early hour of the day alone permitting
the renewal of the attempt. Leaving their telescope and provisions to
await their return, they boldly scrambled, crept and worked their way
up the scaly side, and finally reached the summit in safety. The view
thence they declared to be magnificent. They too raised a cromlech,
and then a giddy descent followed. However, all three were full of
spirits when Jakob met them, and the Ausserkofers declared that they
were ready henceforth to pilot any other tourist to the summit for a
moderate four or five gulden apiece.

Jakob, as herdsman, had left us at three o'clock to look after the
cattle, we strolling with him as far as a wild old wood which formed a
strange contrast to this Sunday afternoon, as lovely an August day as
ever rejoiced the earth. The near yet unattainable Hoch Gall glittered
coldly white between the stems and branches of gigantic pines, which,
scathed and bleached by lightning and storm, rose in the form of
ruined towers or lay tumbled about in the wildest, dreariest confusion
amongst the rugged enormous rocks, fit emblems of the forest in
the Inferno inhabited by the souls of the lost. Nor was this stern,
forbidding scene enlivened when a melancholy man, carrying the dead
body of a goat across his shoulders, crossed the torrent on a fallen
tree and advanced slowly up the craggy path, followed by a little boy
timidly picking his way behind.

"Ach, Mathies, in God's name, another goat!" said Moidel, lifting
her eyes from a little book, the life of the odd, humane Joseph II.,
which, bought for a few kreuzers at a fair, was worth as many guldens
in the pleasure which it gave her.

The man glanced from under his eyebrows, and answered with a sigh,
"_Gott hat's so woelln, Diendl_" ("God would have it so, maiden"); and
then he added in dialect, "It was a beautiful creature. I missed it in
the reckoning last night. After mass I strode far and wide searching
it, until an hour since I found the body hanging by a hind hoof from a
cleft in the Auvogl Nock. See, it has broken its leg in its struggles.
Ah, poor beast! A solitary, cruel death, _und hast ma g'nomma mei
Ruah_" ("and it has taken my rest from me").

"Poor Mathies! his half dozen goats are all that he has in the world.
He rents one of father's huts, but since he has brought them to the
Olm two or three are already dead." This Moidel explained to us as he
moved dejectedly forward. "Father, however, told him that our