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Dear readers,

The Vulture Maiden (Die Geier-Wally) by Wilhelmine von Hillern with translators C. Bell and E. F. Poynter was published in 1875.

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K. C. Lee
Story Collector
March 19, 2012

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TO BERTHOLD AUERBACH, Esq.

Permit me to offer you the fruit that I have gathered in a field peculiarly your own. Under your powerful hand the difficult ground of German peasant-life has yielded up its wealth of poetry; and if others, with myself, now reap in the field tilled by you, it is our first duty to think of you with gratitude, and to render to you the honour that is rightly yours.

Freiburg in Brisgau, April 1875.

The Author.

A TALE OF THE TYROLESE ALPS

Far down in the depths of the Oetz valley, a traveller was passing. On the eagle heights of the giddy precipice above him, stood a maiden's form, no bigger than an Alpine rose when seen from below, yet sharply defined against the clear blue sky, the gleaming ice-peaks of the Ferner. There she stood firm and tranquil, though the mountain gusts tore and snatched at her, and looked without dizziness down into the depths where the Ache rushed roaring through the ravine, and a sunbeam slanting across its fine spray-mist painted glimmering rainbows on the rocky wall. To her, also, the traveller and his guide appeared minutely small as they crossed the narrow bridge, which thrown high over the Ache, looked from above like a mere straw. She could not hear what the two were saying, for out of those depths no sound could reach her but the thundering roar of the waters. She could not see that the guide, a trimly-attired chamois-hunter, raised his arm threateningly, and pointing her out to the stranger said: "That is certainly the Vulture-maiden standing up yonder; no other maid would trust herself on that narrow point, so near the edge of the precipice. See, one would think that the wind must blow her over, but she always does just the contrary to what other reasonable Christian folk do."

Now they entered a pine-forest, dark, damp, and cold. Once more the guide paused, and sent a falcon-glance upwards to where the girl stood, and the little village spread itself out smilingly on the narrow mountain plateau in the full glow of the morning sun, which as yet could hardly steal a sidelong ray into the close, grave-like twilight of the gorge. "Thou needn't look so defiant, there's a way up as well as down," he muttered, and disappeared with the stranger. As though in scorn of the threat, the girl sent up a halloo, so shrilly repeated from every side, that a flying echo reached even the silent depth of the fir-wood with a ghostly ring, like the challenging cry of the chamois-hunter's enemy, the fairy of the Oetz valley.

"Ay, thou may'st scream; I'll soon give it back to thee," he threatened again; and throwing himself stiffly back, and supporting his neck with both hands, he pealed forth, clear and shrill as a post-horn, a cry of mocking and defiance up the mountain-side.

"She hears that, maybe?"

"Why do you call the girl up there the Vulture-maiden?" asked the stranger down in the moist, dim, rustling forest.

"Because, Sir, when she was only a child she look a vulture's nest, and fought the old bird," said the Tyrolese. "She is the strongest and handsomest girl in all the Tyrol, and terribly rich, and the lads let her drive them off, so that it's a shame to see. There's not one of them sharp enough to master her. She is as shy as a wild cat, and so strong that the boys declare no one can conquer her: if one of them comes too near, she knocks him down. Well, if ever I went up there after her, I'd conquer her, or I'd tear the chamois-tuft and feather from my hat with my own hands."

"Why have you not already tried your luck with her, if she is so rich and so handsome?" asked the traveller.

"Well, you see, I don't care for girls like that--girls that are half boys. It's true, she can't help herself. The old man--Stromminger is his name--is a regular wicked old fellow. In his time he was the best wrestler and fighter in the mountains, and it sticks to him still. He has often beaten the girl cruelly and brought her up like a boy. She has no mother, and never had one, for she was such a big strong child that her mother could scarcely bring her into the world, and died of it. That's how it is the girl has grown up so wild and masterful."--This was what the Tyrolese down in the ravine related to the stranger, and he had not deceived himself. The maiden who stood out yonder above the precipice was Wallburga Stromminger, daughter of the powerful "chief-peasant," also called the Vulture-maiden; and he had spoken truly, she deserved this name. Her courage and strength were boundless as though eagle's wings had borne her, her spirit rugged and inaccessible as the jagged peaks where the eagles build their nests, and where the clouds of heaven are rent asunder.

Wherever anything dangerous was to be done, there from her childhood upwards, was Wally to be found, putting the lads to shame. As a child even she was wild and impetuous as her father's young bull, which she had known how to subdue. When she was scarcely fourteen years old, a peasant had descried on a rugged precipice a golden vulture's nest with one young one, but no one in the village dared venture to seize it. Then the head-peasant, scoffing at the valiant youth of the place, declared he would make his Wallburga do it. And sure enough Wally was ready for the deed, to the horror of the women and the vexation of the lads. "It is a tempting of Providence," said the men. But Stromminger must have his jest; all the world must learn by experience that the race of Stromminger down to the children's children might seek its match in vain.

"You shall see that a Stromminger girl is worth ten of you lads," he said laughing to the peasants, who streamed together to witness the incredible feat. Many grieved for the beautiful and stately young life that might perhaps fall a sacrifice to the father's boasting; still, everyone wished to see. As the precipice to which the nest clung was almost perpendicular, and no human foot could tread it, a rope was fastened round Wally's waist. Four men, foremost amongst whom was her father, held it, but it was horrible to the lookers-on to see the courageous child, armed only with a knife, walk boldly to the edge of the plateau, and with a vigorous spring let herself down into the abyss. If the knot of the rope should give way, if the vulture should tear her in pieces, if in her descent she should dash out her brains against some unnoticed crag? It was a God-forsaken act of Stromminger's so to risk the life of his own child. Meanwhile Wally sailed fearlessly through the air, till midway down the precipice she exultingly greeted the young vulture, who ruffled his downy feathers, and piping, gnawed with his shapeless beak at his strange visitor. Hardly pausing to consider, she seized the bird which now raised a lamentable cry with her left hand and tucked it under her arm. There was a rushing sound in the air, and in the same instant a dark shadow came over her, a roaring filled her ears, and a storm of blows fell like hail upon her head. Her one thought was "The eyes--save the eyes," and pressing her face closely against the rock, she hit blindly with the knife in her right hand at the raging bird that threw itself upon her with its sharp beak, its claws and wings. Meanwhile the men above hastily drew in the rope. Still for a time during the ascent, the battle in the air continued; then suddenly the vulture gave way, and plunged into the abyss--Wally's knife must have wounded it. Wally however came up bleeding, her face torn by the rocks, and holding in her arms the young bird, that at no price would she have relinquished.

"But, Wally," cried the assembled people, "why didn't thou let the young one go, then the vulture would have loosed its hold." "Oh," she said simply, "the poor thing can't fly yet, and if I had let him go, he'd have fallen down the precipice and been killed."

This was the first and only time in her whole life that her father gave her a kiss; not because he was touched by Wally's noble compassion for the helpless creature, but because she had performed an heroic action that would reflect honour on the illustrious race of Stromminger.

Such was the maiden who stood out now on the projecting rock, where the foot could hardly find room to rest, and dreamily looked down into the ravine over which she hung; for often, with all her impetuosity, a strange stillness would come over her, and she would gaze sadly before her, as though she saw something for which she longed, and which she yet might not attain. It was an image that always remained the same, whether she saw it in the grey morning twilight, or in the golden glow of noon, in the evening red, or in the pale moonlight, and for a year it had followed her wherever she went or stood, below in the valley, or above on the mountain. And when, as now, she was out and alone, and her large chamois-eyes, at once wild and shy, wandered across to the white-gleaming glaciers, or down into the shadow-filled gorge where the Ache thundered on its way, still she sought him whom the image resembled; and when now and then a traveller, minutely small in the distance, glided past below, she thought, "That may be he," and a strange joy came to her in the fancy that she had seen him, even though she could distinguish nothing but a human form, no bigger than a moving image in a peep-show. And now as those two wayfarers passed along, of whom the one enquired about her, and the other threatened her, she thought again, "It may be he." Her bosom seemed too tight for her beating heart, her lips parted, and like a lark set free, her joy soared up in a pealing song. And as the hunter in the wood below heard its dying echo, so an echo of his reply reached her, and she listened with an intoxicated ear--it might be his voice! and a blushing reflection of her warm rush of feeling spread itself over the wild, defiant face. She could not hear that the song was a song of scorn and defiance. Had she known it, she would have clenched her sinewy fist, she would have tried the strength of her arm, and over her face dark shadows would have passed, till it grew pale as the glaciers after sunset. But now she sat down on the stone that supported her, and swinging her feet as they hung over the abyss, she rested her graceful head on her hands, and gave herself up to dreaming over again all the strange things that had happened that first time that she ever saw him.

Unbending

This was the short story of love and sorrow, whose pain even now awoke again in the young heart as she looked down into the valley, thinking to see Joseph who so often passed along it, and never found the way up to her. She wiped her forehead, for the sun was beginning to burn, and she had already mowed the whole meadow-land from the house up to the "Sonnenplatte;" so the point on which she stood was called, because rising high above all around, it ever caught the earliest rays of the morning sun. From it the village took its name.

"Wally, Wally," some one now called from behind her, "come to thy father, he's something to say to thee," and old Luckard came towards her from the house. Her father had sent for her? What could he want? Never since their adventure in Sölden had he spoken with her excepting of what concerned the day's work. Wavering between fear and reluctance she rose and followed the old woman.

"What does he want?" she asked.

"Great news," said Luckard, "look there!"

Wally looked, and saw her father standing before the house, and with him a young peasant of the place named Vincenz, with a big nosegay in his button hole. He was a dark, robust fellow whom Wally had known from her childhood as a reserved and stubborn man. He had never bestowed a kindly word on anyone but Wally, to whom from her school-days upwards he had shown a special goodwill. A few months previously both his parents had died within a short time of each other; now he was independent, and next to Stromminger the richest peasant in the country side. The blood stood still in Wally's veins, for she already knew what was coming.

"Vincenz wants to marry thee," said her father; "I've said 'yes,' and next month we'll have the wedding." Having thus spoken he turned on his heel and went into the house as if there were nothing more to be said.

Wally stood silent for a moment as though thunderstruck; she must collect herself, she must consider what was to be done. Vincenz meanwhile confidently stepped up to her with the intention of putting his arm round her waist. But she sprang back with a cry of terror, and now she knew well enough what it was she had to do.

"Vincenz," she said, trembling with misery, "I beg of thee to go home. I can never be thy wife--never. Thou wouldn't have my father force me to it. I tell thee once for all I cannot love thee."

A look brief as lightning flashed across Vincenz's face; he bit his lips, and his black eyes were fixed with passionate eagerness on Wally. "So thou doesn't love me? But I love thee, and I'll lay my life on it that I'll have thee too. I've got thy father's consent and I'll never give it back, and I've a notion thou'll come to change thy mind yet if thy father wills it."

"Vincenz," said Wally, "if thou'd been wise thou'd not have spoken like that, for thou'd have known I'll never have thee now. What I will not do, none can force me to do--that thou may know once for all. And now go home, Vincenz; we've nothing more to say to each other," and she turned short away from him and went into the house.

"Oh, thou!" Vincenz called out after her in angry pain, clenching his fist. Then he checked himself. "Well," he murmured between his teeth, "I can wait--and I will wait."

Wally went straight to her father. He was sitting all bent together over his accounts and turned round slowly as she entered. "What is it?" he said.

The sun shone through the low window and threw its full beams on Wally, so that she stood as though wrapped in glory before her father. Even he was amazed at the beauty of his child as she stood before him at that moment.

"Father," she began quietly, "I only wanted to tell you that I will not marry Vincenz."

"Indeed!" cried Stromminger, starting up. "Is that it? Thou won't marry him?"

"No, father, I don't like him."

"Indeed! and did I ask thee if thou liked him?"

"No, I tell it you plainly, unasked."

"And I tell thee too unasked that in four weeks thou'll marry Vincenz whether thou likes him or not. I've given him my word, and Stromminger never takes his word back. Now get thee gone."

"No, father," said the girl, "things can't be settled in that way. I'm no head of cattle to let myself be sold or promised as the master pleases. It seems to me I also have a word to say when it has to do with my marriage."

"No, that thou hasn't, for a child belongs to her father as much as a calf or a heifer, and must do what its father orders."

"Who says that, father?"

"Who says so? It's said in the Bible," and an ominous flush rose on Stromminger's face.

"It says in the Bible that we are to honour and love our parents, but not that we are to marry a man when it goes against us merely because our father orders it. See, father, if it could do you any good for me to marry Vincenz, if it could save you from death or from misery--I'd do it willingly, and even if I were to break my heart over it. But you're a rich man that need ask nothing of anyone; it must be all one to you whom I marry; and you give me to Vincenz out of pure spite, that I may not marry Joseph, whom I love, and who would certainly have loved me if he could have got to know me; and it's cruel of you, father, and it says nowhere in the Bible that a child should put up with that."

"Thou--thou pert thing, I'll send thee to the priest; he'll teach thee what the Bible says."

"It will be no good, father; and if you sent me to ten priests, and if they all ten told me that I must obey you in this, I yet wouldn't do it."

"And I tell thee thou shall do it so sure as my name is Stromminger. Thou shall do it, or I'll drive thee out of house and home and disinherit thee."

"That you can do, father, I'm strong enough to earn my own bread. Yes, father, give everything to Vincenz--only not me."

"Foolish nonsense," said Stromminger perplexed. "Shall people say of me that Stromminger cannot even master his own child? Thou shall marry Vincenz; if I have to thrash thee into church, thou shall."

"And even if you thrashed me into church I'd still say no, at the altar. You may strike me dead, but you cannot thrash that 'Yes' out of me; and even if you could, sooner would I fling myself down from the cliff, than I'd go home with a man I've no love for."

"Now listen," cried Stromminger; his broad forehead was cleft as it were, with a swelling blue vein that ran across it, his whole face was suffused, his eyes bloodshot. "Now listen, thou'd better not drive me mad. Thou's already had enough of my cudgel; now give in, or between us things will come to a bad end!"

"Things came to a bad end between us a year ago, father. For when you beat me so that time on my confirmation day, then I felt all was at an end between us. And see, father, since then it's been all one to me whether you are bad to me or good, whether you treat me well or strike me dead--it's all one to me. I have no heart left for you. You're no dearer to me than the Similaun-, or Vernagt-, or Murzoll-glacier."

A stifled cry of rage broke from Stromminger. Half-stupified he had listened to the girl's words, but now, incapable of speech, he sprang upon her, seized her by the waist, swung her from the ground high over his head, and shook her till his own breath failed; then flinging her to the ground he set his heavy heel studded with nails upon her breast. "Unsay what thou has said," he gasped, "or I'll crush thee like a worm."

"Do it," said the girl, her eyes fixed steadily on her father. She breathed hard, for her father's foot weighed on her like lead, but she did not stir; not so much as an eyelash trembled.

Stromminger's power was broken. He had threatened what he could not perform, for at the thought of crushing the fair and innocent breast of his child his anger faded, he grew suddenly calm. He was conquered. Almost staggering he drew back his foot.

"Nay, I'll not end my days in a prison," he said gloomily, and sank exhausted into his chair.

Wally got up, she was pale as death, her eyes were tearless, lustreless, like a stone. She waited passively for what might come next. Stromminger sat for a minute in bitter reflection, then he spoke in hoarse tones.

"I cannot kill thee, but since Similaun and Murzoll are dear to thee as thy father, by Similaun and Murzoll thou may remain for the future, thou may belong to them. Thou shall never more stretch thy feet under my board. Thou shall go and mind the cattle up on the Hochjoch, till thou's found out it's better to be in Vincenz's warm home, than in the snow drift of the glacier. Tie up thy bundle, for I'll see no more of thee. Go up early tomorrow, I'll let the Schnalser people know, and send the cattle after thee next week by the boy. Take bread and cheese enough to last till the beasts come; Klettenmaier will guide thee up there. Now take thyself off. These are my last words and by these I'll stand."

"It is well, father," said Wally softly; she bowed her head, and quitted her father's room.

