ne Church, and the new German-Evangelical Church.

But Florie Hausbaum's youth saw nothing of the future German
death-struggle there in the wooded valley of the Drau. Every one was
still singing the dear old songs, and Florian sang them best of all. He
learned nothing, he never drudged, he merely sang, as forgetful of toil
as the cricket of the south. And when it was time to go to work,
the good-for-nothing did not care to earn his bread in the cool
spruce-grown ravine with its saw-mills; his cheery, worthless soul felt
drawn to the open, sunny country which reaches up a good stretch along
the Drau westward of Marburg, until Bachern and Possruck bite together
their bristly jaws at the river, making the region wild, precipitous,
and rugged.

In sunny Marburg the wine flows down all the hills in streams to this
very day. But at that time, more than forty years ago, there were three
times as many vineyards, extending clear beyond Maria-Rast and
Zellnitz, and Florian Hausbaum became a wine-carter and made trips into
Carinthia.

And so he drove his nodding horses uphill and downhill through his
native village across the border; and in Drauburg, in Lavamuend, in
Voelkermarkt, and Klagenfurt, all the inn-keepers waited for him as the
bringer of joy. And he was the lad for that. He sang all the way along
the windblown road, and from all the windows men and maidens nodded to
him.

[Illustration: RUDOLF HANS BARTSCH]

Between Voelkermarkt and Lavamuend the liverymen had grown rich on the
relaying which the excellent humps of the road brought them, and there
they also had open purses and open hearts for wine. Hence at the two
ends of his route, where the road did its maddest tricks, Florie was
best loved and known: if for no other reason, because he had so much
time on account of all the "getting his breath," staying over night,
feeding, and changing horses.

He too liked best to dwell in that up-and-down world. For he had a girl
in Drauburg, and one in Lavamuend; one at St. Martin and another at Eis
close by (dangerous and burdensome sweethearting), one at Lippitzbach,
one in Voelkermarkt, and a warm terminal station at Klagenfurt. These
seven dear yearning creatures were just enough for him, but he was also
just enough for them; for he never skipped one of them when he went his
rounds.

He was a handsome fellow, of that becoming, jolly, light-blond type of
Old Styria which is now beginning to grow rare among the men in