minutes later the mystery was solved by the identical Jakob, attended by Franz, reappearing from the chamber, not, however, in the hard-working dress in which they had entered, but in full Sunday array, the leather boots upon their feet and broad-brimmed, flower-bedecked beavers in their hands.  Poor Jakob! sore must have been his perplexity when, in the hope of slinking into his wardrobe-room unobserved, we had come open-eyed upon him in his soiled array.  At the cost of apparent rudeness, arising chiefly from shyness, he had silently disappeared, the old servant following his example.  Now, however, they could both freely welcome us to the Olm, expressing the pleasure it would give them to accompany us to the senner huts on their return with Moidel at ten o’clock from church.

This was Jakob’s first introduction to Frau Anna and E——.  He eyed them closely and silently for some minutes; then said, “I like them:  they look good!” and so they went to mass.

The barn and chalet called Eder formed part of the Hofbauer’s lower Alp, where a little later in the season the cattle were brought down for several weeks of pasturage before they descended to their winter home.  We were now bound in company with the returning church-goers for the group of senner huts belonging to the larger still more elevated tract, which the Hofbauer rented in company with five other bauers.  Leaving the meadows very shortly after quitting our night-quarters, where we seemed already in the very bosom of the snow-mountains, we began again to ascend through a wood of primeval pines and fir trees, long gray moss hanging from their hoary branches like patriarchs’ beards, whilst round their stems, amidst a chaos of rocks, were spread the softest carpets of moss and lichen.  In the centre of the wood, where an opening covered with the finest turf afforded an agreeable resting-place, as usual a cross—­that most familiar object in a Tyrolese landscape—­had been erected.  In this instance, more striking and melancholy than ever, for this general point of attraction to peasants seemed here, in the very heart of the mountains, to be forgotten and despised.  Small in size, as if wood had been grudged in this land of wood, the writing on the cross erased by storms, the dissevered arms and limbs were painfully scattered on the sward below—­type indeed as of a powerless Saviour unable to save or to bless.  Indeed, so offensive and discordant did this pitiable emblem appear, and in such mocking contrast to the sublimity of the scene, that we spoke of it to Moidel, as, laden with our eatables, she came slowly up behind.  “Ah,” she replied, “it is not that the cross is left unregarded, nor is it age which has thus damaged it, but the wild storms and lasting snows.  A new cross is often erected, but it has not long been exposed before it is again utterly defaced.  The herdsmen and senners, however, see the meaning under it, and it keeps them straight, Fraeulein.”