Murzoll's Child

For five hours did Wally continue to ascend; now over whole fields of fragrant Alpine plants, now sinking ankle-deep in snow-fields, or crossing broad moraines. Last night's sleeplessness lay heavily upon her limbs, and she almost despaired of ever reaching the end of her journey. Her hands and feet trembled, for to struggle for life during five hours against so steep an ascent is hard work. Large drops stood on Wally's brow, when suddenly as by a magic stroke she stood before a dense wall of cloud. She had turned an angle of the rock which hid the sun, and now thick mists enveloped her and an icy breath dried the sweat from her forehead. Her foot slipped at every step, for the ground was like glass; she stood upon ice, she had stepped upon the Murzoll glacier, the highest ridge of the serrated Hochjoch. Nothing grew here but starveling mountain-grass between clefts in the snow; around were the blue gleaming ice-crevasses, the virgin snow-flats, untrodden this year by foot of man or beast. Mid-winter! Wally shuddered at its icy touch. This was the forecourt to Murzoll's ice-palace, of which so many tales are told in the Oetz valley, where the "phantom maidens" dwell, of whom old Luckard had related many a story to the little Wally in the long winter evenings when the snowstorms howled round the house. The air that blew on her now from those desolate walls of ice, those caves and dungeons, came to her with a ghostly thrill like a shudder out of her childhood, as though in very truth there dwelt the dark spirit of the glacier, with whom Luckard had so often frightened her to bed when she had been naughty.

Silently she walked on. At last her deaf guide halted by a low cabin built of stone, with a wide overhanging roof, a strong door of rough wood, and little slits instead of windows. Within were a couple of blackened stones for a hearth, and a bed of old rotten straw. This was the hut of the Schnalser herdsman, who had formerly found shelter here, and here Wally was now to dwell. She did not change countenance however at the sight of the comfortless hut; it was neither more nor less than a bad mountain cabin, there were many such, and she was used to hard living. It was not such things as these that could quench her resolute spirit; but she was exhausted to faintness; since yesterday she had gone through more than even her unusual strength could bear. Mechanically she helped the deaf man, whom Luckard had loaded with a number of good things for Wally, to arrange a better bed, and to make the desolate hut somewhat more habitable. Mechanically she eat with him some of the food Luckard had sent. The man saw that she was pale, and said compassionately, "There, now thou's eaten something, lie down a while and sleep. Thou needs it. I'll fetch thee up some wood meanwhile to last thee a few days, then I must go back, or I shall never be home by daylight, and thy father strictly ordered me to get back to-day." He shook up a good bed of straw that he had brought with him; she sank down on it with half closed eyes and held out her hand gratefully.

"I'll not wake thee," he said. "In case thou'rt still asleep when I go, I'll say goodbye to thee now. Take care of thyself and don't be frightened. I'm sorry for thee all alone up here; but, why didn't thou obey thy father?"

Wally heard the last words as in a dream. The deaf man left the cabin, shaking his head compassionately; the girl was already sound asleep.

Her breast heaved painfully, for even in her sleep her past sorrow weighed on her like a mountain. And she dreamed of her father; he was dragging her into church by her hair, and she thought that if only she had a knife so that she might cut off her hair she would be free. Then suddenly Joseph stood by her, and with one stroke he cut through the long plait, so that it remained in her father's hand; and while Joseph was struggling with her father she ran out and climbed to the height of the Sonnenplatte to throw herself into the torrent. But a terror came over her, and she hesitated; then again she heard her father close behind her, and urged by despair she made the leap. She fell and fell, but could never reach the bottom, and suddenly she felt as if she were met from below by a gust of wind that supported and carried her upwards. So she floated, struggling always to keep the balance she continually feared to lose, up to the very summit of Murzoll. But she could gain no footing on the rock; a terrible whirlwind had seized her, and she strove in vain to cling to the bare precipice, like a ship that cannot reach the land. Black storm-clouds gathered together around her, through which Murzoll's snowy summit rose in ghostly whiteness. Fiery snakes shot through the black mass, the mountains quaked beneath a crashing thunder-clap, and flung whirling backwards and forwards between these mighty powers, a terror came over her that the tempest might cast her head downwards into the abyss. She bowed and turned, like a little ship on the swaying waves of the wind, striving only to keep her head uppermost. But suddenly her feet were raised and she felt that the weight of her head must carry her down, through the storm and thunder and the black darkness of the clouds; she would have cried for help, but could utter no sound--terror choked her voice. Then all at once she felt herself supported, she was on firm ground, she lay in a mountain cleft, as it seemed; but no, it was no cleft, they were giant arms of stone that embraced her, and behold, out of the brightening clouds a mighty face of stone bent over her: it was the hoary countenance of Murzoll. His hair was of snow-covered fir trees, his eyes were ice, his beard was of moss and his eyebrows of edelweiss; on his brow was set as a diadem the crescent moon which shed its mild radiance over the white face; and the icy eyes shone with a ghostly light in its bluish rays. He gazed at the maiden with these cold eyes, piercing but unfathomable, and beneath their glance the drops of agony on her brow and the tears on her cheeks froze and fell down with a faint ringing sound like crystal beads. He pressed his stony lips to hers, and under the long kiss his mouth grew warm and dewy and blossomed with Alpine roses, and when Wally looked up at him again glacier streams flowed from the icy eyes down upon his mossy beard. The black clouds had cleared away and the breath of spring stirred the night.

Now Murzoll moved his lips, and his voice sounded like the dull roll of a distant avalanche. "Thy father has banished thee," he said, "I will receive thee as my child, for a heart of cold stone may more easily be moved than the hardened heart of man. Thou pleasest me, thou art one of mine; there is strength in thy nature as the rocks are strong. Wilt thou be my child?"

"I will," said Wally, and clung to the stony heart of her new father.

"Then stay with me and go no more among men; among them there is strife, with me there is peace."

"But Joseph, whom I love," said Wally, "shall I never have him?"

"Let him be," replied the mountain, "thou mayest not love him; he is a chamois hunter, and to such as he my daughters have sworn destruction. Come, I will take thee to them, that they may deaden thy heart, else thou canst not live in our eternal peace." And he carried her through wide halls and endless galleries of ice till they came to a vast hall that was transparent as though of crystal; the rays of the sun shone through and broke into millions of coloured sparks, and through the walls heaven and earth gleamed in varied and mingled splendour. There white maiden-forms, glistening like snow, with waving veils of mist, were playing with a herd of chamois, and it was charming to see them sporting with the swift-footed animals, catching them and chasing them here and there. These were Murzoll's daughters, the "phantom maidens" of the Oetz valley. They crowded inquisitively round Wally as Murzoll set her down on the slippery glass of the floor. They were as beautiful as angels, and had faces like milk and blood; but as Wally observed them more closely, a slight shudder ran through her, for she saw that they had all eyes of ice, like their father, and that the rosy hue of their cheeks and lips was not that of blood, but the sap of the Alpine rose, and they were as cold as frozen snow.

"Will you receive this maiden?" asked Murzoll. "I like her, she is strong and firm as the rock, she shall be your sister."

"She is fair," said the maidens; "she has eyes like the chamois. But she has warm blood, and she loves a hunter--we know!"

"Lay your hands on her heart that she may be frozen with all her love, and live in bliss with you," said Murzoll.

The damsels hastened to her--it was like the breath of a snow storm--and laid their cold white hands on her heart; already she felt it shrink and throb more slowly. But she kept off the maidens with both arms and cried, "No, no, leave me. I want none of your bliss, I want only Joseph."

"If thou goest back amongst men we will dash Joseph to pieces, and throw thee and him into the abyss," threatened the phantom maidens; "for no one may live among men who has seen us."

"Throw me into the abyss, but leave me my heart to love. All, anything I will bear, but I will not part from my love," and with the strength of despair Wally seized one of the damsels round the waist and wrestled with her; and behold! the tender form was shattered in her arms, and she held in her hand only dripping snow. The daylight was extinguished; suddenly all was veiled in grey twilight. She stood on the bare rock; a sharp wind drove needles of ice in her face, and instead of the "phantom maidens" white mists whirled round her in a wild dance. High above, Murzoll's pale countenance looked darkly down upon her through the clouds, and his voice of thunder said,

"Dost thou rebel against Men and Gods?--Heaven and earth will be thy enemies. Woe is thee!" And all had vanished--Wally awoke. The chill evening wind whistled through the window-slits on the girl. She rubbed her eyes; her heart still trembled at the weird dream; she thought long before she knew where she was, or could separate the images of her dream from the reality; an inexplicable sense of horror remained in her mind and mingled itself with all she saw. She rose from her bed and involuntarily called loudly for the servant. She went out of the hut to seek him; it was a clear and beautiful evening; the mists were scattered, but the sun was low and the breeze blew keenly from the heights. Wally hastened hither and thither in search of the deaf man; she found only the pile of firewood that he had made for her. Then it occurred to her that he had said he would go away while she was asleep. It was so; he had not waited for her awakening. It was not right of him to abandon her while she slept. To wake thus and find no one; it was hard! All was so silent around her, so deserted and empty. It must be six o'clock and milking time. The confiding cattle would look at the stable door, where no mistress would come in with bread and salt for them--she was sitting up here with her hands in her lap, and around her far and wide stirred no living thing. Oh! the deathly stillness and inaction--she knew not how she felt--alone, so terribly alone! She climbed higher still, on to an overhanging point, that she might look down upon the wide world. A vast unknown picture was spread before her eyes in the purple of the setting sun. There lay before her to the very verge of the horizon the great range of the Tyrol, in the distance growing fainter and fainter, close at hand crushing and overpowering her with their great silent sublimity; between them, like children in their father's arms, slept the blooming valleys. A nameless longing seized her for the beloved fields of home, that even now lay reposing peacefully before her eyes in the evening shadows. The sun had set, and on the horizon lay violet clouds shot with streaks of ruddy gold; little by little, the pale full moon began to shine, contesting the victory with the last flickering gleams of day. Down in the valleys it was already night; here and there, scarcely visible in the distance, a light glimmered from afar--a star of earth. Now they were going to rest, her weary companions down yonder. With them all was well; a friendly roof was above their heads; they rested securely in the bosom of a sheltered home--perhaps, already half-asleep, they still listened behind the coloured curtain of the little window to the beloved one's song--only she was alone, thrust forth and banished, exposed defenceless to every terror, her only shelter the inhospitable hut, where the wind whistled through the empty window-slits. "Father, father, how could thou have the heart to do it?" she cried aloud, but near and far nothing answered but the rush of the night-wind. Higher and higher rose the moon, the streaks of light in the west lost their gold, and glimmered only a pale yellow in the darkness of the evening sky. The outlines of the mountains seemed to shift and grow larger in the twilight; threatening, overpowering, her nearest neighbour, the mighty Similaun, looked down upon her. All the giant peaks around seemed to stare at her frowningly, because she had dared to spy out their nightly aspect. It was as though only since Wally's arrival, they had all become so still and quiet--as a company that confers of private affairs is suddenly dumb when a stranger enters. There she stood, the helpless human form, so lonely in the midst of this silent, motionless world of ice, so inaccessibly high above all living things, so strange in the weird company of clouds and glaciers, in the terrible, mysterious silence. "Now art thou all alone in the world!" cried an inner voice, and an unspeakable anguish, the anguish of the forsaken ones, swept over her. It seemed to her all at once as though she were doomed to go on, for ever lost, through vast immeasurable space, and as though seeking help she clung to the steep wall of rock, pressing her wildly-beating heart against the cold stone.

What passed within her in that hour, she herself did not know, but it seemed as though the stone against which she pressed her young, warm, trembling heart, had exercised some mysterious power over her, for that hour left her hard and rough as if she had been in very truth Murzoll's child.

A Day At Home

As Wally went back across the bridge, she turned giddy; she felt now for the first time how the blood had mounted to her head. The milder air down here that felt heavy and oppressive after the clear, icy atmosphere of the Ferner, the bird that clung tightly to her shoulder as her rapid movements made his hold insecure--all seemed painful, almost unbearable. At last she came to the village where her home stood, but to reach it she was obliged to go the whole length of the street, to the very last house. All the villagers, who had just finished their dinners, put their heads out of window and pointed at her with their fingers. "See, there goes the Vulture-maiden. Hast ventured down at last, then? And thou's brought the vulture back with thee, thou and he were not frozen together, then? Thy father left thee to shiver up there long enough!" "Let's see, now, how thou'rt looking? As brown and lean as a Schnalser herdsman." "He! he! thou's grown tame enough up yonder; yes, yes, that's the way to serve such as will not obey their father!"

A shower of spiteful comments such as these fell around Wally; she kept her eyes bent on the ground, and the burning red of shame and bitterness mounted to her brow. Insulted--scoffed at--thus the proud daughter of the chief peasant returned to her home. And all--for what? An implacable hatred rose up in her, sorer, bitterer than anger; for anger may subside, but the deep hatred that grows in an embittered, ill-treated heart strikes its roots through the whole being; it is the silent, persistent outcome of helpless revenge.

Silently Wally mounted the hill behind the hamlet whence Stromminger's farm looked proudly down. No one noticed her arrival but the deaf Klettenmaier, who was splitting wood for winter-use under the wooden shed in the yard; all the others were in the field.

"God be praised," he said, and took off his cap to his master's child. She set down her burden, the heavy vulture, on the ground, and gave her hand to the old man.

"Thou's heard?" he said. "Old Luckard?"

Wally nodded.

"Ay! ay!" he continued without interrupting his work. "If Vincenz once takes a dislike to any one he never rests till he's driven them out. He'd be glad enough to see me off the place, for he knows very well I always held by Luckard, and he thinks that if no one was left at the farm to help thee, thou dursn't be so wilful. And because there's nothing else he can do to me, he leaves me always the hardest work; I've a whole waggon load of wood to cut up every day, but I can't do it for long. See, I'm nearly seventy-six years old, and this is the third day. But that's just what he wants, to be able to tell Stromminger that I'm no longer good for anything, or else for me to go away of myself when I can hold out no more. But where could I go--an old man like me? I must hold out."

Wally had listened with a gloomy countenance to the old man's speech. Now she went quickly into the house to fetch bread and wine for him; but the store-room was locked and so was the cellar. Wally went into the kitchen. Her heart felt a pang--here had been Luckard's peculiar domain, and she felt as if the old woman must come to meet her and ask: "How is it with thee?--what does thou want?--what can I do to serve thee?" But all that was over and gone. A strange and sturdy servant girl sat on the hearth, peeling potatoes.

"Where are the keys?" asked Wally.

"What keys?"

"The keys of the store-room and the cellar!"

The girl looked insolently at Wally. "Ho, ho! what next--and who may thou be?"

"That thou might guess well enough," said Wally proudly, "I am the master's daughter."

"Ha, ha," laughed the girl, "then thou may just take thyself out of the kitchen. The master has forbidden that thou should come into the house. Over there in the barn--that's thy place. Dost understand me?"

Wally grew pale as death. Thus, then--thus was she to be received in her father's house. Wallburga, daughter of the Strommingers, must give way to the lowest servant girl on the estate to which she was heir! Not only was she to be forbidden her father's presence--it was intended to break her spirit through degrading humiliations. She, Wally, the Vulture-maiden, of whom her father had once proudly said that a girl like her was worth ten boys!

"Give me the keys!" she commanded in a firm voice.

"Ha! ha! that's better still. The master has ordered us to look on thee as a stable girl--there's no question of keys there. I look after the house, and I give out nothing but what the master allows."

"The keys," cried Wally in an outburst of anger, "I command thee!"

"Thou's no call to command me--dost understand? I'm Stromminger's servant, and none of thine. And I am master in the kitchen, dost understand? It's Stromminger's orders. And if Stromminger holds his own daughter lower than a servant--no doubt he knows the reason why!"

Wally stepped close up to the servant, her eyes flashed, her lips quivered; the girl was frightened. But only for an instant did the struggle last in Wally, then her pride conquered; with the miserable serving maid she had nothing to do. She left the house. Her pulses beat like hammers, her eyes swam, her bosom rose and fell in gasps; it was too much--all that this day had brought her. She crossed the yard, took the cleaver from the hand of the old man who was trembling with his efforts, and led him to a bench that he might rest himself. He honestly resisted, he dared not leave his task incomplete; but Wally made him understand she would do his work for him.

"God bless thee, thou hast a good heart," said the man, seating himself wearily on the bench. Wally went into the shed and split the heavy logs with mighty blows. So wrathfully did she swing the axe that at each stroke she hit it through the wood deep into the block. The old man watched with astonishment how the work went on better in her hands than in a man's, and he took a pride in it--he had seen the child grow up from her birth and loved her in his own way. But Wally saw afar the hated form of Vincenz approaching, and involuntarily she discontinued her work. Vincenz did not see her. He came up from behind Klettenmaier, and suddenly stood close in front of the startled old man, whilst Wally observed him from within the shed. He seized the man by the doublet and pulled him up. "Hallo," he screamed in his ear, "dost call that working? thou lazy dawdle, thou; as often as I come by thou's sitting there doing nothing--now I've had enough of it--be off with thee," and he gave him a push with his knee, so that the trembling old man was flung to a distance on the stone pavement of the yard.

