ent, as if she expected a reply; but
there was a breathless silence in the audience. Only a heavy sigh came
from the table where Fritz sat with the Austrian soldier. The yodle
grew louder; then suddenly some one sprang up, not a dozen rods from
the stage, and sang, in a deep, magnificent baritone:

Tell me, Ilka on the hill-top,
While the rivers seaward flow,
Is thy heart as true and loving
As it was a year ago?
Hohli-ohli-ohli-ho!
Hohli-ohli-ohli-ho! Hohli-oh!

Ilka stood for a while as if stunned; her eyes peered in the direction
whence the voice had come; her face lighted up with a sweet, serene
happiness; but the tears streamed down her cheeks as she answered:

Dearest Hansel in the valley,
I will tell you, tell you true,
Yes, my heart is ever loving,
True and loving unto you!
Hohli-ohli-ohli-ho!
Hohli-ohli-ohli-ho! Hohli-oh!

Suddenly she made a leap over the edge of the stage, and in the next
moment the gorgeous Germania lay sobbing on the soldier's bosom. It
made a very touching tableau, and some of the male sceptics among the
audience were inclined to view it in that light. Fritz Hahn, as soon
as the idea was suggested to him, eagerly adopted it, and admitted in
confidence to half a dozen friends, whom he had allowed to suspect the
fair singer's devotion to him, that it was all a pre-arranged effect,
and that he was himself the author of it.

"Germania weeping on the breast of her returning son," he said. "What
could be more appropriate on a day like this?"

The maidens and matrons, however, would listen to no such theory; they
wept openly at the sight of the reunited lovers, and have until this
day maintained that the scene was too spontaneous and genuine to be a
product of Mr. Hahn's inventive genius.

The singing of "Die Wacht am Rhein," although advertised on the
programme, had to be indefinitely postponed, for Germania had suddenly
disappeared, and was nowhere to be found. The Austrian soldier,
however, was seen later in the evening, and some one heard him
inquiring in a fierce tone for the junior Hahn; but the junior Hahn,
probably anticipating some unpleasantness, had retired from the public
gaze.

VI.

Six weeks after this occurrence--it was St. John's day--there was a
merry festival in the village of Mayrhofen. Ilka and Hansel were bride
and groom, and as they returned from church the maidens of the village
walked in th