thought too highly of the scapulary. We gathered the following fragment:

"Now, the man was nigh unto death, and it was neither for confession nor for the death-sacrament that he craved. No, it was for a scapulary. 'A scapulary!' he cried, 'a scapulary!' My brethren, you know well he should have asked for the priest and for the blessing of the Church, but it was merely for a scapulary."

Later on we asked permission to see a scapulary. It consisted of two small squares of cloth, herring-boned round the edge, and united by a narrow ribbon of sufficient length to permit one square to rest on the breast, whilst the other hung between the shoulders. That in front bore the image of the Virgin, designed by the nuns in the convent, whilst the simpler work had been given to some poor old woman, or even man, who was past harder employment. The privilege of wearing this charmed badge entailed the payment of a small yearly subscription and the repetition of seven Paternosters daily.

The procession followed the sermon. Mary, Joseph, Saint Nothburg (once a good peasant-girl, now a saint) were paraded round the village by children, and borne back to church. Peasant-men staggered under large silk banners, which swayed and fluttered in the blustery wind, and, but for the steady grasp of the strong men who carried them, threatening at each moment to crush the pious throng. The four chief peasants of the district, wearing their robes of state, the Noah's ark coats in which they were married, bore the baldachin over the head of the Capuchin who elevated the Host: the village priest, in white surplice and Hessian boots, swung the censer at his side. The men were in front, the women, a long, broad file, divided in the procession by the priests from their male relations, followed—a dense black mass, but relieved in color by the whiteness of their short linen sleeves.

Men and women, carefully severed in their prayers and on the very steps of the altar by Holy Church, were soon able to come together again under the spacious, hospitable roof of Herr Kappler, the wirth. Innumerable clean wooden tables, forms, and stiff, high-legged wooden chairs were ranged up stairs and down stairs and in the orchard without, for the accommodation of the scapularists and their friends.

We sat at a side-table in an upper room partaking of grilled fowl and salad, whilst buben and their dirnen, or lads and their lasses, middle-aged couples, old men and women, poured into the house, filling every chair, bench and table. They came thither from all the country-side, and endless were the greetings amongst cousins and cousins' cousins. The Tyrolese, like the Scotch, keep up every link of relationship, claiming the fiftieth cousin. Relationship, in fact, never does die out; and though it may become an abstract during busy seasons of ploughing and sowing, it becomes a strong reality at wakes and festivals. Thus, at Kappler's, on this scapulary afternoon, Barthel's brother-in-law's cousin drank with "Cousin Barthel," and Seppl's sister-in-law's niece was treated by "Onkel Seppl." There was one square-built, good-humored old man who appeared to be the whole world's cousin: he passed from table to table, and had to sip from fifty offered glasses.

With our delicious coffee and boiled cream we ordered the host, as a suitable person, to find us a guide to carry our valise and shawls to Bad Scharst. Probably the perpetual and loud demands for pints of wine left him but little time to make a wise selection, seeing that there soon stood before us a small man with so subtle and malignant a look that his exorbitant demand made us only too gladly dismiss him. Our confidence shaken in the landlord's powers of discrimination, we sent word below that if Anton had returned we should be glad to speak with him. He had been in the village to visit his cousins, but was waiting our orders below. Although his native shyness made it hard for him to step forward and address ladies under the curious gaze of all the relative Seppls and Barthels, he did it with manliness, and turning round and addressing the popular old man as Hansel, asked him if his brother Joergel were below; and being answered in the affirmative, he hastened away, and returned with another compact little peasant, whom he introduced to us as Senner Franz's brother, with an aside, that he was "a friendly mortal and Count Arlberg's forester."

The agreement was soon made, the sullen-looking man glowering at us from behind a stack of firewood, whilst Hansel and Anton packed a kraxe or wooden frame and fixed it on Joergel's back. As we set off, Anton drove away homeward, although the skittle-balls were just beginning to roll, and the sound of "I bin a lustiger bua" and other Tyrolese songs came floating from the windows.

MARGARET HOWITT.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]



SAINT ROMUALDO.