"Help, master! help me up," cried the man imploringly, but Vincenz had seized a cudgel and raised his arm. "Wait a bit--thou shall see how I help up a lazy knave!" he said. At this moment such a blow fell on Vincenz's head that he uttered a loud cry and staggered backwards. "God in heaven, what is that?" he stammered and sank upon the bench.

"It is the Vulture-maiden," answered a voice trembling with rage, and Wally, the hatchet in her hand, stood before him with white lips and staring eyes, struggling for breath as if the wild pulses of her heart were choking her.

"Did thou feel that?" she panted out with breathless pauses. "Dost know now how it feels to get a heavy blow? I'll teach thee to oppress my faithful old servant. Thou'st already sent my Luckard underground, and now thou'll do the same by this old man? Nay, before I'll suffer such a deed, I'll set my whole inheritance in flames and smoke thee out of it as I would a fox." Meanwhile she had helped up old Klettenmaier, and led him out to the barn. "Go in, Klettenmaier," she said, "and recover thyself, I order thee."

Klettenmaier obeyed; he felt that at this moment she was master, but at the door he freed himself from her support and said, shaking his head, "Thou shouldn't have done it, Wally--go and look after Vincenz; I fear thou'st given him a heavy blow."

She left the old man and went out again. Vincenz lay quite still. Wally looked at him with half-averted eyes; he had lost consciousness and lay stretched out on the bench, and blood dripped from his head on to the ground. With quick decision, Wally went into the kitchen and called to the girl; "Come out here; bring some vinegar and a cloth and help me."

"What, thou's more orders to give already," said the girl, laughing out loud, without stirring from the spot where she sat.

"It's not for me," said Wally with a dark and evil glance, as she took the vinegar flask from the shelf. "Vincenz is lying out there--I've half killed him."

"Heaven and earth!" shrieked the maid; and instead of hastening to help Vincenz, she ran screaming about the house and yard. "Help, help," she cried; "Wally has struck Vincenz dead!" And from every side the alarm cry was echoed back till it reached even to the village, and every one ran to the spot.

Wally had meanwhile called Klettenmaier to her assistance, and was washing the face of the senseless man with vinegar and water. She could not understand how it was the wound was so deep, for she had struck with the back of the hatchet, and not with the sharp edge; but the blow had been dealt with a force of which she herself was unconscious. Her long restrained rage had concentrated itself in that one stroke, which came crashing down as if she were still splitting the logs of wood.

"What's happened here?" roared a voice in Wally's ear, and her blood stood still--her father had dragged himself out on his crutches. "What's happened here?" repeated twenty or thirty voices, and the yard was filled with people.

Wally was silent.

A buzzing murmur arose all round her, every one pressed forward, touching and examining the lifeless man. "Is he dead?" "Will he die?" "How came it about?" "Did Wally do it?" was asked from one to another.

She stood there as though she neither heard nor saw, and laid a bandage on the wounded Vincenz. "Can thou not speak?" thundered her father. "What hast thou done, Wally?"

"You can see!" was the short reply.

"She owns to it," they all shrieked together. "Gracious Heaven, what insolence!" "Thou gallows-bird, thou!" cried Stromminger. "Is it so thou comes down again to thy home?"

At the word "home," Wally gave a short bitter laugh and fixed a piercing glance on her father.

"Laugh away," cried Stromminger; "I thought thou'd learn better up there, and now, scarce a quarter of an hour in the house, thou's already at mischief again."

"He moves," cried one of the women, "he's still alive."

"Carry him into the house and lay him on my bed," ordered Stromminger, making way by the kitchen door against which he was leaning. Two men raised Vincenz and carried him indoors.

"If only the doctor were here," lamented the women, following the sick man into the room.

"If only we had old Luckard, we should need no doctor," said some of them, "she knew what was good for everything."

"Let her be fetched," cried Stromminger, "tell her to come this instant."

Again Wally laughed. "Yes, truly, old Luckard," she said. "Thou'd be glad to have her back again now, Stromminger! Thou must seek her now in the churchyard!"

The people looked at each other in consternation. "Is she dead?" asked Stromminger.

"Yes, three days ago she died--died heartbroken because of what you did to her. See, Stromminger, it serves thee right, and if yon man dies because there is no one by who knows how to cure him, it serves him right too; so much as that he has well deserved of Luckard."

Now there arose a tumult--this was too bad. "After such a deed to talk like this, and say it served him right, instead of repenting it. Why, no one's life was safe! and Stromminger to stand by and let her talk like that and never say a word! there was a fine father for you!" So they talked together, while Wally, with folded arms, stood defiantly in the kitchen door looking at Stromminger, who, in spite of himself, was hard hit by her reproaches. Now however his wrath returned with double force, and raising himself on his crutch he cried to the crowd; "I'll show you what manner of father I am! seize her and bind her."

"Yes, yes," cried the people confusedly, "bind her, such a one should be under lock and bolt--before the justice she shall go, the murderess."

Wally uttered a dull cry at the word "murderess," and drew back into the kitchen. "Hold," cried Stromminger. "Before a justice my daughter shall never go; do you think I'll live to see the chief peasant's child taken off to prison? Do you know Stromminger no better than that? Do I need a court of justice to punish a wilful girl? Stromminger himself is man enough for that, and on my own ground and my own territory I am my own judge and justice. I'll soon show you who Stromminger is, though I am lame. Into the cellar she shall go, and there remain under lock and key, till her proud spirit is broken and she comes after me on her knees before you all. You have heard, all of you, and if I don't keep my word you may set me down a rascal."

"Merciful God, hast Thou forgotten judgment?" cried Wally. "No, father no! for God's sake don't lock me up! Turn me out, send me up the Murzoll to perish in the snow--I'll die of hunger--I'll die of cold--but under the open heavens. If you lock me up, harm will come of it!"

"Aha, thou'd like to be off again wandering round like a vagabond--that would please thee better? Not so; I've been too soft with thee. Thou'll stop under lock and key till thou asks pardon on thy knees of me and of Vincenz."

"Father, all that is no good with me; sooner than do that, I'd rot away in the cellar--that you might know of yourself. Let me go, father, or, I tell you once more, harm will come of it."

"There--enough said. Well, you--what are you all standing there for? Are you dreaming? Am I to run after her with my lame foot? Seize her, but hold her fast--she has Stromminger blood in her that'll try your teeth--hold on there!"

The peasants, stung by this mockery, crowded into the kitchen. "We'll soon get hold of her!" they said scoffingly.

But with one spring Wally was at the hearth, and had snatched burning brands from the fire. "The first that touches me, I'll singe him, hair and skin!" she cried, and stood like the archangel with the flaming sword.

All fell back.

"Shame upon you!" cried Stromminger. "All of you together might be a match for a girl! Strike the brands from her hand with a stick," he ordered, in a paroxysm of rage, for it was now a point of honour with him to master his daughter before the eyes of the whole village. Some of them ran and fetched sticks; it was like hunting a wild animal, and a wild animal Wally had in truth become. Her eyes bloodshot, the sweat of agony on her brow, her white teeth clenched, she defended herself against this pack of hounds, fought like the wild beast of the forest, without reflection, without calculation, for her freedom--her life's element. Now they struck with the sticks at the brands in her grasp, her only weapon, and she flung them into the midst of the crowd, so that they fell back on one another, shrieking; then, snatching another brand from the hearth, and yet another, she threw them like fiery shot at the heads of her assailants. The uproar grew louder.

"Water here," cried Stromminger, "fetch water,--put out the fire!" This would be an end to everything; the fire once out, Wally was lost. One moment more, and the water would be brought--despair seized the girl. All at once there came a thought--a terrible, desperate thought; but there was no time for consideration; the thought was a deed before she could reflect upon it, and waving a burning log in her hand, she rushed swift as an arrow through her pursuers out into the courtyard, and hurled the brand with a mighty fling on to the hay-loft, right into the middle of the hay and straw.

There was a scream of terror and amazement. "Now put the fire out," cried Wally, and flew across the courtyard through the gate, away and away, whilst all in the farm hurried shouting and storming to extinguish the flames that were already blazing upwards through the roof.

With the rising pillar of smoke, as if born of the roaring flame, a dark object rose screeching from the roof, circled two or three times high overhead in the air, and then took flight in the direction in which Wally had fled.

Wally heard the rushing sound behind her; she thought it was her pursuers, and ran blindly on. It was already night, but there was no darkness, clear light quivered all around her, so that she might still be seen from afar. She mounted a steep point of rock whence she could look down the road, and now she saw that her pursuer was coming through the air. She had attained her end, no one thought any more of following her. To save the farm buildings was a more pressing need, and all hands were engaged in the work. The vulture overtook her as she stood there, and bounded against her with such force as nearly to throw her down from the rock. She pressed the bird to her bosom and sank exhausted on the ground. With dazed eyes she looked up at the glare of the fire that shone afar, and lighted up the dark mountain tops around. With a glowing and angry aspect her deed looked down on her--threatening, wrathful, overpowering. From every church tower in the canton round sounded the dismal peal of warning, and the bells rang out quite distinctly, "Incendiary, incendiary." But the terrible song lulled her senses to sleep--unconsciousness dropped a kindly veil over her hunted spirit.

The Klotz Family Of Rofen

Day after day Wally wandered round the canton seeking a place, but no one would take her with her vulture, and from him she would not part. Even if she had abandoned him, he would have flown back to her again, and as to killing the faithful bird, such a thought could not enter her mind, let what might befal her. Now, in very truth, she was the Vulture-maiden, for her destiny was inseparably linked to that of the bird, and he had as much influence over it as a human being. Luckard's old cousin, to whom she once paid a passing visit, would have taken her in gladly, but she would have been too near home, and wholly in her father's power. She must go farther--as far as her feet would carry her. Every day the season grew more severe; it began to snow, and the nights, which Wally was often forced to spend in an open barn, were keenly cold. The clothes she wore grew old and shabby, she began to look like a beggar and a vagabond, and she was every day more summarily dismissed from the doors where she ventured to knock with her companion. She looked so strange that no good housewife now would let her work in the house for even a few hours, and eat at her table afterwards. They gave her a piece of bread at the door for "God's pity's sake;" and Wally, the haughty Wally, daughter of the Strommingers, sat down on the threshold and eat it. For she would not die! Life--tormented, baited, poor and naked--life was still fair to her, so long as she could hope that sooner or later Joseph might come to love her; for the sake of that hope she would bear everything--hunger, cold, weariness. But her frame, hitherto so powerful, began to fail under the constant consuming anxiety and tension, her eyes were dim, her feet refused to serve her, and as soon as she lay down quietly her thoughts whirled in her brain, and she fell into a feverish dose. With overwhelming dread she met the feeling that she might be going to fall ill. It was too much! If she were to lose consciousness in some barn or shed, she might be taken back to her father, she would find herself once more in his power. She had wandered up into the Gurgler valley, and as she had there found nothing to do, she had taken the weary road again over to the Oetz valley; she had been as far as Vent, which lying in the domain of her father Murzoll, seemed to her almost like a home. But there things had gone worse than ever with her; the ruder the place, the ruder the inhabitants, and when Wally arrived there, she found that the news of her deed had hastened to precede her, and that wherever she showed herself she was met with horror and aversion. She did not appeal to the curé of Heiligkreuz; he had desired her not, and she perceived that he had been right to do so; but for that reason she sought no more priests; not one of them would dare to take any interest in her.

The last door in Vent had just been closed upon her. Before her lay nothing but the cloud-reaching wall of the Platteykogel, the Wildspitz, and the Hochvernagtferner, which closed in the valley, and over which no pathway led. Here on all sides the world was shut in like a cul-de-sac, and she was at the end of it; she stood still and looked up and around at the steep and towering walls. It was a grey morning; thick snow had fallen during the night and lay all over the valley, which looked like a prodigious trough of snow; every trace of a path was obliterated. She sat down and thought, "If I go to sleep, and am frozen, it is an easy death." But it was not yet cold enough for that; the snow melted under her, and she was soon shivering from the wet. Then she started up and dragged herself up the slope that leads up behind Vent to the Hochjoch; from thence she could look over all the surrounding country, and here she became aware of a sort of furrow in the snow that led behind the village along by the Thalleitspitz into the very heart of the Ferner. It might be a footpath--but whither did it lead? She went up higher to get a wider view, and a bandage seemed to fall from her eyes--that was the path that led from Vent to Rofen--Rofen, the highest inhabited spot in the whole Tyrol, the last in the Oetz valley where men, like eagles, can still dwell, and of them only two families, the Klotz family and the Gestreins; Rofen that lies silent and hidden at the foot of the terrible Vernagt-glacier, on the shore of the lake of ice where no straying foot wanders from year's end to year's end, which a venerable tradition wraps in a mysterious veil. This was the place that Wally must strive to reach, this was the last refuge where she might perhaps find help, or at least could die in peace and unseen, like the wild animal of the desert. Thither would she go--to the Klötze of Rofen; they were the most renowned guides in all the Tyrol, they were at home on the mountains as the mountain-spirits themselves; they would understand how Wally would sooner burn down a house, would sooner die, than let herself be deprived of the breath of freedom; and they could protect her against all the world, for the farms of Rofen had right of sanctuary. Duke Frederick had granted it in token of gratitude, because he once in sore distress had found refuge there from his enemies. Joseph the Second had indeed withdrawn it at the end of the last century, but the peasant clings to old usages, and the villagers of the Oetz valley willingly continued to hold it in honour. No one who sought and found asylum at Rofen could be touched; for the Rofeners--the Klötze and the Gestreins--harboured no one who did not deserve it, and were held in as great respect as their forefathers. An assault on their home-right would have been simply a sacrilege.

Wally lifted her arms to Heaven in passionate thankfulness to God who had shown her this path. Her head swimming, her feet stumbling, she strove for the last goal that her strength might yet avail to reach; first, downwards to the path that led from Vent, then again steeply upwards. For an endless hour she mounted the encumbered path; there they lay before her as if sleeping in the snow, the peaceful, honoured farms of Rofen, which she had so often seen from Murzoll looking like eagles' nests clinging to the cliff. Her heart beat so that she could hear it, her knees almost failed her; if she were to be turned away, even here! A fresh storm of snow whirled silently around her, and wrapped the whole scene in a white, shifting veil. It flitted and glanced before her eyes, and the white veil waved coldly about her head, but it melted on her fevered brow and flowed in drops down her face and hair, and she trembled again with the chill. At last she stood before the door of Nicodemus Klotz, and took hold of the iron knocker; but as she put out her hand, a strange light flashed before her eyes, she fell heavily against the door, then sank down in a heap on the ground.

On and on the white flakes drifted up the narrow valley and wrapped it in a shrouding veil, and heaped themselves before the well-closed door of Nicodemus Klotz over the stiffened body that lay there, till it was a peaceful white hillock.

Nicodemus Klotz sat on his warm bench by the stove, smoked his pipe, and looked comfortably out of window at the snow. So the peaceful half-hours passed by, whilst his brother Leander, a fine-looking hunter, read the weekly news out of a shabby paper. "It is coming down finely," said Nicodemus, blowing out a cloud of smoke.

"Yes," said Leander, looking up at the snowflakes floating and swarming before the little window. Suddenly in the midst of the white whirl a dark wing struck on the panes, something fluttered and croaked, then flew up to the roof.

"There is something there," said Leander standing up.

"What matter?" growled the elder brother, "whatever it may have been, thou can't go out in this storm."

"Why not?" said Leander taking his rifle from the wall; the wing-stroke of the passing bird had roused his hunter's instincts; he must see what it was. He went to the door and opened it cautiously, so as not to disturb the bird by any noise. A mass of snow fell inwards, and he perceived the heap that had piled itself up on the threshold. He could not get out; he must fetch a spade to clear away the wall, and impatiently putting aside his gun, he began to shovel.

"Heavens! what is this?" he cried out suddenly, "Nicodemus, come--quick--here is some one buried under the snow--help me!"

His brother hastened forward; in a moment the heap was dug into, and a beautiful rounded arm appeared, and then from beneath the light covering, they drew forth a lifeless body.

"Good God! a maiden--and what a maiden!" whispered Leander as the beautiful head and the finely-moulded form revealed themselves.

"How can she have wandered up here?" said Nicodemus, shaking his head as he lifted, not without effort, the heavy body out of the snow.

"Is she dead?" asked Leander touching her, while his eyes rested with mingled alarm and pleasure on the pale, sunburnt face.

"She must instantly be rubbed," ordered Nicodemus, "inside, in the bedroom there."

