The man stood aside that she might pass into the outer room, and, though she was not invited to further exploration, she could see by the several doors cut in the walls that this was not the sole accommodation which the curious house could boast.
On the stone floor rugs of deer and chamois skin were spread; in a 51 rack of oak, ornamented with splendid antlers and studded with the sharp, pointed horns of the chamois, were suspended guns of modern make and brightly polished knives. The table in the middle of the room had been carved with exceeding skill; and the half-dozen chairs were oddly fashioned of stags antlers, formed to hold fur-cushioned, wooden seats. A carved dresser of black oak held a store of the brightly coloured china made by the peasants in the valley below, eked out with platters and tankards of old pewter; and in the great fireplace a gipsy kettle was suspended over a red bed of fragrant pine-wood embers.
"This is a place fit for a king—or even an emperor," Sylvia said, with demure graciousness, when the bare-kneed young man had offered her a seat and crossed the room to open the closed cupboard under the dresser. He was stooping as she spoke, but at her last words looked quickly round over his shoulder.
"We peasants are not afraid of a little work when it is for our own comfort," he responded, "And most of the things you see are homemade 52 during the long winters."
"Then you are all very clever. But, tell me, has the Emperor ever been your guest? I have read—let me see, could it have been in a guide- book, or perhaps in some society paper?—that he comes occasionally to the mountains here."
"Oh yes; the Kaiser has been at this hut—once, twice, perhaps." Her host laid a loaf of black bread, a cut cheese, and a knuckle of ham on the table. He then glanced at his guest, expecting her to come forward; but she sat still on her throne of antlers, her little feet in their strong mountain boots, daintily crossed under the short tweed skirt.
"I hear your Kaiser is a good chamois-hunter," she leisurely remarked. "But that, perhaps, is only the flattery which makes the atmosphere of kings. No doubt, you could give him many points in chamois-hunting?"
The young man smiled. "The Emperor is not a bad shot," he returned.
"For an amateur. But you are a professional. I wager now that you 53 would not change places with the Emperor?"
How the chamois-hunter laughed and showed his white teeth! There were those in the towns he scorned, who would have been astonished at his levity.