I give God thanks that I, a lean old man, Wrinkled, infirm, and crippled with keen pains By austere penance and continuous toil, Now rest in spirit, and possess "the peace Which passeth understanding." Th' end draws nigh, Though the beginning is as yesterday, And a broad lifetime spreads 'twixt this and that— A favored life, though outwardly the butt Of ignominy, malice and affront, Yet lighted from within by the clear star Of a high aim, and graciously prolonged To see at last its utmost goal attained. I speak not of mine Order and my House, Here founded by my hands and filled with saints— A white society of snowy souls, Swayed by my voice, by mine example led; For this is but the natural harvest reaped From labors such as mine when blessed by God. Though I rejoice to think my spirit still Will work my purposes, through worthy hands, After my bones are shriveled into dust, Yet have I gleaned a finer, sweeter fruit Of holy satisfaction, sure and real, Though subtler than the tissue of the air— The power completely to detach the soul From her companion through this life, the flesh; So that in blessed privacy of peace, Communing with high angels, she can hold, Serenely rapt, her solitary course.

Ye know, O saints of heaven, what I have borne Of discipline and scourge; the twisted lash Of knotted rope that striped my shrinking limbs; Vigils and fasts protracted, till my flesh Wasted and crumbled from mine aching bones, And the last skin, one woof of pain and sores, Thereto like yellow parchment loosely clung; Exposure to the fever and the frost, When 'mongst the hollows of the hills I lurked From persecution of misguided folk, Accustoming my spirit to ignore The burden of the cross, while picturing The bliss of disembodied souls, the grace Of holiness, the lives of sainted men, And entertaining all exalted thoughts, That nowise touched the trouble of the hour, Until the grief and pain seemed far less real Than the creations of my brain inspired. The vision, the beatitude, were true: The agony was but an evil dream. I speak not now as one who hath not learned The purport of those lightly-bandied words, Evil and Fate, but rather one who knows The thunders of the terrors of the world. No mortal chance or change, no earthly shock, Can move or reach my soul, securely throned On heights of contemplation and calm prayer, Happy, serene, no less with actual joy Of present peace than faith in joys to come.

This soft, sweet, yellow evening, how the trees Stand crisp against the clear, bright-colored sky! How the white mountain-tops distinctly shine, Taking and giving radiance, and the slopes Are purpled with rich floods of peach-hued light! Thank God, my filmy, old dislustred eyes Find the same sense of exquisite delight, My heart vibrates to the same touch of joy In scenes like this, as when my pulse danced high, And youth coursed through my veins! This the one link That binds the wan old man that now I am To the wild lad who followed up the hounds Among Ravenna's pine-woods by the sea. For there how oft would I lose all delight In the pursuit, the triumph or the game, To stray alone among the shadowy glades, And gaze, as one who is not satisfied With gazing, at the large, bright, breathing sea, The forest glooms, and shifting gleams between The fine dark fringes of the fadeless trees, On gold-green turf, sweetbrier and wild pink rose! How rich that buoyant air with changing scent Of pungent pine, fresh flowers and salt cool seas! And when all echoes of the chase had died, Of horn and halloo, bells and baying hounds, How mine ears drank the ripple of the tide On that fair shore, the chirp of unseen birds, The rustling of the tangled undergrowth, And the deep lyric murmur of the pines, When through their high tops swept the sudden breeze! There was my world, there would my heart dilate, And my aspiring soul dissolve in prayer Unto that Spirit of Love whose energies Were active round me, yet whose presence, sphered In the unsearchable, unbodied air, Made itself felt, but reigned invisible. This ere the day that from my past divides My present, and that made me what I am. Still can I see the hot, bright sky, the sea illimitably sparkling, as they showed That morning. Though I deemed I took no note Of heaven or earth or waters, yet my mind Retains to-day the vivid portraiture Of every line and feature of the scene. Light-hearted 'midst the dewy lanes I fared Unto the sea, whose jocund gleam I caught Between the slim boles, when I heard the clink Of naked weapons, then a sudden thrust Sickening to hear, and then a stifled groan; And pressing forward I beheld the sight That seared itself for ever on my brain— My kinsman, Ser Ranieri, on the turf, Fallen upon his side, his bright young head Among the pine-spurs, and his cheek pressed close Unto the moist, chill sod: his fingers clutched A handful of loose weeds and grass and earth, Uprooted in his anguish as he fell, And slowly from his heart the thick stream flowed, Fouling the green, leaving the fair, sweet face Ghastly, transparent, with blue, stony eyes Staring in blankness on that other one Who triumphed over him. With hot desire Of instant vengeance I unsheathed my sword To rush upon the slayer, when he turned In his first terror of blood-guiltiness.