They carried the weighty burthen into the house and laid it on Nicodemus' bed. "She must have lain a good half-hour out there; it must be about that time since I heard a heavy blow against the door, but I thought it was a lump of snow fallen from the roof."

Leander fetched a tub full of snow, and officiously tried to help in pulling off the girl's garments. "Let be," said the older and more discreet man, "that will not do--a youngster like thee; the girl'd be ashamed if she knew it. Do thou go out and see if thou can bring down one of the Gestreins, Kathrine or Marianne. Go!"

Leander could not take his eyes from the lifeless form. "Such a beautiful maid!" he muttered compassionately as he went out.

With gentle care the experienced man now undressed the girl, and rubbed her hard with the snow till warmth revived in her skin, and the blood began to circulate again. Then he dried her well, covered her up carefully, and poured a few drops of a strong cordial extracted from herbs down her throat. At last she recovered consciousness, turned and stretched herself, and looked once round the room; but her eyes were glazed and vacant, and muttering a few unintelligible words, she closed them again.

"She is ill," said Nicodemus to Leander, who at this moment reappeared, whilst a sturdy peasant woman who stopped at the door to shake off the snow followed him.

"Marianne," said Nicodemus--she was his married sister, "thou must help us here. Two men like Leander and me can't look after the girl. There is Leander making eyes at her already."

He threw a dissatisfied glance at the young man, who was again standing by the head of the bed and seemed to devour with his eyes the face of the sick girl; but he turned away hastily and blushed at being found out.

Marianne went up to the bed, and her first question was: "Who can she be?"

"God only knows! Some vagabond," said Nicodemus.

"What should make thee say that?" growled Leander, "one can see plainly enough she's no vagabond."

"Ay, because she's a handsome girl and pleases thee," said Marianne; "there's many a fair face covers a blackened soul--good looks prove nothing; a decent girl doesn't wander round the country at this time of year, all alone in the snow till she falls in a heap. Likely enough she's in some scrape, and God knows what sort she may be to harbour in the house."

"Well, it's all one now," said Nicodemus good-naturedly, "we can't turn a sick girl out in the cold and snow, be she what she may."

"As you will," said the woman, "I'll come over here and welcome, to take care of her for you; but I won't take her into my house, and that you may know once for all."

"No one asked thee; we will keep her ourselves," said Leander irritated, and as Wally again muttered some words to herself, he leaned tenderly over her and asked, "What is it? What dost thou want?"

The elder brother and sister exchanged glances. "As for thee," said Nicodemus, "I have something to say to thee. Thou's willing enough and ready to open house and home before we know who this woman is. There stands the door;--now walk out and come in here no more unless thou'd like to see me turn out the girl, ill as she is. Dost understand?"

"What, one mayn't even look at a girl now," grumbled Leander, "I see no reason why thee should come in before me."

"Thou'st nought to do but to go out; I'll allow none of this so long as I am master of the house and eldest brother to thee." So saying Nicodemus took him by the arm and pushed him out, and remained himself alone with his sister by the sick girl.

Wally did not recover consciousness, she lay in a fever; her throat was swelled, her limbs stiff and aching. The brother and sister soon saw that the stranger must have suffered terribly from cold and over-fatigue, and they tended her to the best of their powers. Leander meanwhile wandered idly and restlessly through the house, and as often as one of them came out of the sick room he was in the way to enquire how things were going on. He was full of grief and vexation; he also would so willingly have tended the beautiful girl. Towards evening it ceased snowing, and he took his rifle and went out. But he had scarcely been away a minute when he came back again and called Nicodemus from the sick room. "Look here," he said, much excited, "there is a vulture on the roof, a splendid golden vulture, and he looks at me quite quietly and confidingly, as though he belonged there."

"Ah!" said Nicodemus, "that is singular."

"Only come and see," said Leander, and drew his brother out, in front of the house. "There--there he sits and never moves. A state prize, and I can't shoot him! The devil take it all!"

"Why can't thou shoot him?" asked Nicodemus.

"How can I fire now, with the sick girl lying indoors?" said Leander, stamping his foot.

"Drive him away," advised Nicodemus, "and then thou can follow him and shoot him further off where she cannot hear."

"Tsch, tsch," said Leander, throwing up balls of snow to scare off the bird. The vulture ruffled his feathers, screamed, and at last rose. But he did not fly away, he floated for a minute high in the air, and then quietly let himself down on to the roof again.

"That is strange, he won't go away; it's just as if he were tame."

Once, twice more they tried to drive it off--always with the same result.

"He's bewitched," said Leander, making the sign of the cross; but it did not seem to trouble the bird--so it was certain the devil could have nothing to do with it!

"It seems to me that he's been shot already, and cannot fly," said Nicodemus, "any way let him be in peace till he comes down of himself, if thou doesn't wish to frighten the girl with the crack of the rifle."

"He's half down already; I believe I might take him with my hand," said Leander. He fetched a ladder, laid it against the wall and cautiously ascended. The bird quietly let him approach; he drew his handkerchief from his pocket, and would have thrown it over the vulture's head, but the bird struck and pecked at him so violently, that he was obliged to beat a hasty retreat.

Nicodemus laughed. "There, he's shown thee how to catch a vulture with the hand. I could have told thee as much as that."

"I never saw such a bird in my life," said Leander grumbling, and shaking his head, "Wait a bit," he added, threatening his foe above, "only wait till I find thee somewhere else."

"Thou can hunt him to-morrow if he's not perished in the night. If he can fly, he'll go farther away, and hardly come so far as this again."

It was getting dark now, and Marianne came out to say she must go home and cook her husband's supper. The brothers went in, and Nicodemus also went to prepare supper, by fetching bread and cheese from the store room. While he was gone, Leander softly opened the door that led from the living room into the bedroom and peeped through the crack at Wally. She lay still now, and slept soundly. It was so long since she had lain in any bed, that it could be seen even in her sleep how comfortable she found it; she lay reclining so softly, so easily amongst the pillows. "God help thee, thou poor soul, God help thee!" whispered Leander to her through the opening, then hastily closed the door again, for he heard Nicodemus coming. He was sitting quite innocently on the bench by the stove when his brother came in with the food.

"To-night," said Nicodemus, "we shall do well enough; as Benedict is not here, I can sleep upstairs in his bed, but to-morrow night, when he's back again, we three must divide the two beds between us."

"Oh, I need no bed," said Leander hastily. "For the sake of her in there, I'd as soon sleep on the bench here, or in the hay-loft; it is all one to me. If any of us is to be put out for her, it shall be me, and no one else."

"Well, if it pleases thee, thou can have it so. But in the hay-loft, not on the bench; that is too near the sick-room--dost understand?"

"Ay, ay, I understand well enough," muttered Leander, and bit into his cheese as if it were a sour apple.

The bedroom of the two younger brothers was exactly opposite that of Nicodemus, who took the bed of the absent Benedict. Two or three times in the night he got up, and went to listen at Wally's door; she talked and wandered a good deal, and once Nicodemus could clearly understand that she was speaking of a vulture. "Ah," thought he, "she too will have seen the vulture when she came up, and the fright comes back to her in her dreams."

Early in the morning, before breakfast even, the restless Leander was up and out; he did not come home till nearly mid-day.

"Well, how is she getting on?" he asked as he came in.

"Just the same; she doesn't come to herself at all, and she's always in dread of people who, she thinks, want to take her away."

Leander scratched his head behind his ear. "Then I can't shoot yet. Only think now--there's the vulture outside still sitting on the roof."

"Never!"

"Ay, when I went out this morning, I couldn't see him anywhere; then I thought, he's flown away, and I went after him for nearly three hours. Then when I get home, there he is, sitting quietly on the roof again."

"Well," said Nicodemus, "that's a thing that might make one really uneasy, if one happened to be superstitious."

"Ay, indeed. One might almost think of the phantom maidens of Murzoll, and that they meant to play me a rogue's trick."

"God be praised!" said a rough deep voice, and Benedict the second brother, who had been away on a journey, now walked in.

"Ay, God be praised thou'rt back again," cried his brothers together. "What's the news? What's thou been doing?"

"Oh, nothing much; they've only sent me from Herod to Pilate again down in the Court-house, and crammed me with half-promises. I only know that all Oetzthal, man and beast of all three genders, may break neck and limb over the road here before we get the path." The speaker threw off his knapsack discontentedly and seated himself on the bench by the stove. "Is there anything to eat?" he said.

"Directly," said Nicodemus, who did the cooking himself, and he fetched in the soup.

He also brought a bowl of milk, and took it in to the sick girl; Leander's eye followed him enviously. Benedict was hungry and fell to on the soup without observing what his brother had done: Nicodemus soon returned, and silently, like all peasants, who seem to fear when performing the solemn act of eating that they will get out of time if they speak, the three spooned up the soup in a measured rhythmical movement, so that neither of them should get more nor less than his share.

When they had eaten, the weary Benedict lighted his pipe and stretched himself comfortably on the bench.

"What's the news in the world? Tell us all about it," said Leander, who knew his brother's habit of silence. Benedict had stuck his pipe aslant in his mouth and yawned. "I know of nought," he said. After a time, however, he went on: "Rich Stromminger of Sonnenplatte, his daughter, the Vulture-maiden, you know--she set her father's place on fire, and is running now about the country begging."

"Ah, when did that happen?" asked the brothers astonished.

"She must be a real bad girl that," continued Benedict. "Her father had sent her up to the Hochjoch before this, because she wouldn't do his bidding, and when she comes down, the first thing is that she half kills Gellner, and sets her father's house on fire."

"Jesu Maria!"

"After that she naturally ran away, and is now wandering about the neighbourhood. Yesterday she was in Vent, and trying to get a place, but who would have such a girl in the house? To add to it all, she drags the big vulture about with her that she took from the nest, and expects folk to take that in too. Naturally every one refuses."

Nicodemus looked at Leander, and Leander grew crimson.

"Well!--" said Nicodemus, "now I know who's lying in there!--The vulture that won't leave the roof--and all night she was raving about a vulture--that's not so bad--we've the Vulture-maiden in the house!"

Benedict sprang up. "What!" he cried.

"Don't cry out so loud," said Leander, "dost want the poor sick girl to hear it all?"

Then Nicodemus related how Leander had found her half dead in the snow, and how they could not do otherwise than keep her in the house, at least till she was able to walk. But Benedict was a rough man, and thought the illness was only a pretence--that his brothers had been too soft and should have sent her away. He would soon have got the better of her. "For incendiaries he had no sanctuary," he cried, and his piercing eyes glanced wrathfully under his bushy brows.

"If thou'd seen the maid, thou'd have taken her in too," said Leander, "It'd have been less than human to turn the poor thing out in the wind and weather."

"Indeed? And in that way we should get at last every robber and murderer in the neighbourhood in asylum here, till it is said that Rofen is a hiding-place for all the rabble--that'd be a fine thing for the justices to get hold of. If you two can be taken in by a cunning chit, I at least must maintain order and decency in Rofen!"

He approached the door. Nicodemus stood before it and said quietly, but firmly, "Benedict, I am the eldest, and I'm master in Rofen as much as thou, and I know as well as thou what is our duty as Rofeners. I give thee my word I will keep the girl no longer in the house than I must for human and Christian duty; but now she is sick, and I will not suffer thee to ill-use her. So long as I live at Rofen I'll have no injustice done under my roof."

Then Leander broke in. "Look here," he said confidently and with flashing eyes; "only let him go in--when he sees her, he'll never send her away."

"I believe thou'rt right, thou simpleton," said Nicodemus smiling, and he softly opened the door.

Benedict hastily and noisily entered; this time Leander ventured to slip in also, and Nicodemus had nothing to say against it; he might help to watch over the harsh Benedict and keep him from being too rough. Marianne was sitting by the bed making new stockings for the sick girl, for she had become so ragged that she would have had none to wear when she could get up again. At Benedict's noisy entrance she made a sign that he should be quiet; but scarcely had he perceived the sick girl, when of himself he hushed his footsteps, and went slowly up to the bed. Wallburga was fast asleep. She lay on her back, and had thrown one beautiful rounded arm over her head; her abundant dark-brown hair fell loosely over the snow-white neck that no sunshine could tan through her thick peasant's bodice, and which her loose linen chemise now left partly uncovered; her mouth was half-open as though smiling, and two rows of pearly teeth shone between the arched lips; on the sleeping brow lay an unspoken expression of nobility and purity that no words can describe. Benedict had grown quite still. He gazed long at the touching and yet innocent picture as if astonished, and his brown face began gradually to redden--like Leander's, which seemed dyed in a crimson glow. Then he ground his teeth together and turned round. "Aye, she is certainly ill," he said in a voice which implied, "There is nothing to be done," and he went out of the room on tiptoe.

The Mistress Of The Sonnenplatte

Again a year had gone by, a hard year for Wally; for when her lonely summer in the wilds was ended and Stromminger had sent to fetch the flocks home, she had gone down into the Schnalser valley on the other side of the Ferner where she was quite a stranger, and there had sought service. To the Rofeners she would not return, as she must again have rejected their suit. But it was just as hard to find employment with the vulture here as it had been in the Oetz valley, and at last she gave up all thought of remuneration, only to be taken in with Hansl. Naturally her lot was a forlorn one--for on account of this folly, as they called it, she was often turned away or scornfully treated by the women; and often she had to defend herself stoutly against the rude importunities of the men, who, here as everywhere, admired the beautiful girl. Nevertheless she bore it all steadfastly, for she was too proud to lament and complain of a burden she had laid on herself of her own free will. But she grew hard under it, hard and ever harder, just as the good pastor had forewarned her. The ghosts of all the murdered joys of her young life haunted her and cried out for revenge; in the short spring time of life three lost years count for much. Other young girls weep and lament over a lost dance. Wally did not weep for all the lost dances, for all the thousand pleasures of her youth, she grieved only for her wasted love; and her spirit, on which no ray of happiness had shone, waxed sour and hard like a fruit that has matured in the shade.

Again the spring time came, and again Wally ascended the Ferner. It was a bitter spring and a stormy summer; rain, snow, and hail succeeded each other in turns, so that her clothes often did not dry the whole day through, and for weeks together she breathed the damp atmosphere of an impenetrable chaos of drizzling clouds, through which, as before the first day of Creation, no ray of light would dawn. And, in her soul, the vast outer chaos reproduced itself in little, gloom reflected gloom. The whole world as yet was but a dark and troubled dream like the cloud drifts around her--and God came not, who alone could say, "Let there be Light."

One day, however, after endless weeks of darkness, He spoke again the mighty word of creation, and a gleam of sunshine shot through the clouds and parted them, and gradually there emerged from the chaos a fair and well-ordered world, with mountains and valleys, pastures and lakes and forests; it was spread out suddenly complete before her eyes, and she felt as if she also were now first suddenly roused to life--as was once the mother of mankind--that she might rejoice in this world that God had made so beautiful, not for Himself alone, but for those beings whom He had created to take delight in it with Him.

Was it possible there should be no happiness in so fair a world? And wherefore had God set her, this hapless Eve, up here in the desert, where he for whom she had been born could never find her? "Oh! yonder, down yonder--enough of these lonely heights!" a voice cried suddenly within her, and all at once the wild yearning for life, for love, for happiness broke forth, so that she longingly stretched out her arms towards the smiling, sunny world that lay below at her feet.

"Wally, thou must come down at once. Thy father's dead." The shepherd boy stood before her.

Wally stared at him as if dreaming. Was it a vision called up by her own heart, that even now had cried out so rebelliously for happiness? She grasped the lad by the shoulder as though to assure herself that he was indeed there, and it was no trick of the imagination. He repeated the message. "The place in his foot got worse and worse, then it mortified, and he died this morning. Now thou's mistress at the farm, and Klettenmaier sends thee greeting."

Then it was true, really true! the messenger of release, of peace, of liberty stood before her in the flesh. For this it was that God had shown her the earth so fair, as though He would say to her beforehand, "See, this is now thine own, come down and take that which I have given thee."

She went silently into the hut and closed the door. Then she knelt down and thanked God, and prayed--prayed again, for the first time in many weeks, ardently, from the depth of her soul; and hot tears for the father who was now for ever gone--whom living she could not and dared not love as a child--welled up from her released and reconciled heart.

Then she went down to the home, that now at last was again a home to her, where her foot once more trod her own soil, her own hearth. Old Klettenmaier stood at the gate and joyfully waved his cap when she arrived; the servant-girl who, two years before, had been so rude to her, came weeping and submissive to give her the keys, and at the sitting-room door she was received by Vincenz.

