ago by a flash of lightning;
but the wonder-working image was rescued unhurt, and may still be seen
and worshipped beneath the dome of the present much less imposing church
which has been reared upon the ruins of its ancestor.

The monastery, which was also rebuilt at the same time, now serves the
more useful purpose of a brewery.

From Ettal the road is comparatively level, and, jolting swiftly over it,
we soon reached Ober-Ammergau. Lights were passing to and fro behind the
many windows of the square stone houses, and dark, strange-looking
figures were moving about the streets, busy with preparations for the
great business that would commence with the dawn.

We rattled noisily through the village, our driver roaring out "Good
Night!" to everyone he passed in a voice sufficient to wake up everybody
who might be sleeping within a mile, charged light-heartedly round
half-a-dozen corners, trotted down the centre path of somebody's front
garden, squeezed our way through a gate, and drew up at an open door,
through which the streaming light poured out upon two tall, comely
lasses, our host's daughters, who were standing waiting for us in the
porch. They led us into a large, comfortably furnished room, where a
tempting supper of hot veal-chops (they seem to live on veal in Germany)
and white wine was standing ready. Under ordinary circumstances I should
have been afraid that such a supper would cause me to be more eager for
change and movement during the ensuing six hours than for sleep; but I
felt that to-night it would take a dozen half-baked firebricks to keep me
awake five seconds after I had got my head on the pillow--or what they
call a pillow in Germany; and so, without hesitation, I made a very
satisfactory meal.

After supper our host escorted us to our bedroom, an airy apartment
adorned with various highly-coloured wood-carvings of a pious but
somewhat ghastly character, calculated, I should say, to exercise a
disturbing influence upon the night's rest of a nervous or sensitive
person.

"Mind that we are called at proper time in the morning," said B. to the
man. "We don't want to wake up at four o'clock in the afternoon and find
that we have missed the play, after coming all this way to see it."

"Oh! that will be all right," answered the old fellow. "You won't get
much chance of oversleeping yourself. We shall all be up and about, and
the whole village stirring, before five; and besides, the band will