man: you have just stretched your finger out for him.'

According to the common Austrian reckoning of them, Herr Johannes had
adopted the right method for ensuring the devotion of the maidens of
Tyrol. She responded with an amazed gulp of her mouth and a grimace of
acquiescence. Ten florins in silver shortened the migratory term of the
mountain girl by full three months. Herr Johannes asked her the hour
when the officers in command had supper, and deferred his own meal till
that time. Katchen set about earning her money. With any common Beppo
it would have been easy enough--simple barter for a harmless kiss. But
this Beppo appeared inaccessible; he was so courtly and so reserved; nor
is a maiden of Tyrol a particularly skilled seductress. The supper of
the officers was smoking on the table when Herr Johannes presented
himself among them, and very soon the inn was shaken with an uproar of
greeting. Katchen found Beppo listening at the door of the salle. She
clapped her hands upon him to drag him away.

'What right have you to be leaning your head there?' she said, and
threatened to make his proceedings known. Beppo had no jewel to give,
little money to spare. He had just heard Herr Johannes welcomed among
the officers by a name that half paralyzed him. 'You shall have anything
you ask of me if you will find me out in a couple of hours,' he said.
Katchen nodded truce for that period, and saw her home in the Oberinnthal
still nearer--twelve mountain goats and a cow her undisputed property.
She found him out, though he had strayed through the court of the inn,
and down a hanging garden to the borders of a torrent that drenched the
air and sounded awfully in the dark ravine below. He embraced her very
mildly. 'One scream and you go,' he said; she felt the saving hold of
her feet plucked from her, with all the sinking horror, and bit her under
lip, as if keeping in the scream with bare stitches. When he released