"Wally," he began, "thou'st used me very badly, but--"

Wally interrupted him quietly but severely. "Vincenz, if I've done thee any wrong, may God punish me as it shall please Him. I cannot regret it nor make it good to thee, nor do I ask thee for forgiveness. Now thou know'st my mind, and all I pray thee is, leave me to myself."

And without vouchsafing him another glance, she went in to where the body of her father lay, and locked the door. She stood by it, tearless. She had been able to weep for the transfigured father, freed from the "tenement of clay;" but standing by that form of clay itself, which with a heavy fist had marred her and her life, which had struck her down and trodden on her--she could shed no tears, she was as if made of stone.

Quietly she said a Pater Noster, but she did not kneel to say it. As she had stood motionless, self-possessed before her living father, so now she stood before him dead; only without resentment, reconciled by death.

Then she went into the kitchen to prepare a supper by the time the neighbours should come for the night to pray and to watch the dead. It kept all hands busy, and by midnight the room was so full of watchers that she could hardly provide enough to eat and to drink. For the richer a peasant is, the more neighbours come to the watching and praying by the corpse.

Wally looked on with silent aversion. Here lay a dead man--and so they ate and drank like so many flies! The dull hum and bustle were so strange to her after the sublime stillness of her mountain home, and struck her as so small and pitiful, that involuntarily she wished herself back again on the silent heights. Speechless and indifferent she passed to and fro between the noisy eating and drinking groups, and people said how much she resembled her dead father. On the third day was the funeral. From far and near people of the neighbouring hamlets came to it, partly to pay the last respect to the important and dreaded chief-peasant, partly to "make all straight" with the wicked Vulture-maiden, who now was mistress of all the great possessions of the Strommingers. Hitherto, indeed, she had been only an "incendiary" and a "ne'er do weel;" but now she was the wealthiest owner in all the mountain range, and that made all the difference.

Wally felt the change keenly, and she knew too whence it came. When she saw now after the funeral the same people stand before her with bent backs and obsequious grins, who, but one year before, had turned her from their doors with scorn and flouting when, starving with cold and hunger, she had asked them for work--then she turned away with loathing--then, and from that hour she despised mankind.

The curé of Heiligkreuz came too, and the Klötze from Rofen. Now was the moment for making at least an outward return for all their goodness to her when she had been poor and abandoned, and she distinguished them from all the others and kept with them only. When the funeral feast was over and the guests had at last dispersed, the priest of Heiligkreuz remained with her yet a little while, and spoke many good words to her. "Now you are mistress over many servants," he said, "but remember that he who does not know how to govern himself will not know how to govern others. It is an old saying, that 'he who cannot obey, cannot command'; learn to obey, my child, that you may be able to command."

"But, your reverence, whom am I to obey? There's no one here now that has any orders to give me."

"God."

Wally was silent.

"See here," said the curé, taking something from the pocket of his wide-skirted coat. "I have long meant this for you, ever since the time you were with me, but you could not have taken it with you in your wanderings." He took out of a box a small neatly-carved image of a saint with a little pedestal of wood.

"See, this is your patron saint, the holy Wallburga. Do you remember what I said to you about hard and soft wood, and about the good God who can carve a saint out of a knotty stick?"

"Yes, yes," said Wally.

"Well, you see, in order that you may not forget it, I have had a little image brought for me from Sölden. Hang it up over your bed, and pray before it diligently--that will do you good."

"I thank your reverence very much," said Wally, evidently delighted, as she took the fragile object carefully in her hard hands. "I will be sure always to remember when I look at it, how well you explained the meaning of it all to me. And this is how the holy Wallburga looked! Oh, she must indeed have been a sweet and lovely woman; but who could be so good and so pious as that?"

And as Klettenmaier came towards her across the courtyard, she held the figure out to him and cried, "See, Klettenmaier, what I have had given me; it is the holy Wallburga, my patron saint. We will send his reverence the first fine lamb that is dropped, as a present."

The good priest put in a sincere protest against this kind of return, but Wally, in her pleasure, paid no heed.

When the curé was gone, she went into her room and nailed the carved figure with the sacred images over her bed, and all round, like a wreath, she placed the pack of cards that had been old Luckard's. Then she went to see what there was to do in the farm or in the house.

"Hansl," she cried as she passed the vulture who was perched on the wood-shed, "we are the masters now!" And the sense of mastery after her long servitude pervaded her whole being, as intoxicating wine drunk in deep draughts fills the veins of an exhausted man.

In the courtyard the servants hired by Vincenz were all assembled, and Vincenz himself was amongst them. He had grown haggard, his face was of a yellow paleness, and on the back of his head in the midst of his thick black hair he had a bald place like a tonsure; his glaring eyes lay deep in their sockets, like the eyes of a wolf lurking in a crevice for his prey.

"What is it?" asked Wally, standing still. The upper servant, erewhile so rude, approached with timid subserviency.

"We only wished to ask thee if thou's meaning to send us away because we treated thee so badly while the master was alive? Thou knows we could only do what he would have done."

"You did only your duty," said Wally quietly. "I send none away unless I find him dishonest or a bad servant. And if you left off bowing and bending before me, you'd please me better. Go to your work that I may see what you can do, that's better worth than fooleries."

The people separated; Vincenz remained, his eyes fixed glowingly on Wally; she turned and stretched out her hand against him. "One only I banish from my hearth and home--thee, Vincenz," she said.

"Wally!" cried Vincenz, "this--this in return for all I did for thy father."

"What thou did for my father as his steward, so long as he was lame, that thou shall get a return for. I give thee the meadows that adjoin thy farm and round off thy land; that I think will repay thee thy time and trouble, and if not, say so--I'll be beholden to thee for nothing--ask what thou will but get thee from before my eyes."

"I want nought--I'll have nought but thee, Wally. All is one to me without thee. Thou'st well nigh murdered me, thou'st ill used me every time I've ever seen thee--and--the devil's in it--I cannot give thee up. Look here--I did it all for thee. For thee I'd commit a murder--for thee I'd sell my soul's salvation--and thou thinks to put me off with a few meadows? Thou thinks to be free of me so? Thou may offer me all thou hast--all thy land and the Oetzthal into the bargain--I'd fling it back to thee if thou didn't give me thyself. Look at me--my very marrow is wasting away--I don't know how it is, but for one single kiss from thee, I'd give thee all my lands and goods and starve for the rest of my days. Now send a clerk to reckon once again with how many pounds and acres thou'll be rid of me!" And with a glance of the wildest and bitterest defiance at the astonished Wally he left the farmyard.

She was awed by him--she had never before seen him thus; she had had a glimpse into the depths of an unfathomable passion, and she wavered between horror and pity.

"What is there in me," she thought, "that the lads are all such fools about me?"

Ah, and only one came not; the only one that she would have had--despised her. And if--if meantime he were already married? The thought took away her breath. She thought again of the stranger that he had brought with him across the Hochjoch--but no--she was only a servant maid!

And yet something must happen soon! She was rich and important now, she might venture to take a step towards him! But all her maidenly pride stood in arms at the thought, and "Wait--wait," was still all that was left to her.

She felt driven restlessly through house and fields; soon it was apparent that she was spoilt for the village life; week followed week, and she could not accustom herself to it. She was and she remained the child of Murzoll--the wild Wally. She scorned pitilessly all that seemed to her petty or foolish, she could bind herself to no regularity, no customs, no habits. She feared no one--she had forgotten what fear was, up there on the Ferner, and she met the smaller life below with the same iron front that had defied the terrors of the elements. Mighty and strong of body and soul she stood among the villagers like a being of another world. She had become a stranger in the boorish herd who stared at her with distrust and dislike--as boors always stare at that which is unfamiliar--but who nevertheless dared not approach too near to the great proprietress. But the girl was sensible of their hostility, as of the mean cowardice which, while it spoke her fair to her face, betrayed its hatred behind her back.

"I ask leave of no one," was her haughty motto, and so she did whatever her wild spirit prompted. When she was in the humour, she would work all day like a labourer to incite the lazy servants, and if one of them was not up to the mark in his work, she would impatiently snatch it from his hand and do it herself. At other times she would spend the whole day in melancholy dreaming, or she would wander about the mountains so that people began to think her mind was unsettled. The men and maids meanwhile did as they pleased, and the neighbours maliciously whispered to each other that in this fashion she would let everything go to ruin.

While she thus set herself against all rule and order, she was on the other hand stern even to hardness in matters which the other peasants passed over much less strictly. If she detected a servant in dishonesty or false dealing she at once gave information to the justices. If any one ill-used a beast, she would seize him by the collar and shake him, beside herself with rage. If one of her people came home drunk in the evening, she would have him ignominiously locked out to pass the night out-of-doors, whether in rain or snow. If she discovered any immorality, the culprit that same hour was turned out of the house. For her spirit was chaste and pure as the glaciers with whom she had so long dwelt in solitude, and all the lovemaking and whispering, the meetings and serenadings that went on around her, filled her with horror.

All this gained her a reputation for unsparing hardness, and made her to be feared as her father had been before her.

Nevertheless she seemed to have bewitched all the young men. Not only her possessions;--no, she--she herself with all her strangeness was what the lads desired to win. When she stood before them, tall, as though standing on higher ground, slim and yet so strongly and proudly built that her close-laced bodice could hardly contain her nobly-moulded form, when she raised her arm, strong and nervous as a youth's, against them threateningly, whilst a lightning flash of scorn flamed like a challenge from her large black eyes--then a wild fire of love and strife seized the lads, and they would wrestle with her as if for life or death only to win a single kiss. But then woe to them, for they had not the strength to conquer this woman, and must go their way with scorn and derision. He was yet to come who alone could cope with her--would he ever come? Enough, she awaited him.

"He that can say of me I ever gave him a kiss, him will I marry, but he that's not strong enough to win that kiss by force--Wallburga Stromminger was not born for him!" she said haughtily one day, and soon the saying was reported in all the surrounding neighbourhood, and the young men came from far and near to try their luck and take her at her word. It became indeed a point of honour to be a suitor of the wild Wallburga, as any rash adventure is thought honourable by a man of strength and courage.

Soon there was not a man of marriageable age in all the three valleys who had not striven to conquer Wally and to wrest the kiss from her, but not one had succeeded. And she triumphed in the wild game and in her mighty strength, for she knew that she was talked of far and near, and that Joseph would often hear of her; and she thought that now he must at last think it worth the trouble to come and carry off the prize, if it were only to prove his strength--as that day when he had gone to slay the bear. If only he were here, she thought, why should he not fall in love with her like all the others,--above all, if she showed to him how sweet and friendly she could be?

But he never came. Instead, there came one day to the "Stag" which adjoined Wally's kitchen-garden, the messenger from Vent. Wally, who was at that moment weeding, heard Joseph's name spoken and listened behind the hedge to the messenger's narration.

Since his mother's death Joseph Hagenbach goes oftener to the "Lamb" at Zwieselstein--was the man's story--and a love affair is talked about between him and the pretty Afra, the barmaid at the "Lamb." Only yesterday he was up there, and dined alone with Afra at the guest's table while the hostess stayed in the kitchen. Suddenly the bull broke loose, and ran through the village like a whirlwind; a hornet had stung him in the ear. All fled to their houses and shut to the doors, and the innkeeper of the "Lamb" is about to do the same, when he sees his youngest child, a girl of five, lying in the road. She couldn't get up, for the children had been playing coaches, and the little one was harnessed to a heavy wheel-barrow when the cry was raised that the bull was loose; the other children ran off, but little Liese with the heavy barrow could not so quickly get away; she fell and entangled herself in the rope, and there she lies right in the middle of the road, and the brute is snorting quite close to her with his horns lowered. There is no time to untie the child or to carry it off, barrow and all; the bull is there; the father and Afra scream so that they can be heard all through the village,--but all at once Joseph is on the spot, and thrusts a hay-fork into the side of the beast. The bull bellows and turns upon Joseph, and out of the windows, every one cries for help--but no one comes to help him. He seizes the bull by the horns, and with the strength of a giant forces him back a step or two whilst the bull struggles with him. Meanwhile the father has had time to fetch the child, and now the question is what will become of Joseph, whom all have left in the lurch? Afra wrings her hands and screams for help, the bull has forced Joseph with his horns to the ground and is about to trample on him, when from below Joseph strikes him in the neck with his knife, so that the blood spurts out all over him. The bull now begins to kick, lifting Joseph who holds tight on to his horns, then rushes furiously forward a little way, dragging Joseph with him, half in the air, and half on the ground: Joseph meanwhile, who wants to bring him to a stand-still again, never losing his hold. By this time the bull is bleeding from five wounds, and gradually getting weaker; once or twice Joseph finds his feet again, but each time the brute regains the mastery, and with desperate leaps hurries him on. The peasants have recovered themselves now and come out, the host of the "Lamb" at their head, to help Joseph with hay-forks and knives. But the bull hears the uproar behind him, and once more lowering his horns flings himself, with Joseph, against a closed barn door, so that every one thought Joseph must be crushed; but the door gives way under the blow and flies open, the bull rushes into the shed, and there wallows in his death-struggle among ladders, carts, and ploughs, so that all fall in confusion one over another. Joseph however swings himself up to a beam and throws the door to, so that the raging animal shall not get out again; the people outside hear him barricade the door; he is shut up in that narrow space alone with the brute, and those outside can do nothing. They hear the stamping and storming, the bellowing and uproar within, and shudder at the sound. At last all is still. After an anxious interval, the door is opened, and Joseph comes staggering forward bathed in blood and sweat. They suppose the bull is dead, but Joseph says it were a pity to kill so fine a beast, that his wounds could be healed and were none of them in a vital part.

In the barn all is in confusion, everything upset, trampled, and crushed, but the bull lies with all four legs tied and fastened to the floor; he lies motionless on his side, snorting and gasping, like a calf in a butcher's cart. Joseph has subdued the bull and bound him, alive--all by himself. There is no one like him.

When they came back with Joseph to the "Lamb," Afra fell on his neck before all the people, crying and sobbing, and the hostess brought Liese to him in her arms, and would have treated him to the best in the house--but Joseph was in no mood for any more merry-making. He drank one draught in his raging thirst, and then went home. The whole village was full of him, and that evening there was a great drinking-bout in his honour, that lasted far into the night.

This was the news the messenger brought from Vent, and again there was much talking about Joseph Hagenbach, and all the folks wondered that he should never come up here after Wally. The mistress of the Sonnenplatte had so many suitors--only Joseph seemed to wish to have nothing to do with her.

Wally left her place by the hedge: the words brought a hot blush of shame to her brow. Thus it was then that people spoke of her,--that Joseph would have nothing to say to her? And it was Afra that he was following? That was the same girl that he had brought with him over the Ferner the year before, and had been so careful of even then.

She sat down on a stone and covered her face with both hands. A storm raged within her, a storm of love, admiration, jealousy. Her heart was as though torn in pieces. She loved him--loved him as she had never done before, as though the panting breath with which she had followed the narration of his deed had fanned the glimmering spark into a glowing flame. Again, then--again he had done what no other could accomplish, but she had no part in it--for Afra's master it had been done, for love of Afra! Was it possible? must she give way to a maid-servant--she, the daughter of the Strommingers? Was not she the richest, and as all the young men told her, the most beautiful maid in all the land? Far and wide, was there one that could compare with her for strength and power? Was not she, and she alone, his equal, and should they two not come together? There was but the one Joseph in the world, and should he not belong to her? Should he throw himself away on Afra, on a miserable beggar girl? No, it could not be, it was impossible. Why, after all, should he not go to the Lamb, without its being for Afra's sake? He wandered about so much in the course of hunting, and the Lamb was at Zwieselstein, exactly where all the cross roads met. "O Joseph, Joseph, come to me," she moaned aloud, and threw herself with her face upon the ground, as if to cool its burning heat in the little dewy leaves. Then all at once she remembered how the messenger had said that Afra had thrown herself on Joseph's neck when he came back to the inn. She shuddered at the thought. And suddenly she pictured to herself how it would be if she were Joseph's wife, and if, when after such a struggle he came home weary, wounded, and bleeding, she had the right to receive him in her arms, to refresh him, to comfort him. How she would wash his hot brow and bind his wounds and lay him to rest on her heart till he fell asleep under her caresses! She had never thought of such things before, but now, as they crowded on her, she was thrilled by a hitherto unknown sense--as an opening flower trembles when it bursts the encasing bud.

In this moment she ripened into a woman, but, wild and ungovernable as all her feelings were, that which made her womanly stirred up all the hidden and sleeping powers of evil in her soul, and a fearful tempest raged within her.

The evening breeze swept coldly over her, she felt it not; night came on, and the ever-peaceful stars looked down with wondering eyes on the writhing form, as she lay on the earth in the night dews and tore her hair.

