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rvel! On the darken'd page The verse which thrice she had essayed to read Now shone illuminate, silver-clear, as though God's hand had written it with the flash of stars. MARGARET J. PRESTON. OUR HOME IN THE TYROL. CHAPTER V. We had not gone many yards when we noticed a grand old mansion with gray slopes of roof and stone galleries on arched pillars, and, asking its history, learned that it was a deserted seat of the counts of Arlberg, inhabited now by our guide in quality of forester, and where he had his sister Nanni and brother Hansel to live with him. We kept gradually ascending by the side of deep, turfy meadows, passing many a rich brown wooden chalet, with views ever and anon of our distant village and its stately Hof. Soon we turned into a woody gorge and began climbing the steep saddle of the Scharst; and as we slowly toiled upward in the pleasant summer air, amongst the aromatic fir trees, some verses came into my head out of a little German book, _Jakob Stainer_, by Herr Reif, which we had given as a parting present to Schuster Alois: The fiddle-maker Stainer Goes whistling on his way: A master like to Stainer Is not found every day. He passes lofty beech trees, And old oaks stout and good, Because that which he seeks for Grows not in every wood. But yonder in the sunshine, Above the dark green shade, Behold a hazel-fir tree-- "Joergel," said I, "as you are a forester and know all the trees in the wood, I wish you would show me a hazel-fir tree." "_Wohl gut_," he replied. "Higher up the chances are small but what we pass one. I only pray the gracious Fraeulein to say those verses over again." When I had done so he wished to know whether the fiddle-maker Stainer were a real man or no. "Why, good Joergel," I replied, "he was a real Tyroler like yourself, only you are not likely to have met with him, seeing that he died and was buried some two hundred years ago. Yes, a very real man, who did his work well, but to little profit. He was a peasant lad of Absam, who, probably going to Innspruck whilst the archduke Leopold and his Italian consort, Claudia dei Medici, kept their gay court there, thought Italian violins were harsh and unsatisfactory in tone, and so quietly worked out one of a different make from his own principles; which has since gained for him the name of 'the father of the German violin.' He never expected to earn such a
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