With our delicious coffee and boiled cream we ordered the host, as a suitable person, to find us a guide to carry our valise and shawls to Bad Scharst.  Probably the perpetual and loud demands for pints of wine left him but little time to make a wise selection, seeing that there soon stood before us a small man with so subtle and malignant a look that his exorbitant demand made us only too gladly dismiss him.  Our confidence shaken in the landlord’s powers of discrimination, we sent word below that if Anton had returned we should be glad to speak with him.  He had been in the village to visit his cousins, but was waiting our orders below.  Although his native shyness made it hard for him to step forward and address ladies under the curious gaze of all the relative Seppls and Barthels, he did it with manliness, and turning round and addressing the popular old man as Hansel, asked him if his brother Joergel were below; and being answered in the affirmative, he hastened away, and returned with another compact little peasant, whom he introduced to us as Senner Franz’s brother, with an aside, that he was “a friendly mortal and Count Arlberg’s forester.”

The agreement was soon made, the sullen-looking man glowering at us from behind a stack of firewood, whilst Hansel and Anton packed a kraxe or wooden frame and fixed it on Joergel’s back.  As we set off, Anton drove away homeward, although the skittle-balls were just beginning to roll, and the sound of “I bin a lustiger bua” and other Tyrolese songs came floating from the windows.

MARGARET HOWITT.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

SAINT ROMUALDO.

  I give God thanks that I, a lean old man,
  Wrinkled, infirm, and crippled with keen pains
  By austere penance and continuous toil,
  Now rest in spirit, and possess “the peace
  Which passeth understanding.”  Th’ end draws nigh,
  Though the beginning is as yesterday,
  And a broad lifetime spreads ’twixt this and that—­
  A favored life, though outwardly the butt
  Of ignominy, malice and affront,
  Yet lighted from within by the clear star
  Of a high aim, and graciously prolonged
  To see at last its utmost goal attained. 
  I speak not of mine Order and my House,
  Here founded by my hands and filled with saints—­
  A white society of snowy souls,
  Swayed by my voice, by mine example led;
  For this is but the natural harvest reaped
  From labors such as mine when blessed by God. 
  Though I rejoice to think my spirit still
  Will work my purposes, through worthy hands,
  After my bones are shriveled into dust,
  Yet have I gleaned a finer, sweeter fruit
  Of holy satisfaction, sure and real,
  Though subtler than the tissue of the air—­
  The power completely to detach the soul
  From her companion through this life, the flesh;
  So that in blessed privacy of peace,
  Communing with high angels, she can hold,
  Serenely rapt, her solitary course.