After seeing the now desolate, forsaken chapel, we bent our steps into the village to visit the Wirth-haus.  A friendly, quiet peasant-woman met us in the dark passage, and showed us into a clean, comfortable wainscoted room, the zechstube.  We ordered some wine for the good of the house, which was brought by an equally quiet peasant-man.  Setting it on the table, he hovered about the room in an uncertain way, but confided to us eventually that he was the landlord.  The woman then came and introduced herself as his sister, and they both stood silently before us in a house as silent as themselves, the great festival at the neighboring hamlet having probably thinned their custom.  It was evident that they had plenty of leisure to answer any questions, and we had soon learned from them that the old Tharer-wirth was their grandfather.

“You must know,” said the sister, “I have read in big printed letters that Onkel Peter’s little children, holding up their little hands, prayed the cruel general with tears to spare their father.  It is a pity that what is put in print can never be altered, because he had no children.  He had only a young wife, who afterward married a bauer at Antholz, where their son is the priest.”

“Yes,” said the wirth.  “If there had been children, they would have succeeded, not my mother.  It was before either of us was born, but she often told us of it—­how cold it was, in the depth of winter, on the Name of Jesus Day.  Onkel Peter marched with a cross placed in his hands, which were bound behind him, from Bruneck, being led to a house near the inn at Nieder Olang, since burnt down, where he confessed.  At the wayside chapel he next received the sacrament, and then the soldiers shot him.”

Were there any mementoes of him in the house? we asked.

“Oh, not now.  His belt used to lie about the house, but had been either carried off or lost.”  And then one of the good souls intimated that it was sad to have a relation publicly executed:  he must pass as a criminal.  It did their hearts good to find that strangers from other parts did not look upon him as such.  It was natural that they and the villagers should think well of him, but they were poor ignorant people at the best.  However, criminal or not, all the school-children in Tyrol read about him now.  He was stuck in their primers and called a hero and a patriot; only, even in the lesson-book, the mistake had again been made of giving him children.  The wirth thought it must be for effect—­to make the tale more thrilling.

“We often puzzle ourselves about the rights and wrongs of Onkel Peter’s death,” concluded the simple man; “but this will always be clear to us, that three foreign ladies visiting the house out of respect to his memory speaks well for him.”