"The mistress wasn't in again all last night," said the housekeeper next morning to the underservants. "What is it, think you, that she does all night?" And they laid their heads together and whispered to each other.

But they all scattered like spray before the wind when Wally came towards them across the courtyard from the kitchen-garden; she was pale, and looked prouder and more imperious than ever. And so she continued; from that day forth she was changed, unjust, capricious, irritable, so that no one dared speak to her but old Klettenmaier, who always had more influence with her than any one else. And withal she carried her haughtiness in everything to the farthest point; her last word was always "the mistress"--for "the mistress" nothing was good enough--"the mistress" would not be pleased with this or with that--"the mistress" might permit herself things which no one else could venture on, and many another such provocation.

Every day she dressed herself as if it were Sunday, and had new clothes made, and even a silver necklace brought from Vent with all sorts of pendants in filigree-work, so heavy and costly that the like had never before been seen in the valley. At the feast of Corpus Christi she left off her mourning for her father and appeared in the procession so resplendent with silver and velvet and silk that the people could hardly say their prayers for gazing at her. It was the first time that she had joined in a procession, and indeed no one knew exactly what kind of a Christian she might be; but it was clear that she only went now to show her new clothes and her necklace, because most of the people of the canton from as far up as Vent, and as far down as Zwieselstein, were assembled there.

When she knelt down there was a rustling and jingling of stiff silks and plaitings and tinkling silver, and it seemed to say, "See, no one can have all this but the mistress of the Sonnenplatte!"

It happened that as the last Gospel was being read a slight confusion arose in the procession, and some people who had been behind were now walking before her. They were the hostess of the Lamb at Zwieselstein and the pretty slim Afra; she found herself close to Wally, and nodded to her, then looked back at Joseph, who was walking behind with the men--so at least it seemed to Wally. Afra looked so lovely at this instant, that for sheer jealousy Wally forgot to return her salute. Then she heard Afra say to her companion, "See there, that is the Vulture-maiden, that let her vulture tear Joseph to pieces nearly! Now she'll not even take my good-day--and yet I've said many a Pater Noster for her."

"Thou might have spared thyself the trouble then," Wally broke in, "I want none to pray for me--that I can do for myself."

"But as it seems to me, thou doesn't do it," retorted Afra.

"I've no need to pray as much as other folk; I've enough and to spare, and don't need to pray to God like a poor maid-servant, who must say a Pater Noster whenever she's in want of a new shoe-ribbon."

The angry blood mounted in Afra's face. "Oh, for that matter, a shoe-ribbon that's been prayed for may bring more happiness than a silver necklace that's been got in a godless way."

"Yes, yes," said the hostess, putting in her word, "Afra's in the right there."

"If my necklace doesn't please thee, walk behind me, then thou'll not see it; nor does it become the mistress of the Sonnenplatte to walk behind a servant wench."

"It'd do thee no harm to tread in Afra's footsteps--that I tell thee plainly," retorted the innkeeper's wife.

"Shame on you, hostess, to lower yourself by taking part with your own maid," cried Wally with flashing eyes. "He who doesn't value himself, none other will value!"

"Oh! then a maid-servant's not a human soul!" said Afra, trembling from head to foot. "A silk gown though, makes no difference to the good God; He sees what's beneath it, a good heart or a bad!"

"Yes, truly," cried Wally with an outbreak of hatred, "it's not every one can have so good a heart as thine--above all towards the lads. Go to the Devil!"

"Wally!" exclaimed Afra, and the tears rushed from her eyes. But she had to be silent, for at this moment the procession had again reached the church, the last benediction was pronounced, and the procession broke up. Wally shot by Afra like a queen, so that she had to cling to her companion; she had almost run over the girl, and every one turned to look after her. The men said no more beautiful maid was to be found in all the Tyrol, but the women were bursting with envy.

"She looks rather different now to what she did up on the Hochjoch, with a dog's hole to live in and neither combed nor coiffed--like a wild thing!" said Joseph, who was standing not far off, and looked at her with wondering eyes; then he nodded a farewell to Afra, and quitted the crowd; he wanted to be home by midday.

But Afra hastened after Wally. Her pretty blue eyes sparkled with tears, like water sprinkled on a fire; she was beside herself with anger, and so was the innkeeper's wife. They caught up Wally at the village inn. She too was in the most terrible agitation; she had seen the affectionate familiar farewell that Joseph had nodded to Afra, and to her--to her, as she believed--he had not vouchsafed a single glance. And now he was gone, and all the hopes betrayed that she had set on this day's doings. This Afra! all her anger was centered on her, she could have trampled her under foot. And here was Afra standing before her, stopping her way and speaking to her with angry defiance--she, the low servant-girl!

"Mistress" Afra brought out breathlessly, "thou's said a thing that I cannot let pass, for it touches my character--what did thou mean by saying I had a good heart towards the lads? I will know what lay behind those words!"

"Dost wish to make a quarrel with Wallburga Stromminger," cried Wally, and her flashing eyes looked straight down upon the girl. "Dost think I'd enter into strife with such a one as thou?"

"With such a one as me," cried the girl, "what sort of one am I then? I'm a poor maid and have had none to care for me, but I've done no one any harm, nor set fire to any one's house. I've no need to put up with anything from thee--know that."

Wally started as though stung by a snake.

"A wench art thou, a shameless servant wench that throws thyself on a lad's neck before every one," she cried, forgetting herself and every thing, so that the people crowded round her.

"What? who? whose neck?" stammered the girl, turning pale.

"Shall I tell thee? Shall I?"

"Yes, speak out; I have a good conscience, and the mistress of the Lamb here, she can testify that it is not true."

"Indeed--not true! is it not true that two years ago, when thou hardly knew Joseph, he dragged thee with him over the Hochjoch, and had to carry thee half the way because thou made as though thou could walk no farther? Is it not true thou'st never let him be since, so that everyone names him and thee together? Is it not true thou keeps Joseph away from other maids that have better right and were better wives for him than thou--a vagabond serving-girl? Is it not true that only the other day, when he had fought the bull, thou fell on his neck before the whole village as if thou'd been his promised wife? Is none of that true?"

Afra covered her face with her hands, and wept aloud, "Oh, Joseph, Joseph, that I should have to put up with this."

"Be quiet, Afra," said the good natured landlady consolingly, "she has betrayed herself, it's only her anger because Joseph doesn't run after her and won't burn his fingers for her like the other lads. If only Joseph were here he would make her tell a different story."

"Yes, I can well believe that he wouldn't leave his pretty sweetheart in the lurch," said Wally, with a laugh so terribly sharp and shrill that the sound re-echoed from the hills like a cry of pain. "Such a sweetheart, who hangs about his neck, is no doubt more convenient than one who must first be won, and with whom it might come to pass that he'd have to take himself off again with scorn and mockery. The proud bear-hunter would no doubt sooner mate with such a one than with the Vulture-Maiden!"

The innkeeper now stepped forward. "Hearken," he said, "I've had enough of this; the lass is a good lass--my wife and I, we answer for her, and we'll let no harm come to her. Do thou take back thy words; I order it--dost understand?"

Again Wally laughed aloud, "Landlord," she said. "Did thou ever hear tell that the Vulture lets itself be ordered by the Lamb?"

Everyone laughed at the play of words, for the host of the Lamb was proverbially called a "Lamperl,"[1] because he was a weak good-natured man who would put up with anything.

"Aye, thou deserves thy name, thou Vulture-Wally--that thou dost."

"Make way there," Wally now exclaimed, "I've had enough of this--this threshing of empty straw. Let me pass!" and she would have pushed Afra on one side under the doorway.

But the innkeeper's wife held Afra by the arm.

"Nay, thou's no call to make way--get thee in first; thou'rt no worse than she is," she said, as she tried to press through the door with Afra in front of Wally.

Wally seized Afra by the waist, lifted her up and flung her from the door into the arms of the nearest bystander. "First come the mistresses, and after them the maids," she said; then passing before everyone into the room she seated herself at the head of the table.

Everyone chuckled and clapped their hands at the audacious jest. Afra cried and was so abashed that she would not go in, and the innkeeper and his wife took her home.

"Only wait, Afra," said the good woman consolingly on the way home, "I'll send Joseph to her, and he will take her in hand." But Afra only shook her head and said no one would do her any good; disgraced she was, and disgraced she must remain.

"Well, but why must thou needs begin a quarrel with that bad girl of Stromminger's," said the landlord, scolding her good-naturedly, "every one keeps out of her way that can."

Meanwhile Wally sat within and looked out of window at Afra departing with her companions; her heart beat so that the silver pendants to her necklace tinkled softly.

She was called upon to eat, the vermicelli soup was getting cold; but she found the soup bad and the mutton as tough as leather; she tossed a gulden on the table, would take no change, and in the face of all the astonished peasants rustled out of the house.

Just as she had done after her confirmation five years before, she tore off her fine clothes when she got home, and flung them into the chest. The silver necklace with its filigree work she trampled into a shapeless mass. What good had her splendour done her? It had not helped her to please the only one whom she desired to please. And, as once before, she threw herself on her bed, angrily chafing against the holy images. A piercing torment tortured her soul as if with knives. Her eyes fell on the carved image of Wallburga above her, and then she thought that the pain she was enduring might be the knife of God working on her, to make out of her a Saint--as the curé had said. But why should she be made a saint? She would so much rather be a happy woman. And that might have been done so easily; the good God would not have needed to carve her out for that--she would already have been quite right just as she was!

So she murmured and rebelled against the knife of God.

In The Night

All through the night a strange and measured sound was audible throughout the silent, sleeping farm-house. Now and then the maids awoke and listened, without knowing what they heard, then turned to sleep again. The boards cracked and the beams trembled, slightly but unceasingly.

It was Wally who paced backwards and forwards with heavy, unpausing steps, her sinking heart engaged in a death-struggle with herself, with Fate, with Providence. All around was shattered--her clothes flung about the room, on the floor the carved St. Wallburga, the crucifix, the holy images, all broken to fragments in impotent wrath.

She had half-undressed, and her hair fell loose and disordered on her bare shoulders. A red gleaming pine-torch flickered in its socket, and in the trembling shadows the features of the broken figure of Christ looking distorted and living. She stayed her steps, and looked down on the fragments.

"Ay, thou may grin," she said, "thou's always taken me for a fool. You're of no good, none of you; idols you are of wood and paper, and no help to any one. Neither prayer nor curse can you hear. And them for whom you stand, hide themselves, God knows where, and would laugh if they could see how we kneel down before a piece of wood." And she pushed the fragments under the bed, that they might not be in her way as she walked to and fro.

A shot was heard in the distance.

Wally stood still and listened; all was silent. She must have fancied it. Why should the sound have taken her breath away? She was not even sure that it was a shot. The thought flashed through her like lightning, "Suppose Vincenz should have shot Joseph!" It was mere folly, Joseph was safe at home--or perhaps at Zwieselstein with his Afra!

She beat her head against the wall in nameless agony at the thought, and pictures rose before her that drove her frantic. If only he were dead--dead so that she need never think of him again! She flung the window open that she might breathe more freely.

Hansl, who was asleep on a tree outside the window, woke up and fluttered in half-stupid with sleep. "Ah, thou!" cried Wally, and stretched out her arms to him; she clasped him to her breast, he was all--all that was left to her in the world.

Again--a second shot, and this time distinctly in the direction of Zwieselstein; she let go of the vulture, and pressed her hand to her heart, as though she herself had been struck. Why this terror? The trifling incident had suddenly brought before her the whole terrible deed which yesterday she had sworn to. She could not help thinking again and again how it would be if the shot she had just heard had shattered Joseph's head, and a wild and frenzied joy came upon her. Now he belonged to her only, now none other could claim his kiss, and as she thought upon it, it seemed to her as though it had really happened; she saw him lying on the ground in his blood, she knelt down by him, she took his head in her lap, she kissed the pale face--the beautiful pale face--she saw it actually before her. And then suddenly pity overwhelmed her for the poor, dead man, a burning, unutterable pity; she called him by every loving name, she shook him, she chafed his hands--in vain, he was no more. Unspeakable anguish filled her soul; no, this must not be, he must not die--sooner would she part with her own life!

She felt as if an icy cramp had been grasping and crushing her heart, so that no warm human blood could flow in her veins, and that now the grip was at last relaxed and the hot flood streaming into her heart again. She must go out, she must see whether Vincenz was at home, she must speak to him at once, before daybreak, she must tell him that the ghastly deed must not be done--she was in a fever, all her pulses throbbed. She had desired the deed, commanded it, but already the idea that it might have been done, extinguished her wrath--and she forgave.

She threw a neckerchief on her shoulders, and hastened across the courtyard and through the garden to Vincenz' house. What would he, what would everyone think of her? It was all one--what did it matter now?

She reached the house. There was a light in Vincenz' room on the groundfloor; noiselessly she glided up, she could see through the parted curtains--her heart stood still--the room was empty, the pine-torch almost burnt away. She went round the house; the door was unfastened, she opened it softly and went in. All was still as death, the men and maids fast asleep; she crept through the whole house, nothing stirred--Vincenz was away! The blood curdled in her veins; she went into his bedroom, the bed was disturbed--he must have laid himself down, then risen again; his Sunday clothes were hanging up, but his work-day clothes were missing, nor was his hat in its place. She looked into the sitting-room; the nail where his rifle usually hung was empty.

Wally stood as if paralysed; she never knew how she got outside the house again. At the door she dropped on to a bench; her feet would carry her no further. She tried to reassure herself: most likely, restless as he was, he had gone out after some night game--what could he do to Joseph, quietly asleep somewhere--she shivered--on a soft pillow? And by day when everyone was up and about, nobody could touch or harm him.

It was her evil conscience that pursued her with these terrors, and she hid her face in her hands. "Wally, Wally, what art thou become?" Shamed, scorned, degraded in the eyes of men, and a sinner in the eyes of God. Where was water enough to purify her? Down below, there rushed the torrent--that--yes, that would clear her from every stain; if she threw herself into that cold flood, all would be washed away, her sorrow and her guilt--the whole unblest existence created only to horror and to strife at once done away with--annihilated. Yes, that were redemption--why did she hesitate? Away with the useless shell that held the soul in fetters of guilt and suffering! She started up, but she could not move, she fell back upon the bench. Was this down-trodden, deadened spirit still held to life then by some invisible thread?

There, God be praised! a footstep on the grass. There came Vincenz. Now she could speak with him; all might yet be well.

"Saints above us!" exclaimed Vincenz, as she went forward to meet him, "is it thou?" He gazed at her as if she were a spirit. Wally saw in the morning twilight that he was pale and disturbed. His gun was on his shoulder.

"Vincenz," she said in a low voice, "hast thou shot anything?"

"Aye."

"What?" She looked at his game-bag, it was empty.

"Noble game," he whispered.

Wally shivered. "Where is it?"

"He lies in the Ache!"

Wally seized him by the arm, in her eyes was a gleam of frenzy. "Who?" she said.

"Dost need to ask?"

"Joseph!" she cried, and staggered back against the wall.

"It was a hard job," said Vincenz, wiping his brow; "I never thought he'd have come so soon within shot. The devil knows what brought him out and about by night. I thought I'd get up early, so as to be down in Sölden before he was stirring, and at the first step he walks right into my hands. But it was still so dark that the first shot missed, and the second only grazed him, but he must have turned giddy, for he stumbled on the bridge, and held on by the railing. I made the best of the chance,--I sprang behind him and pushed him over the rail."

A groan like a death-rattle burst from Wally, and as a vulture swoops upon his prey, she flew at Vincenz and seized his throat with both hands. "Thou liest, Vincenz, thou liest--it is not true, it cannot be--say it is not true, or I'll murder thee."

"On my soul, it's true;--didst suppose Vincenz'd think twice when there was ought to do for thee?"

"Oh murder! most cruel and dastardly murder," sobbed Wally, trembling from head to foot, "so underhand, so cowardly, so base--that I never meant; in fair fight I meant that he should die. Cursed be thou in time and in eternity!--outcast and accursed now and hereafter. What can I do to thee? With tooth and nail thou ought to be torn in pieces."

"So these are the thanks I get?" said Vincenz between his teeth. "Did not thou bid me do it?"

"And if I did--what then? Was that a reason?" cried Wally wildly, "often one says in anger what afterwards one rues in bitterness. Could thou not wait till I had come to myself again after the awful shock? Joseph, Joseph!--wild and wicked I may be, but no murderess. Oh, why could thou not wait, only a few hours? Thy own wickedness it was that drove thee on, and thou could never rest till thou had worked it out."

