"Yes, 'tis time," murmured Anna Maria, Anthony Wallner's wife, to herself; "'tis time for me to give Lizzie the signal, for the insurrection has broken out." She hastened into the house, took her husband's old rifle from the chamber, ran with it out of the back- door of the house, and fired the signal for her daughter.
"There," she said, returning quietly into the house, "she will have heard the report, and there is time yet to save him. I will do now what Tony asked me to do. When he sings the song, I shall take the paper-balls from the table-drawer in the back-room, give a package to each of the two boys and two servant-girls, and tell them to go with it into the mountains and circulate the paper-balls everywhere, that the inhabitants of the whole Pusterthal, from one end to the other, from the Gross-Glockner to the Venediger and Krimler Tauern, may learn this very day that it is time, and that the Boafoks are to be expelled from the country. Halloo, boys, come here! Halloo, girls, your mistress wants to speak to you!"
CHAPTER XI.
THE DECLARATION OF LOVE.
Eliza Wallner, after leaving her mother, had sped with the utmost rapidity through the back-door, across the yard, through the garden, out of the small gate leading to the meadow, down the foot-path, up the mountain-road, jumping from stone to stone, courageous and intrepid as a true daughter of the Tyrol. Now she stood at the portal of the castle, in front of which some of the Bavarian soldiers were lying in idle repose on a bench, while others in the side-wing of the castle allotted to them were looking out of the windows, and dreamily humming a Bavarian song, frequently interrupted by loud yawns.
Eliza walked past them with a slight greeting and entered the house. The old footman sitting in the hall received her kindly, and told her, in reply to her inquiry, that the castellan, old Baron von Hohenberg, had set out early in the morning for Salzburg to attend court, but that his daughter and her cousin, Captain Ulrich von Hohenberg, were lunching in the small dining-room up-stairs.
This was all the information Eliza needed; she nodded to the footman, and ascended the staircase quickly. The old footman did not follow her; he knew that it was unnecessary for him to announce beautiful Lizzie to his mistress, but that she always was welcome to her. He therefore sat down again quietly, and took up the wood-work with which he had been occupied before.
Eliza reached the dining-room and threw open the door with a hasty hand; a blissful smile then overspread her flushed face, for on the balcony yonder, behind the open glass door, she beheld the tall slender form of Captain Ulrich von Hohenberg. She heard him chatting and laughing gayly; and through the door she also saw her friend Elza von Hohenberg, who was listening to her cousin's words in smiling repose. Scarcely touching the floor with her feet, she hastened through the room.
"I assure you, cousin," said Elza at this moment, in her clear,
distinct voice, "I believe at times that she is the resuscitated
Maid of Orleans, and that she will perform heroic deeds one day. Oh,
I know my dear beautiful Eliza Wallner, and—"
"Don not speak of me, for I am listening to you," exclaimed Eliza, entering the balcony.