"The lame soldier!--he is mad!" cried an old peasant: "there is none
such in all the Dorf."

"Yes, yes," reiterated Hans; "they flung him away last night, because he
was lame--lame, and a cripple like me: but he told me they were coming;
and I had only time to reach the Kaiser-fells when they gained the top
too."

"Wretched fool!" said the Vorsteher, sternly; "thy mad reading and wild
fancies have ruined the Vaterland. See, there is the signal from Pfunds,
and the whole Tyrol will be up! If thy life were worth anything, thou
shouldst die for this!"

"So shall I!" said Hans, sobbing; "the bullet is yet here." And he
opened his jacket, and displayed to their horrified gaze the whole chest
bathed in blood, and the round, blue mark of a gun-shot wound.

This terrible evidence dispelled every doubt of Hans' story: all its
strange incoherency vanished before that pool of blood, which, welling
forth at every respiration, ran in currents over him. Dreadful, too, as
the tidings were, the better nature of the poor villagers prevailed
over their fears, and in the sorrow the child's fate excited all other
thoughts were lost.

In a sad procession they bore him home to his mother's cottage, the
Vorsteher walking at his side; while Hans, with rapid utterance,
detailed the events which have been told. Broken and unconnected as
parts of his recital were--incomprehensible as the whole history of
the lame soldier appeared--the wounded figure--the blazing fires that
already twinkled on every peak,--were facts too palpable for denial;
and the hearers stared at each other in amazement, not knowing how to
interpret the strange story.

The agonising grief of the bereaved mother, as she beheld the shattered
and bleeding form of her child, broke in upon these doubtings; and while
they endeavoured to offer her their consolation, none thought of the
impending danger.

For a while after he was laid in bed, Hans seemed sunk in a swoon; but,
suddenly awakening, he made an effort to rise. Too weak for this, he
called the chief people of the village around, and said,

"They are coming from the Kaiser-fells; they will be down soon, and burn
the village, if you do not cut away the bridges over the Kletscher, and
close the pass on the Weissen Spitze. Throw out skirmishers along the
mountain side, and guard the footpath from the Pontlatzer Bruecke."

Had the words been the dying orders of a general commanding an army,
they could not have been h