their return with Moidel at ten o'clock from church.

This was Jakob's first introduction to Frau Anna and E----. He eyed
them closely and silently for some minutes; then said, "I like them:
they look good!" and so they went to mass.

The barn and chalet called Eder formed part of the Hofbauer's lower
Alp, where a little later in the season the cattle were brought down
for several weeks of pasturage before they descended to their winter
home. We were now bound in company with the returning church-goers for
the group of senner huts belonging to the larger still more elevated
tract, which the Hofbauer rented in company with five other bauers.
Leaving the meadows very shortly after quitting our night-quarters,
where we seemed already in the very bosom of the snow-mountains, we
began again to ascend through a wood of primeval pines and fir trees,
long gray moss hanging from their hoary branches like patriarchs'
beards, whilst round their stems, amidst a chaos of rocks, were spread
the softest carpets of moss and lichen. In the centre of the wood,
where an opening covered with the finest turf afforded an agreeable
resting-place, as usual a cross--that most familiar object in a
Tyrolese landscape--had been erected. In this instance, more striking
and melancholy than ever, for this general point of attraction to
peasants seemed here, in the very heart of the mountains, to be
forgotten and despised. Small in size, as if wood had been grudged
in this land of wood, the writing on the cross erased by storms,
the dissevered arms and limbs were painfully scattered on the sward
below--type indeed as of a powerless Saviour unable to save or to
bless. Indeed, so offensive and discordant did this pitiable emblem
appear, and in such mocking contrast to the sublimity of the scene,
that we spoke of it to Moidel, as, laden with our eatables, she came