"That's right, lay it all on me," growled Vincenz; "and yet thou's thy share in the mischief too."

"Aye," said Wally, "I have--and with thee I'll atone for it. For us two no mercy remains. Blood cries for blood--" She ground her teeth, and seizing Vincenz by the collar, dragged him forward with her.

"Wally, leave go of me!--what dost thou want? My God, are these the thanks I get? Mercy--Wally, thou'rt choking me--where art thou dragging me to?"

"To where we two belong," was the gloomy answer, and on she went as though borne by a whirlwind, up the ascent, on to the bridge where the sheer precipice overhangs the torrent--where the deed was done. "Down," was the one fearful word she thundered in his ear, "we two--together."

"God above us!" shrieked Vincenz in terror, "thou swore that if I did the deed thou'd be my wife, and now wilt thou murder me?"

Wally laughed her fearful laugh of scorn. "Thou fool, when I fling myself down yonder with thee, shall not we two be together to all eternity? will thou try to save thy wolfish life?" And with the strength of a giant she grasped him in her arms, and hurried him forward to the low parapet that she might throw herself with him into the twilight gloom of the abyss.

"Help!" shrieked Vincenz involuntarily, and--

"Help!" sounded feebly, ghostly, like an echo from the depths.

Wally stood as if turned to stone and let go her hold of Vincenz. What was that? Some mocking goblin? "Did thou hear it?" she said to Vincenz.

"It was the echo," he said, and his teeth chattered.

"Hark--again!"

"Help!" sounded once more like a passing breath from the abyss.

"All good spirits be praised, it is he--he lives--he is clinging somewhere--he calls for help! Yes--I am coming, Joseph, only wait, Joseph--I am coming!" she shouted out with a voice like a trumpet into the depths, and with a voice like a trumpet-call she hailed the sleeping village as she flew along the street, knocking at every door. "Help, help--a man is perishing, save him--help, for God's sake, help--it's life or death!" And at the cry everyone sprang from his bed, and threw open the windows.

"What is it? what's the matter?"

"It's Joseph Hagenbach--he's fallen into the ravine," cried Wally, "ropes--bring ropes--only come quick--it may already be too late--it may perhaps be too late by the time we get there."

She flew like the wind, home to the farm, into the barn, collected all the ropes that were there, and knotted them together with trembling hands; but all she could tie together, ropes and lines and cords, were still not enough to reach into the depths where he lay--God only knew where.

Meanwhile the men came running together half-incredulous, half-amazed at the terrible news, and brought with them ropes, and hooks and lanterns--for it seemed as if to-day it would never be light--and there was questioning and advising and helpless bewilderment, for in the memory of man no one had ever fallen over the cliff, and here on the broad Plateau they were not provided with ready means of rescue as they are in places where the dizzy precipices and yawning clefts and chasms every year demand their victims. Thus they came at last to the spot, and a chill terror seized even the most cold-blooded as they bent over the railing, and looked down into the mysterious depths of the abyss in which nothing could be seen but the surging mists that rose up from the water. Vincenz had disappeared; all was solitary and silent as death far and wide, above and below. Wally gave a halloo so shrill that the air trembled; all listened with suspended breath--no answer.

"Joseph--where art thou?" she cried once more with a voice in whose tone the anguish of all suffering and desperate humanity seemed concentrated. All was still.

"He doesn't answer--he is dead!" sobbed Wally, and threw herself in despair upon the earth. "Now all is over!"

"Perhaps he's lost his senses, or is too weak to answer," said old Klettenmaier consolingly, then whispered in her ear. "Mistress, think of all the people."

She raised herself and pushed her disordered hair off her forehead. "Tie the ropes together; don't stand there doing nothing--what are you waiting for?" The men looked at her doubtingly. "We must at least try if he's not to be found," said Klettenmaier.

The men shook their heads, but began to fasten the cords together. "Who will let himself down by the rope?" they said.

"Who?" said Wally. Her black eyes flashed out of her pale face. "I will!" she said.

"Thou, Wally--thou's out of thy senses--the rope will scarce bear one, much less two."

"It need bear only one," said Wally gloomily, and seized the rope that it might be done quicker.

"It's impossible, Wally--thou'll have to tie thyself and him to it to come up again," said the men, dropping their arms helplessly; "the only thing to do is to send into the villages, and collect more ropes--"

"And meanwhile he'll fall to the bottom if he's lost his senses, and all will be too late," cried Wally desperately. "I'll not wait till more comes--give it me here--unwind the rope, and see how long it is--go on--unwind!" She shook out the coils of rope, and tried its length and strength; involuntarily the men took hold of it again, they unwound the huge coil, the preparations began to take shape and order. The men stepped out to make a chain. "It may reach far enough, but it'll never bear two."

"If it won't bear two, I'll send him up alone. Where he has room to lie, I shall have room to stand. As soon as I've found a footing, I'll untie myself, and tie the rope round him; then draw him up, and I can wait till the rope comes down again--"

"Nay--that won't do--if he's weak or senseless he can't be pulled up alone; he'll be dashed and crushed against the cliff if there's no one with him to hold him off."

Wally stood as if thunderstruck--she had not thought of that. Again, then, she was thwarted--she was not to reach him, except down yonder, perhaps, in the cold bed of the Ache! The rope would not bear two, that she herself could see. "In the name of God," she said at last, and in spite of the fever that shook her, she stood there dignified and commanding in her firm resolve. She tied the rope round her waist, and took her Alpenstock in her hand. "Let me down, that I may at least seek him. If I find him, I'll stay with him and support him till you've brought another rope, and let it down to us. I'll wait patiently down there, even if I've to wait for hours hanging between earth and heaven till the other rope can come."

Old Klettenmaier fell on his knees before her. "Wally, Wally, don't thou do it, they all say the rope isn't safe. If it must be done, let me go--what does my old life matter? If I can do no good, at least thou'll see if the rope holds, and if it breaks, it'll only be me that's killed--not thee."

"Aye, Wally, hear him," said another, "he's in the right; don't thou go. Only wait, bethink thyself a little till help comes from the villages."

Wally threw up her arms, so that they all fell back. "When I was but a child, I did not wait to think before I took the vulture from its nest down the precipice--and shall I wait now when I go to seek Joseph? Speak no more to me--I will, I must go to him. Now--step back, unwind, hold fast!" And even as she spoke, she had sprung over the railing, whilst the men who formed the chain had to hold back with all their might, so great was the strain upon the rope. "God Almighty help us," said Klettenmaier crossing himself, then ran off, as if Wally's words had reminded him of something. All gazed after her with horror as she slowly sank lower and lower into the sea of mist till it had swallowed her up and closed over her, never perhaps to be seen again. All stood speechless round the spot where she had disappeared, as round a grave; the tightly-strained rope alone gave intelligence of the movements of the death-defying diver in this sea of clouds, and on it every eye was fixed--would it break?--would it bear? And each time one of the hastily-tied knots was paid out, every heart beat louder--"Would it hold?"

The beads of sweat fell from the brows of the men who formed the chain, and involuntarily each tried once more the knots on which a human life depended. So passed minute after minute, heavy as lead,--as if time also were bound to some rope that dark powers refused to let go. Still the rope strained and swayed, still she must be hanging to it; she had not yet found a footing.

"It's coming to an end," cried the last man of the chain, "it's not long enough."

"God help us!" they all cried together, "not long enough!"

Only a few yards remained, and still no sign from below that Wally's end was attained. The men pressed together as close as they could to the edge of the precipice, paying out as much of the rope as they dared. If it were not long enough;--if all had been in vain;--if they should be obliged to draw up the hapless Wally, to set forth once more on the way of death!

There--there, the rope is suddenly loosened--it is slack--a fearful moment! Has it given way, or has its burden touched the ground?

The women pray aloud, the children cry. The men begin slowly to pull in, but only a little way--the rope is tight again. It is not broken, Wally has found a footing, and now, listen! An echoing cry rises from the depths, and a quivering response bursts from every throat. Again the rope is slack, they wind it in, and again it is loosened once or twice; it would seem that Wally is climbing up the precipice. Meanwhile the day has broken, but a fine, cold rain is drizzling down and the swirl of fog below is thicker than ever. Now the rope sharply jerked to the right takes a slanting direction; the men follow it and pass from the left to the right side of the bridge. Wally seems to mount higher and higher; they continue to haul in.

"God be praised!" said some, "he cannot have fallen so deep; if he lies so far up, he may still live." "Perhaps she's only looking for him," said others. Now another pull at the rope, and then a sudden slackening, and a soul-piercing scream.

"It's broken!" shrieked the people.

No, it is taut again--perhaps it was a scream of joy--perhaps she has found him. The women fall on their knees, even the men pray, for though all hated the haughty "peasant-mistress"--still, for the devoted girl who hangs down there in the chaos between life and death, every one that has a human heart trembles. If only a ray of sunshine would pierce the gloom for one single moment! All stand looking down, but they can distinguish nothing; they must leave it to time that passes with such slow reluctance, to reveal the event.

The rope remains immovable, but not another sound reaches them from below. Is it broken and caught on some point of rock, while Wally lies dashed to pieces below? Why is there no signal, no call? And hours must pass before they can get help from the villages round.

No one dares to speak a word--all stand listening with suspended breath. Suddenly old Klettenmaier comes running up, beckoning and shouting.

"See what I've got," he called out, showing a whole length of stout rope thrown over his shoulders. "Thank God, when Wally spoke of the vulture, it all at once struck me that old Luckard had had the rope laid by that Stromminger let Wally down to the vulture's nest with;--and there sure enough I found it, in the loft under a heap of old lumber."

"That is a find!" "Klettenmaier, that's a real godsend," cried the people confusedly. "God grant it may yet be of use," said the patriarch of the village, looking despondingly at the cord of deliverance, "she gives no farther sign!"

"The rope is pulled!" shouted the foremost man of the chain, and at the same moment a cry came up, so close at hand, that when all was silent they could catch the words: "Is there no more rope?"

"Ay, ay, plenty!" resounded joyfully from every side. A grappling iron was fastened for an anchor on to the end of the rope, a fresh chain of men was formed, and it was cast into the impenetrably shrouded abyss. The oldest of the peasants gave the word of command--for the ropes must be paid out exactly together, so that Wally might be close to the injured man and support him. Not half so far down as Wally had gone at first, the rope was caught below, and held fast.

"Let out!" said the leader, in order that Wally might have a few more yards to fasten round Joseph. "Enough," he called out then, and like soldiers at the word of command, the men stood awaiting the next order. Again a few minutes' pause; she must make the loop securely and carefully, so that the senseless man, now so nearly saved, might not fall again into the abyss.

"Tie it fast, Wally," panted Klettenmaier, half beside himself

"Yes, for God's sake, let her make it fast," echoed the people.

A thrice-repeated pull at both ropes at once. "Haul in!" commanded the leader, and his voice trembled as he spoke. The men at both ropes set their feet firmly in the ground, the veins swell in legs and arms and brows, sinewy hands are stretched forward to pull, and the lifting of the heavy loads begins. A fearful and responsible task!--if one fails, all is lost.

"Steady," warns the leader, "watch each other."

It is a solemn moment. Even the children dare not stir; nothing is audible far or near but the deep breath of the toiling men.

Now!--now they appear through the mist, more and more distinctly.--Wally emerges with one arm supporting the lifeless body that hangs to the saving rope, whilst with the other she powerfully bears off from the precipice with her Alpenstock, to keep herself and him from being dashed against it. In this way, as if rowing, she ascends upwards through the sea of clouds. And at last they are there, close to the edge,--one pull more, and they can be lifted up.

"Steady," says the leader--every breath is held--the last moment is the worst--if the rope were to break now!

But no, the foremost of the chain stoop and seize them with a firm grasp, those behind hold fast to the rope.

"Up!" cry the men in front. They are raised--they are there--they are on firm ground, and a ringing shout of joy relieves the long-oppressed hearts of the bystanders. Wally has sunk speechless on the inanimate body of Joseph. She does not see, she does not hear, how all crowd round her and praise her--she lies with her face upon his breast--her strength is gone.

The Message Of Grace

High up on the lonely Ferner, near her stony father, once more sits the outcast, solitary child of man--spell-bound, as it were, like a part of the dizzy heights from which she looks down on the little world below, in which no space could be found for the large and alien heart that had matured in the wilderness among the glacier-storms. Men have hunted and driven her forth, and that has been fulfilled that her dream foretold, the mountain has adopted her as its child. She belongs to the mountain now; stone and ice are her home--and yet she cannot turn to stone herself, and the warm and hapless human heart is silently bleeding to death up here between stone and ice.

Twice had the moon's disk waxed and waned since the day when Wally sought this, her last refuge. No familiar face from amongst the dwellers in the valley had she seen. Only once the priest had dragged his old and frail body up the mountain to tell her that Joseph was recovering; further, that news had come from Italy that shortly after enlisting Vincenz had been shot, and had left to her the whole of his possessions. Then she had folded her hands on her knees, and said quietly, "It is well for him--it is soon over," as if she envied him.

"But what will you do with all this money?" the priest had asked her, "who will manage your immense property? You must not let it all go to ruin."

"Gold and goods plentiful as straw--and no help in them," said Wally, "they cannot buy for me one short hour of happiness. When time has gone by, and I can think of things again, I'll go down to Imst and make it all sure that my property becomes Joseph's. For myself I'll keep only enough to have a little house built further on, under the mountain, for the winter--but now I must have peace, I can care for nothing now. Manage things for me, your reverence, and see that the servants get their due, and give the poor what they need; there shall be no poor on the Sonnenplatte from this day forward."

Thus briefly had she settled her worldly affairs as though on the brink of the next world: it remained to her only to await her hour--the hour of deliverance. It seemed to her as if God had said by the mouth of the priest, "Thou shalt not come to me, till I myself fetch thee." And now she waited till He should fetch her--but how long, how terribly long the time might be! She looked at her powerfully-built frame--it was not planned for an early death, and yet death was her only hope. She knew and understood that she must not end her days with violence, that her atonement must be consecrated; but she thought--surely she might help the good God to set her free when it should please Him! And so she did everything that might injure the strongest body. It was not suicide to take only just enough nourishment to keep herself from starving--fasting is ever a help to penitence--nor to expose herself day and night to the storm and rain from which even the vulture took shelter in a cleft of the rock, so that wet, frost, and privation began gradually to undermine her healthy constitution. It was not self-murder to climb the cliffs no mortal foot had trodden, it was only to give the good God the opportunity to fling her down--if He would! And with a sort of gloomy pleasure she watched her beautiful body waste away, she felt her strength diminish, often she sank down with fatigue if she had wandered far, and when she climbed, her knees trembled and her breath grew short. Thus she sat one day weary on one of Murzoll's highest peaks. Around her, piled one upon another, rose white pinnacles and blocks of ice; it looked like a church-yard in winter where the snow-covered grave-stones stand in rows side by side, no longer veiled by clinging leaf or blossom. Immediately at her feet lay the green-gleaming sea of ice with its frozen waves, that flowed onwards as far as the pass leading over the mountain. Deepest silence as of the tomb dwelt in this frozen, motionless upper world. The distance with its endless perspective of mountains lay dreamily veiled in soft noonday mists. On Similaun, close to the brown Riesenhorn, nestled a small, bright cloud, that clung to it caressingly and was wafted up to sink again, till at last, torn on the sharp edges of the frightful precipices, it disappeared.

Wally lay supported on her elbow, and her eye mechanically followed the drift of the tiny cloud. The mid-day sun burned above her head, the vulture sat not far off, lazily pruning himself and spreading his wings. Suddenly he became uneasy, turned his head as if listening, stretched his neck, and flew croaking a short way higher up. Wally raised herself a little to see what had startled the bird. There, over the slippery, fissured glacier came a human form straight towards the rock where Wally sat. She recognized the dark eyes, the short, black beard, she saw the friendly glance and greeting, she heard the "Jodel" that he sent up to her--as once years ago, when from the Sonnenplatte she had seen him pass through the gorge with the stranger--she, an innocent, hopeful child in those days, not yet cast out and cursed by her father--not yet an incendiary--not yet a murderess. As a whole landscape bursts from the darkness with all its heights and depths revealed, under a flash of lightning--so the whole destined chain of events passed before her soul, and shuddering, she recognized the depth to which she was fallen.

What had she been then--and what was she now? And what did he seek who had never sought her then, what did he seek now of her, the condemned one--the dead-alive?

