God's hand had written it with the flash of stars.

MARGARET J. PRESTON.




OUR HOME IN THE TYROL.

CHAPTER V.


We had not gone many yards when we noticed a grand old mansion with
gray slopes of roof and stone galleries on arched pillars, and, asking
its history, learned that it was a deserted seat of the counts of
Arlberg, inhabited now by our guide in quality of forester, and where
he had his sister Nanni and brother Hansel to live with him.

We kept gradually ascending by the side of deep, turfy meadows,
passing many a rich brown wooden chalet, with views ever and anon of
our distant village and its stately Hof. Soon we turned into a woody
gorge and began climbing the steep saddle of the Scharst; and as we
slowly toiled upward in the pleasant summer air, amongst the aromatic
fir trees, some verses came into my head out of a little German book,
_Jakob Stainer_, by Herr Reif, which we had given as a parting present
to Schuster Alois:

The fiddle-maker Stainer
Goes whistling on his way:
A master like to Stainer