after Christ."

A curious smile flitted across Dan's face. He tilted his chair back,
and rested his head against the wall.

"There's nothing that takes me so much out of the nineteenth century
after Christ," he said dreamily, "as this little French cafe. It wafts
me back to my early student days, that lie somewhere amid the
enchanted mists of the youth of the world; to the zestful toil of the
studios, to the careless trips in quaint, gray Holland or flaming,
devil-may-care Spain. Ah! what scenes shift and shuffle in the twinkle
of the gas-jet in this opalescent liquid; the hot shimmer of the arena
at the Seville bull-fight, with its swirl of color and movement; the
torchlight procession of pilgrims round the church at Lourdes, with
the one black nun praying by herself in a shadowy corner; the lovely
valley of the Tauba, where the tinkle of the sheep-bells mingles with
the Lutheran hymn blown to the four winds from the old church tower;
wines that were red--sunshine that was warm--mandolines--!" His voice
died away as in exquisite reverie.

"And the East?" I said slily.

A good-natured smile dissipated his delicious dream.

"Ah, yes," he said. "My East was the Tyrol."

"The Tyrol? How do you mean?"

"I see you won't let me out of that story."

"Oh, there's a story, is there?"

"Oh, well, perhaps not what you literary chaps would call a story! No
love-making in it, you know."

"Then it can wait. Tell me about your picture."

"But that's mixed up with the story."

"Didn't I say you had become an anecdotal artist?"

"It's no laughing matter," he said gravely. "You remember when we
parted at Munich, a year ago last spring, you to go on to Vienna and I
to go back to America. Well, I had a sudden fancy to take one last
European trip all by myself, and started south through the Tyrol, with
a pack on my back. The third day out I fell and bruised my thigh
severely, and could not make my little mountain town till moonlight.
And I tell you I was mighty glad when I limped across the bridge over
the rushing river and dropped on the hotel sofa. Next morning I was
stiff as a poker, but I struggled up the four rickety flights to the
local physician, and being assured I only wanted rest, I resolved to
take it with book and pipe and mug in a shady beer-garden on the
river. I had been reading for about an hour when five or six Tyrolese,
old men and young, in their gray and green costumes and their little
hats, trooped in a