words of either language, I could tell that London was
mentioned between them more than once, while I waited on the table.
Besides, it is painted in black letters on their traveling boxes."

"You did not expect their arrival?"

"Oh, no, sir. Had they written beforehand, at this season, when I
generally expect to be honored by your presence, I should have
answered that the house was full--or closed--or any excuse which
occurred to me, to keep strangers away. But none have ever before
arrived so late in the year, and I was taken all unawares when my son
Alois drove them up last night. He did not know you had arrived, as
the papers spoke so positively of your visit to the Baths; and I could
not send travelers away; you have bidden me not to do so, once they
are in the house. But these ladies are here but for a day or two more,
on their way to Kronburg for a visit; and I thought--"

"You did quite right, Frau Yorvan. Has my messenger come up with
letters?"

"Yes, your--yes, sir. Just now also a telegram was brought by another
messenger, who came and left in a great hurry."

The chamois hunter shrugged his shoulders, and sighed an impatient
sigh. "It's too much to expect that I should be left in peace for a
single day, even here," he muttered, as he went toward the stairs.

To reach Frau Yorvan's best sitting-room (selfishly occupied,
according to one opinion, by four men absent all day on a mountain),
he was obliged to pass by a door through which issued unusual sounds.
So unusual were they, that the Emperor paused.

Some one was striking the preliminary chords of a volkslied on his
favorite instrument, a Rhaetian variation of the zither. As he
lingered, listening, a voice began to sing--ah, but a voice!

Softly seductive it was as the cooing of a dove in the spring, to its
mate; pure as the purling of a brook among meadow flowers; rich as the
deep notes of a nightingale in his passion for the moon. And for the
song, it was the heart-breaking cry of a young Rhaetian peasant who,
lying near death in a strange land, longs for one ray of sunrise light
on the bare mountain tops of the homeland, more earnestly than for his
first sight of an unknown Heaven.

The man outside the door did not move until the voice was still. He
knew well, though he could not see, who the singer had been. It was
impossible for the plump lady at the window, or the thin lady with the
glasses, to own a voice like that. It was the girl's. She