to my hand as to his, and as the vehicle swayed our heads dodged each other as we rocked back and forth.  Thrown thus, as it were into the embrace of the past, I made the most of it and got as far as might be into the mediaeval.  I found my friar charmingly companionable.  His Bavarian patois was not easy to follow, nor could he catch readily the speech I had been learning in the schools.  But we made shift and had much talk as we drove through the storm into the highlands.  He was a brother in the monastery at Salzburg, but being out of health, was making his way to a hospice of his order above the valley.  He had heard of America, and knew there were houses of his order in that strange land.  He was doubtful of its location, and possibly an American was a creature with whom he had never till then been in touch.  Under the scrutiny of his mild eyes I was being studied as a queer outlandish specimen, as he certainly was to me.  We parted at last as good friends, his head now enveloped in the cowl, his sandals pattering off in the dusk toward the little cell that awaited him in the hospice, while I sought a place by the fire in the inn of Berchtesgaden.  I learned afterward that he was well known and much venerated in Salzburg.

I came into the mountain-nook oddly companioned, and my exit thence was equally so, though greatly in contrast.  For a day or two I was storm-bound, and felt the depression natural in a remote solitude, wrapped in by rain and fog, with no society but an unintelligible mountaineer or two.  At last it cleared and the revulsion was inspiring.  I found myself in a little green vale hemmed in by magnificent heights whose rocky summits were covered with freshly-fallen snow.  Close at hand rose the Watzmann, a soaring pyramid whose summit was cleft into two sharp peaks inclined into some semblance of a bishop’s mitre.  My recent association with the monk had made vivid the thought of the old church, and it seemed fitting that there should be lifted high in air such a symbol of the domination under which the region lay.  But my Protestant eyes regarded it cheerfully, glad to have within range an object so picturesque.  I forthwith strapped on my knapsack, buckled my belt, and strode out for the Koenigs-See, which lay not far beyond.  I walked briskly for a mile or two, stimulated by the abounding oxygen of the highland air, but presently found myself where the road forked and there was nothing to indicate which was my right path.  The solitude seemed complete, but as I stood hesitating, I was relieved by the appearance of a pedestrian who emerged from a by-way.  As I framed an inquiry I was deterred by a certain augustness in the stranger.  I had rarely seen a man of finer bearing.  His stature was commanding, his figure, even in the rough, loose walking-dress he wore, was full of symmetry.  His elastic step showed vigour, and his face under his broad-brimmed Tyrolese hat had much manly beauty.  Was he perhaps a prince in