me of
the German suitor for his daughter's hand--the carpenter, Johann
Spellmann, to whose workshop he requested to be taken. Johann, being one
of the odd Germans in the valley, was well known: he was carving wood
astride a stool, and stopped his whistling to listen to the soldiers, who
took the first word out of Jacopo's mouth, and were convinced, by
Johann's droop of the chin, that the tale had some truth in it; and more
when Johann yelled at the Valtelline innkeeper to know why, then, he had
come to him, if he was prepared to play him false. One of the soldiers
said bluntly, that as Angelo's appearance answered to the portrait of a
man for whom they were on the lookout, they would, if their countryman
liked, take him and give him a dose of marching and imprisonment.

'Ach! that won't make my little Rosetta love me better,' cried Johann,
who commenced taking up a string of reproaches against women, and pitched
his carving-blade and tools abroad in the wood-dust.

'Well, now, it 's queer you don't want to fight this lad,' said Jacopo;
'he's come to square it with you that way, if you think best.'

Johann spared a remark between his vehement imprecations against the sex
to say that he was ready to fight; but his idea of vengeance was directed
upon the abstract conception of a faithless womankind. Angelo, by reason
of his detestation of Germans, temporarily threw himself into the part he
was playing to the extent of despising him. Johann admitted to Jacopo
that intervals of six months' duration in a courtship were wide jumps for
Love to take.

'Yes; amor! amor!' he exclaimed with extreme dejection; 'I could wait.
Well! since you've brought the young man, we'll have it out.'

He stepped before Angelo with bare fists. Jacopo had to interpose. The
soldiers backed Johann, who now said to Angelo, 'Since you've come for
it, we'll have it out.'

Jacopo had great difficulty in bringing him to see that it was a matter
to talk over. Johann swore he would not talk about it, and was ready to
fight a dozen Italians, man up man down.

'Bare-fisted?' screamed Jacopo.

'Hey! the old way! Give him knuckles, and break his back, my boy!' cried
the soldiers; 'none of their steel this side of the mountain.'

Johann waited for Angelo to lift his hands; and to instigate his
reluctant adversary, thumped his chest; but Angelo did not move. The
soldiers roared.

'If she has you, she shall have a dolly,' said Johann, now heated with
th