steady. He cannot, therefore, make little illustrations that ought to be done at once. Would you do them for him? It would be a great favor."

"If only I can- " I sighed; hoping, yet fearing.

Madame glided rapidly away in search of Monsieur's unsuccessful attempts, while he made many courteous little speeches. The Danish child begged to be told if pictures of beetles were coming, and was wofully disappointed when he heard I was only going to "draw" the "patterns in stones."

A dance was about to begin in the next room, and a "jingling of piano strings" made itself heard. The polite Austrian, causing his body, by his ceremonious bow, to describe two sides of a quadrangle, "entreated the honor of a valtz with Madame."

She looked almost pained. Thanking him, she said she "had not waltzed since she was a girl-not for years." "Years?" he repeated, not without a suspicion of vexation, or incredulity, in his tone.

"Three years," she corrected, with her perfectly candid eyes on his.

"You do not dance, and you play dominoes; Schachspiel, tric-trac, Madame," he mused, and his face expressed no vexation, and no doubt, now.

Afterwards, when we were in our own rooms, Jane said: "You declare every one is like some flower or other, or like some living creature. Madame is like two flowers-a San Giuseppe lily and a dark rose; the dear, old-fashioned Jacqueminot rose. Now, confess that is Madame in flowers."

"No; I have found something still better."

"You're provoking not to see her as white lilies and red roses. Scent is to the flower what wit is to the woman. The lily wants her richness besides being heavily sweet. Those dark roses have a spiced fragrance and freshness about them. But what do you say?"

"Lilium Auretum."

"Ah! white, glittering white, like my lily, and with dark, velvety, mixed patches of color, and the fine, penetrating scent. Your guess is not so bad," assented Jane, "but her setting is wrong. The dark gowns are unflowerlike. They're a false note."

VOL. LXXXI.-7

"To the girl false as to the flower. I always want to see her in a white garment, or a diaphanous 'Undine' dress."

At first the task was easy; I had only to look carefully at his stones and put down what I saw, accentuating sundry details, according to his very clear instructions. But something harder awaited me. Monsieur had promised a learned society a paper on Animal Mechanism, and he needed large drawings to show pulleys and levers at work in the slightest movements of a cat. In vain I borrowed an excellent American dictionary, with pictures of fulcrums and fly-wheels and all the terribly unfamiliar things that I had to connect with graceful feline motion; and a big French-English dictionary too. I still could not get on without constant explanations from the learned author.

At an early stage in these almost daily conferences Jane proposed that, instead of "making audience" in my balcony, Madame and she should take some of the lovely walks that are one of the prime glories of Meran. Thus Madame, with Jane, began to see a good deal of that beautiful country.

After every excursion Jane had something good to tell of Madame, though at first she was not enthusiastic enough to please me.

"I don't, of course, mind a gossip like Mrs. Woods," said Jane, "but young girls generally marry graybeards for money; and you'll admit, it must argue ill for anybody's judgment to make so ill-assorted a match as Madame has done."

"People marry for such odd reasons, not exactly bad reasons, though strange. But pity, Jane, would be almost a fair excuse for matrimony, wouldn't it?"

"But he wasn't ill when they married," Jane objected. "However, he must have been quite old-much past sixty. Her topics are not personal; she talks neither of herself nor of him; but, as she is perfectly frank and open, one can't help putting two and two together. She left her conventschool at sixteen, three and a half years ago. Just think of the disparity."

Perhaps my ardent admiration for Madame excited, at first, Jane's spirit of contradiction. Soon, to my great joy, she became warm in her praises of the companion of her walks; as warm as even I could desire.

Jane told me that, with Madame, a prime object in the walks was to bring home what she called a story. It might be some little trait of the friendly peasants; or it might be a big bit of porphyry; or even the mere description of some country sight, such as the vintage-wagons; or a story might be some archæological curiosity, like the chapel-door-carvings at Schloss Tyrol; in short, stories were anything to amuse the invalid.

The first Saltner they met delighted Madame. The Saltner is a rarity. He guards the vines, and has a right to exact a minute toll from those who use the paths that cross his vineyards. Saltners are grandly barbaric fellows, their ruddy, honest faces surmounted by an extraordinary heap of cock's feathers, and the brushes of a dozen foxes; their knees are bare; their leathern breeches are braced with broad bands of brightest green, made in a sort of yoke; their absurdly short-waisted, snuff-colored jackets are slashed with scarlet; they have a black leather belt of fanciful shape, embroidered thickly with white horse-hair, and in one hand they hold a mediæval halberd, while the other often rests on a pistol in their capacious belts.

