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 Jörgel 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 Jörgel'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