She gazed downwards in unspeakable terror. "Oh God! he is coming," she cried aloud, and clung to the rock in mortal anguish as if it were the hand of her stony father. "Joseph--stay below--not up here--for God's sake not up here--go--turn back--I cannot, will not see thee--;" but Joseph, who had mounted the rock at a quick run, was coming towards her. Wally hid her face against the stone, stretching out her hands, as if to defend herself against him. "Can one be alone nowhere in this world?" she cried, trembling from head to foot. "Dost thou not hear? Leave me. With me thou'st nought to do--I am dead--as good as dead am I--can I not even die in peace?"

"Wally, Wally, art thou beside thyself?" cried Joseph, and he pulled her from the rock with his powerful arms, as one might loosen some close-growing moss. "Look at me, Wally--for God's sake--why will thou not look at me? I am Joseph, Joseph whose life thou saved--that's not a thing one does for those one cannot bear to look at."

He held her in his arms, she had fallen on one knee, she could not move, she could not defend herself; she was no longer the Wally of former days, she was weak and powerless. Like a victim beneath the sacrificial knife, she bowed her head as if to meet the last stroke.

"Good Heavens, maiden! thou looks ready to die. Is this the haughty Wallburga Stromminger? Wally, Wally--speak then--come to thyself. This comes of living up here in the wilds where one might forget to speak one's mother-tongue almost. Thou'rt quite fallen away; come, lean on me and I'll lead thee down to thy hut. I'm no hero myself yet, but even so I've somewhat more strength than thee. Come--one gets dizzy up here, and I've much to say to thee, Wally--much to say."

Almost without will of her own, Wally let herself be led step by step, as, without speaking, he guided her uncertain footsteps over the glacier and down to her hut. There however they found the herdsman, and pausing therefore, Joseph let the girl glide from his support on to a meadow of mountain grass. She sat silent and resigned with folded hands; it was God's will to send her this trial also, and she prayed only that she might remain steadfast.

Joseph placed himself beside her, rested his chin on his hand, and looked with glowing eyes into her grief-worn face.

"I have much to account for to thee, Wally," he said earnestly, "and I should have come long ago if the doctor and the curé would have let me; but they said it might cost me my life if I went up the mountain too soon, and I thought that were a pity--for--now I first rightly value my life, Wally--" he took her hand, "since thou'st saved it--for when I heard that, I knew how it stood with thee--and just so it stands with me, Wally!" He stroked her hand gently.

Wally snatched it from him in sheer terror; it almost took her breath away.

"Joseph, I know now what thou would say! Thou think'st that because I saved thy life, thou must love me out of gratitude and leave Afra in the lurch after all. Joseph, that thou need not think, for so sure as there is a God in Heaven--wretched am I and bad--but not so bad as to take a reward I don't deserve, nor to let a heart be given me like wages--a heart too that I must steal from another. Nay, that the Vulture-maiden will not do--whatever else she may have done! Thank God, there's still some wickedness even I am not capable of," she added softly to herself. And collecting all her strength, she stood up and would have gone to the hut where the herdsman sat whistling a tune. But Joseph held her fast in both arms.

"Wally, hear me first," he said.

"Nay, Joseph!" she said with white lips, but proudly erect, "not another word. I thank thee for thy good intention--but thou dostn't know me yet."

"Wally, I tell thee thou must hear me for a moment--dost understand? Thou must." He laid his hand on her shoulder and fixed his eyes on her with an expression so imperious that she broke down and gave way.

"Speak then," she said as if exhausted, and seated herself, far from him, on a stone.

"That is right--now I see thou can obey," he said, smiling good-humouredly.

He stretched his finely-formed limbs on the grass, laid the jacket he had thrown off under his elbow and supported himself on it; his warm breath floated towards Wally as he spoke. She sat motionless with downcast eyes; the internal struggle gradually brought the hot colour to her face, but outwardly she was calm, almost indifferent.

"See, Wally,--I will tell thee exactly how it is," Joseph went on, "I could never bear thee formerly, because I didn't know thee. I heard so much of how wild and rough thou wert, and so I took a bad opinion of thee and would never have to do with thee at all. That thou'rt a fine and handsome maid I could see all the while--but I didn't want to see! So I always kept out of thy way, till the quarrel happened between thee and Afra--but that I could not let pass. For see, Wally--what is done to Afra is done to me, and when Afra is hurt it cuts me to the heart, for thou must know--well, it must come out, my mother in her grave will forgive me--Afra is my sister."

Wally started back, and stared at him as if in a dream. He was silent for a moment, and wiped his forehead with his linen sleeve. "It's not right for me to talk about it," he continued, "but thou must know, and thou'll let it go no further. My mother told me on her deathbed that before ever she knew my father, she had a child out there in Vintschgau, and I solemnly promised her that I would care for the lass as a sister, and it's for that I fetched her from across the mountains and brought her to the Lamb so that she might be near me. But we two promised each other that we'd keep it secret and not bring shame on our mother in her grave. Now dost thou understand how I couldn't let an injury to my sister pass unpunished, and stood up for her when she was wronged?"

Wally sat like a statue and struggled for breath. She felt as if the mountains and the whole world were whirling round her. Now all was clear--now too she understood what Afra had said by Joseph's bedside. She held her head with both hands, as if she could not grasp the meaning of it all. If it were indeed true, how gigantic was the wrong she had done. It was not a heartless man who had scorned her for a lowly maid-servant--it was a brother fulfilling his duty to a sister that she would have killed--she would have bereft a poor orphan of her last remaining stay for the sake of a blind movement of jealousy. "Good God, if it had been so!" she said to herself. She felt giddy--she buried her face in her hands, and a dull groan escaped her. Joseph, who did not observe her agitation, went on.

"So it came to pass that up at the Lamb I swore before them all that I would take down thy pride, and do to thee as thou'd done to Afra, and so we hatched the plot among us, in spite of Afra who'd not have had it done. And all went well; but when we wrestled with one another, and when that dear and beautiful bosom lay upon my heart, and when I kissed thee, it was as if my veins were filled with fire. I'd say no word to thee, because I'd been thy enemy so long,--but from hour to hour the fire grew, and in the night I clasped my pillow to me and thought that it was thou, and when I woke, I cried out loud for thee and sprang out of bed for the ferment and fever I was in."

"Stop, stop--thou'rt killing me," cried Wally, with cheeks and brow aflame; but he went on passionately: "So I went out whilst it was still night, and wandered up to the Sonnenplatte. I'll tell thee all,--I meant to knock at thy window before break of day, and I was full of joy to think how thou'd put out thy sleepy face, and how I'd hold thy head, and make amends for all, and ask thy pardon a thousand, thousand times. And then--then a shot whistled past my head, and directly after another hit my shoulder, and as I stumbled some one sprang on me from behind and hurled me down from the bridge. And I thought, now all is over with love and everything else. But thou came, thou angel in maiden's form, and took pity on me, and saved me, and cared for me--Oh, Wally!" He threw himself at her feet, "Wally, I cannot thank thee as I ought--but all the love of all the men in the world put together is not so great as the love I have for thee."

Then Wally's strength gave way altogether--with a heart-rending cry she thrust Joseph from her, and flung herself in wild despair face downwards on the earth. "Oh, so happy as I might have been--and now all is over--all, all!"

"Wally, for God's sake!--I believe thou'rt really mad! What is over? If thee and me love each other, all is well!"

"Oh Joseph, Joseph, thou doesn't know--nothing can ever be between us two; oh, thou doesn't know, I am outcast and condemned--thy wife I can never be--trample on me, strike me dead--me it was that had thee flung down yonder."

Joseph shrank back at the awful words--he was not yet sure that Wally was not mad. He had sprung up, and was looking down at her in horror.

"Joseph," whispered Wally, and clasped his knees, "I've loved thee ever since I've known thee, and it was because of thee that my father sent me up to the Hochjoch, because of thee that I set fire to his house, because of thee that for three years I wandered lonely in the wilds, and was hungry and frozen and would have died sooner than be married to another man. And out of pure jealousy I treated Afra as I did, because I thought she was thy love and would take thee from me. And thou came at last after long, long years that I had waited for thee, and thou asked me to the dance like a bridegroom--and I believed it, my heart was bursting for joy, and I let thee kiss me as a bride, but thou--thou mocked me before everyone--mocked me!--for all the true love with which I had longed for thee--for all the sore trouble that I had borne for thee--then all at once everything was changed, and I bade Vincenz kill thee."

Joseph covered his face with his hands. "That is horrible," he said in an undertone.

"Then in the night I repented," Wally went on, "and I went out, and would have hindered it--but it was too late. And now thou'st come to tell me that thou loves me, and all would be well if I could stand before thee with a clear conscience. And I have brought it all on myself with my blind rage and wickedness. I thought no wrong could be so great as that thou did to me, and it is all nothing to what I have done to myself--but it serves me right--it serves me quite right."

There was a long silence. Wally had pressed her damp brow against Joseph's knee, her whole body shook as in a death-agony. An agonizing minute passed by. Then she felt a hand gently raise her face, and Joseph's large eyes looked down on her with a wonderful expression.

"Thou poor Wally!" he said softly.

"Joseph, Joseph, thou mustn't be so good to me," cried Wally trembling, "take thy gun and kill me dead--I'll hold still and never shrink, but bless thee for the deed."

He raised her from the ground, he took her in his arms, he laid her head on his breast and smoothed her disordered hair, then kissed her passionately. "And STILL I love thee!" he cried in a voice like a shout, so that the words rang back exultingly from the desert walls of ice.

Wally stood there hardly conscious, motionless, almost sinking under the flood of happiness that flowed over her. "Joseph, is it possible? Can thou really forgive me--can the great God forgive me?" she whispered breathlessly.

"Wally! He who could listen to thy words and look in thy wasted face, and could yet be hard to thee--that man would have a stone in the place of a heart. I'm a hard fellow, but I could not do that."

"Oh God!" said Wally, and the tears rushed to her eyes, "when I think that I would have stilled that heart for ever--!" She wrung her hands in despair: "Oh thou good lad--the better and the dearer thou art to me, so much the more terrible is my remorse. Oh, my peace is gone, for ever gone, in earth and in Heaven. Thy servant will I be, not thy wife--on thy door-step will I sleep, not at thy side--I'll serve thee, and work for thee, and do all thy will before thou can speak the word. And if thou strike me, I'll kiss thy hand, and if thou tread on me, I'll clasp thy knee--and beg and pray till thou'rt good to me again. And if thou grant me nought but the breath of thy lips, and a glance and a word--still I'll be content--it'll still be more than I deserve."

"And dost think that I should be content?" said Joseph hotly, "dost think a glance and a breath are enough for me? Dost think I'd suffer that thou should lie on the doorstep, and me inside? Dost think I would not open the door and fetch thee in? Dost think perhaps that thou would stay outside, when I called to thee to come?"

Wally tried to free herself from his grasp; she hid her glowing face in her clasped hands.

"Be at peace, sweet soul," Joseph went on in his deep, harmonious voice, and drew her towards him. "Be at peace, and take that which our Lord God sends thee--thou mayst, for thou hast atoned nobly. Torment thyself no more with self-reproach, for I also have sinned heavily towards thee, and provoked thee cruelly and rewarded thy long love and faith with mockery and scorn. No wonder that thy patience gave way at last--what else could one expect?--thou'rt only the Vulture Wally! But thou's quickly repented thee, and despised death itself to bring me from the depths where no man would have had the heart to go, and had me carried to thy room, and laid upon thy bed, and thyself hast tended me, till that foolish Afra came and drove thee away, because thou thought she was my love. And thou wished to give us all thy property that I might be able to marry Afra--as thou thought! And then came away to the wilderness with thy heavy sorrow! Oh, thou poor soul, nought but heart-ache hast thou had for my sake since thou's known me, and shall I not love thee now and shall we know no happiness together? Nay, Wally, and if the whole world were hard to thee--it's all one to me, I take thee in my arms, and none shall do thee an injury."

"Is it really true that out of all my shame and misery thou'll take me to thy heart, thy great and noble heart? Thou'll have no fear of the wild Vulture-maiden that's done so many wicked things?"

"I fear the Vulture-maiden--I, Joseph the Bear-slayer? No, thou dear child, and were thou still wilder than thou art, I fear thee not, I'll conquer thee, that I told thee once before in hatred--I tell it thee now in love. And even if I could not tame thee, if I knew that within a fortnight thou'd murder me, I would not leave thee--I could not leave thee. A hundred times have I climbed after a chamois when I knew that each step might cost me my life--and yet would never leave it, and thou--art thou not worth far, more to me than any chamois? See Wally--for a single hour of thee as thou art to-day, to see thee look at me and cling to me as now, will I gladly die." He pressed her to him in a breathless embrace. "A fortnight hence thou'll be my wife, and have no thought of killing me--I know it, for now I know thy heart."

Then Wally sprang up, and raised her arms towards heaven. "Oh, Thou great and merciful God," she cried, "I will praise Thee and bless Thee my whole life long, for it is more than earthly happiness that Thou hast sent me--it is a message of Grace!"

It was now evening; a mild countenance looked down on them as in friendly greeting; the full moon stood above the mountain. On the valleys lay the shades of evening--it was too late now to descend the mountain-side. They went into the hut, kindled a fire and sat down on the hearth. It was an hour of sweet confidence after long years of silence. On the roof sat the Vulture and dreamed that he was building himself a nest, the rush of the night-wind round the hut was like the sound of harps, and through the little window shone a star.

Next morning Wally and Joseph stood at the door of the hut ready to set out homewards.

"Farewell, God keep thee, Father Murzoll," said Wally, and the first gleam of morning showed a tear glittering in her eye, "I shall never come back to thee more. My happiness lies down yonder now, but yet I thank thee for giving me a home so long, when I was homeless. And thou, old hut, thou'll be empty now, but when I sit with my dearest husband down there in a warm room, I'll still think of thee, and how long nights through I've shivered and wept beneath thy roof, and will always be humble and thankful."

She turned and laid her hand on Joseph's arm. "Come, Joseph, that we may be at the good priest's at Heiligkreuz before mid-day."

"Aye, come--I'm taking thee home, my beautiful bride! You see, you phantom maidens, I've won her, and she belongs to me--in spite of you and all bad spirits."

And he threw out a "Jodel" into the blue distance, that sounded like a hymn of rejoicing on the day of resurrection.

"Be quiet," said Wally, laying her hand on his mouth in alarm, "thou mustn't defy them." But then she smiled with a serene look. "Ah no," she said, "there's no more 'phantom maidens' and no more bad spirits--there is only God."

She looked back once more. The snowy peaks of the Ferner glowed around in the morning light. "Still it is beautiful up here," she said with lingering footsteps.

"Art sorry to come down yonder with me?" asked Joseph.

"If thou wast to lead me into the deepest pit under the earth where no gleam of day ever shone, still I'd go with thee and never question nor complain," she said, and her voice sounded so wonderfully soft that Joseph's eyes were moist.

There was a sudden rush down from the roof of the hut. "Oh, my Hansl--I'd almost forgotten thee!" cried Wally. "And thou--?" she said smiling at Joseph, "thou must make friends with him, for now you two are brothers in fate. I fetched thee from the precipice as well as him."

So they went down the mountain side. It was a modest wedding procession, no splendour but the golden crown that the morning sunshine wove around the bride's head--no follower but the vulture that circled high in the air above them--but in their hearts was hardly-won, deeply-felt, unspeakable joy.

---

Up yonder on the giddy height of the Sonnenplatte where once "the wild Highland maid looked dreaming down," where later on she let herself into the depths of the gloomy abyss to rescue the beloved one, a simple cross stands out against the blue sky. It was erected there by the village community in memory of Wallburga the Vulture-maiden and Joseph the Bear-hunter--the benefactors of the whole neighbourhood.

Wally and Joseph died early, but their name lives and will be praised so long and so far as the Ache flows. The traveller who passes through the gorge late in the evening when the bell rings for vespers and the silver crescent of the moon stands above the mountains, may see an aged couple kneeling up yonder. They are Afra and Benedict Klotz, who often come down from Rofen to pray by this cross. Wally herself it was who brought their hearts together, and to-day on the brink of the grave they still bless her memory.

Below in the gorge, white, misty forms hover around the traveller and remind him of the "phantom maidens." Down from the cross there is wafted to him a lament as it were out of long-forgotten heroic legends, a lament that the mighty as well as the feeble must fade and pass away. Still this one thought may comfort him--the heroic may die, but it cannot perish from off the earth. Under the splendid coat of mail of the Nibelungen hero, beneath the coarse peasant frocks of a Vulture-maiden and a Bear-hunter--still we meet with it again and again.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Lamb.]

[Footnote 2: In most foreign countries the law provides that a certain portion of a man's estate is inalienable from his natural heirs.]


THE END