Madame told a Saltner story one day. Jane and herself, after paying their toll of little copper kreutzers to the guardian of the vines, and admiring the decorations (several dozens of wild boars' tusks) that ornamented his broad chest, wound their way up the steep hillside, emerging from under the trellised vines at a point almost directly over the Saltner, but very high above him. It is the way of his kind to lie low; and the gay-colored, armed man, rising suddenly close to unaccustomed eyes, is a sufficiently startling apparition. His crown of fur and feathers gives him the air of a giant; and he invariably has, at his heel, a sharp-looking dog, to make him the more formidable. As they stood upon their coign of vantage, the pedestrians exclaimed at the beauty of the view; the "greeneth" of the lowlands; the unsurpassed richness of the autumn coloring higher on the hills; the fantastic outlines of the Dolomite Mountain summits. Far below them an odd figure caught their attention. Jane said: "Is it only Englishwomen who walk, all at once, on the whole undersurface of large feet?" When lo! the Saltner emerged from among the leaves, right in the duck-like march of the wanderer, his spear

erect, the knowing dog, alert, beside him; and the air was rent by three sharp, discordant screams. Meantime, the Tyroler's rich baritone, firmly but quite respectfully pleading his right to exact "footing," reached the listeners on the height. Jane could not help laughing. Madame, making a speakingtrumpet of both her hands, called down to the stranger, in English, "not to be frightened"; it was a "local custom to claim payment from passers- by, in the vineyards"; and other words of comfort. But she cried to deaf ears. She saw the frightened dame throw something at the Saltner, then turn, and fly down the steep and rugged footway. The man doffed his plumes, and passed his hand often over his bewildered head, before he stooped to pick up the missile. He then slowly examined it.

"Oh, just see how far away she is already, and still running!" cried Jane, as her eyes followed the gauze veil that bobbed about among the vine-leaves, far down the path towards Meran.

"But she has slackened her pace a little," Madame remarked. "Shall we try and tell him that he frightened her?"

At the instant a mighty roar from the gorgeous giant, and a yapping chorus from the dog, sent the luckless intruder speeding on with renewed vigor.

The spectators could not but laugh at sight of such bootless terror. But when they saw the Saltner at last set off in hot pursuit, they would have stopped him if they could. He did not, however, heed their cries and remonstrances, possibly did not even hear them; and they watched the ill-fated gauze-clad head pursued at an ever decreasing distance by the shouting wearer of the cock's feathers, till both runners neared the leading thoroughfare of Meran. Then the Saltner dropped into a walk. In an hour the whole of the little health resort knew that a newly arrived Englishwoman had gone out among the vines nearest the townshe liked to look about her," she said when suddenly, "the most savage, outlandish figure eyes ever rested upon," rose before her. She heard the creature speak, and jumped to the conclusion that he demanded "her money or her life"; "for," she asked, "who but a brigand would wear those plumes and things?" Not reflecting that it would be against a brigand's interest to make himself so conspicuous!

"Of the two," she cried, "let it be my money!" And, forthwith, she flung him her purse; turning, and flying by the way she had come. She was astonished that she could be so fleet of foot, when the sharp stones hurt her so! The good Saltner, in pity and surprise, set her down for a lunatic. Being an honest man, he wished to restore her purse; hence his tremendous shout after the retreating figure. Hearing that cry, she said, she knew he wanted her "life as well as her money." Fear gave her wings; she was running, now, truly for dear life, and faster than ever. The good fellow, unwilling to lose sight of her before restoring her property, called again and again, and ran after her, till he saw her reach the hotel. There-more dead than alive-she flung herself upon the hall porter's breast, as the swing-doors closed behind her. Presently, the Saltner and our hall porter had a very curious conversation; from which it resulted that the Tyroler went back to his vines convinced that all the English were "like that," which meant, not precisely mad, as he had at first supposed, He was quite unable to grasp the concierge's notion that his feathers had frightened the lady.

"My husband would have sketched it all, long ago," said Madame, "in little, spirited, pen-and-ink jottings; a dot telling ever so much; and an artful smudge with the featherend of his quill suggesting a whole volume. I do so long for his hand to be steady again. How our story, to-day, will amuse him. I feel grateful to you; for I am so much better able to cheer and brighten him, through these delightful walks with you. Do you think he has gained much? You know, he has made more than a quarter of his 'cure,' here, already." Thus, between Jane's excursions and my drawing, it came about that my sister and I, of all the guests in our hotel, alone penetrated a little below the surface-had a very small part in the inner life of the French couple. The fact brought us a certain amount of undesired notice. Mrs. Woods would waylay me, in hopes of learning something to gratify her curiosity.

Jane, too, was often attacked. "What do you think?" she cried one day. "Mrs. Woods has been cross-questioning me, and I must be better worth the trouble than you, my dear, for between my admissions, and those of the concierge, she has made out the de Belfort's Paris address; and she finds