ew stations farther down the line to quaint old
Rattenberg, a small town on the banks of the swift Inn. Not an hour from
this place the scantily-inhabited Brandenberg valley opens on the broad
and sunny Innthal. The former is merely a mountain-gorge. Far up in its
recesses stands a small cottage belonging to the keeper of a wood-drift,
and in close proximity to this solitary habitation is a second very wild
and wellnigh inaccessible ravine, the scene of the coming adventure.

Having passed the night in the modest little inn at Rattenberg, Hansel
and I set off next morning long before sunrise on our eight hours' tramp
to the wood-drift by a path which was in most places of just sufficient
breadth to allow of one person passing at a time. Few of my
fellow-travelers of the day before would have recognized me in the
costume I had donned for the occasion--an old and much-patched coat,
short leathern trousers, as worn and torn as the poorest woodcutter's,
and a ten-seasoned hat which had been originally green, then brown, and
had now become gray. My face and knees were still bronzed from the
exposure attendant on a long course of Alpine climbing the year before.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF TOMERL'S COTTAGE.]

The keeper of the wood-drift was an old acquaintance of mine, whose
qualities as a keen sportsman had shone forth when four or five years
previously I had quartered myself for a month in his secluded
neighborhood, spending the day, and frequently also the night, on the
peaks and passes surrounding his cottage. To the buxom Moidel, his
pretty young wife, I was also no stranger, and her smile and blush
assured me that she still remembered the time when, reigning supreme
over her father's cattle on a neighboring alp, she had administered to
the wants of the young sportsman seeking a night's lodging in the
lonesome chalet. Many a merry evening had I spent in the low,
oak-paneled "general room" of Tomerl's cottage when he was still a gay
young bachelor, and no change had since been made in the aspect of the
apartment. In one corner stood the huge pile of pottery used for heating
the room, and round it were still fixed the rows of wooden laths by
means of which I had so frequently dried my soaking apparel. Running the
whole length of the room was a broad bench, in front of which were
placed two strong tables; and at one of these were seated, at our
entrance, two woodcutters, who had heard of the intended expedition and
come