‘Yes, I should,’ she admitted.  ‘What is one man, though!’

‘Something, if he feeds like five.  Quick!  I must eat.  Have you a lover?’

‘Yes.’

‘Fancy you are waiting on him.’

’He’s only a middling lover, signore.  He lives at Cles, over Val Pejo, in Val di Non, a long way, and courts me twice a year, when he comes over to do carpentering.  He cuts very pretty Madonnas.  He is a German.’

‘Ha! you kneel to the Madonna, and give your lips to a German?  Go.’

’But I don’t like him much, signore; it’s my father who wishes me to have him; he can make money.’

Angelo motioned to her to be gone, saying to himself, ’That father of hers would betray the Saints for a handful of florins.’

He dressed, and wrenched his knife from the door.  Hearing the clatter of a horse at the porch, he stopped as he was descending the stairs.  A German voice said, ’Sure enough, my jolly landlord, she’s there, in Worms—­your Bormio.  Found her at the big hotel:  spoke not a syllable; stole away, stole away.  One chopin of wine!  I’m off on four legs to the captain.  Those lads who are after her by Roveredo and Trent have bad noses.  “Poor nose—­empty belly.”  Says the captain, “I stick at the point of the cross-roads.”  Says I, “Herr Captain, I’m back to you first of the lot.”  My business is to find the runaway lady-pretty Fraulein! pretty Fraulein! lai-ai!  There’s money on her servant, too; he’s a disguised Excellency—­a handsome boy; but he has cut himself loose, and he go hang.  Two birds for the pride of the thing; one for satisfaction—­I ’m satisfied.  I’ve killed chamois in my time.  Jacob, I am; Baumwalder, I am; Feckelwitz, likewise; and the very devil for following a track.  Ach! the wine is good.  You know the song?

“He who drinks wine, he may cry with a will,
Fortune is mine, may she stick to me still.”

I give it you in German—­the language of song! my own, my native ‘lai-ai-lai-ai-la-la-lai-ai-i-ie!’

“While stars still sit
On mountain tops,
I take my gun,
Kiss little one
On mother’s breast. 
Ai-iu-e!

“My pipe is lit,
I climb the slopes,
I meet the dawn
A little one
On mother’s breast. 
Ai-aie:  ta-ta-tai:  iu-iu-iu-e!”

Another chopin, my jolly landlord.  What’s that you’re mumbling?  About the servant of my runaway young lady?  He go hang!  What——?’

Angelo struck his foot heavily on the stairs; the innkeeper coughed and ran back, bowing to his guest.  The chasseur cried, ’I ’ll drink farther on-wine between gaps!’ A coin chinked on the steps in accompaniment to the chasseur’s departing gallop.  ‘Beast of a Tedesco,’ the landlord exclaimed as he picked up the money; ’they do the reckoning—­not we.  If I had served him with the worth of this, I should have had the bottle at my head.  What a country ours is!  We’re ridden over, ridden over!’ Angelo compelled the landlord to sit with him while he ate like five mountaineers.  He left mere bones on the table.  ‘It’s wonderful,’ said the innkeeper; ‘you can’t know what fear is.’