reeted the Marches so cordially
that they fully partook his grief in being able to offer them rooms on
the front of the house for two nights only. They reconciled themselves
to the necessity of then turning out for the staff of the King of
Saxony, the more readily because they knew that there was no hope of
better things at any other hotel.

The rooms which they could have for the time were charming, and they
came down to supper in a glazed gallery looking out on the river
picturesque with craft of all fashions: with row-boats, sail-boats, and
little steamers, but mainly with long black barges built up into houses
in the middle, and defended each by a little nervous German dog.
Long rafts of logs weltered in the sunset red which painted the swift
current, and mantled the immeasurable vineyards of the hills around
like the color of their ripening grapes. Directly in face rose a castled
steep, which kept the ranging walls and the bastions and battlements of
the time when such a stronghold could have defended the city from foes
without or from tumult within. The arches of a stately bridge spanned
the river sunsetward, and lifted a succession of colossal figures
against the crimson sky.

"I guess we have been wasting our time, my dear," said March, as they,
turned from this beauty to the question of supper. "I wish we had always
been here!"

Their waiter had put them at a table in a division of the gallery beyond
that which they entered, where some groups of officers were noisily
supping. There was no one in their room but a man whose face was
indistinguishable against the light, and two young girls who glanced at
them with looks at once quelled and defiant, and then after a stare at
the officers in the gallery beyond, whispered together with suppressed
giggling. The man fed on without noticing them, except now and then to
utter a growl that silenced the whispering and giggling for a moment.
The Marches, from no positive evidence of any sense, decided that they
were Americans.

"I don't know that I feel responsible for them as their
fellow-countryman; I should, once," he said.

"It isn't that. It's the worry of trying to make out why they are just
what they are," his wife returned.

The girls drew the man's attention to them and he looked at them for the
first time; then after a sort of hesitation he went on with his supper.
They had only begun theirs when he rose with the two girls, whom Mrs.
March now saw to be of