aring it her pleasure, only regretting that we should
have arrived on such a noisy night, for the house was usually very
still. It was her servant who showed the deaf old woman, the one help
of the establishment, how to make our beds.

The aged crone, Nanni--half the female population of the Tyrol are
called either after the Virgin Mary or her traditionary mother, Saint
Ann--gazed in intense astonishment when we screamed to her our simple
requirements. We asked for a light, and she brought us a tallow candle
stuck in a bottle. We asked for a pitcher of water, and she muttered
something about the spout.

Worn-out, weary, very grateful to the good Frau T----, we went to bed,
but not to sleep. That would have been a vain endeavor, for shrill
laughter, loud words and boisterous songs, in which the high tones
of wild female voices rose painfully above the gruff singing of
half-besotted men, penetrated the room, whilst the old rafters groaned
and creaked from the heavy tramp of dancers below. All our belief in
the sobriety and goodness of the Tyrolese seemed swept away, and a
sense of their coarseness and dissipation to have taken its place.
We were in a very pandemonium, which never ceased until the sun was
rising.

Nor was the evil mitigated when we learned from the landlord's sister
a few hours later that the guests were only returning from Scapulary
Sunday in Reischach. Most of them belonged to the next village, and
had rested here on their way. After prayers it was right to sing and
dance: why should they not? And, look you, when wine got into people's
head, what could she do? She could not turn them out.

"Yes, but the master, her brother, might."

She shook her head ominously, and hurried into the kitchen--a smoky
old kitchen, but quaint from the little windows with the old ox-eyed
panes of thick glass.

It impressed itself forcibly on our minds that Seppl had compromised
himself on the preceding night. He was to be seen nowhere; only the
bustling sister Moidel, who had already swept out and cleaned the
scene of the late dissipation, and was now busy over our coffee, and
the old Nanni, who with bare feet and wet petticoats intimated that
she had scrubbed the female bath-room and placed two freshly scoured
tubs there at our disposition.

Both women meant kindly by us: the pleasant fir woods and the fresh
air seemed to whisper to us to stay. So we gave up the plan which we
had resolutely made in the night of lea