uldn't you clap your hands to see me jumping down right in front
of you all?' said Angelo.

'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
ser