rg was a suitable point of departure.
The sky darkened and it began to rain heavily. Berchtesgaden, in
the mountains, the nearest village to the Koenigs-See, was only to be
reached by _Eilwagen_, a modification of the _diligence_,
which forty years ago still held its place on the Alpine roads. I
stood at the door of the inn, observing the company who were to be
my fellow-passengers. There were two or three from the outside world,
like myself, a few mountaineers with suggestions of the Tyrol in their
garb, and one figure in a high degree picturesque, a Franciscan friar
in guise as mediaeval as possible. His coarse, brown robe wrapped him
from head to foot. A knotted cord bound his waist, the ends depending
toward the pavement and swinging with his rosary. His feet were shod
with sandals, and his head was bare, though an ample cowl was at hand
to shelter it. His head needed no tonsure for age had made him nearly
bald. His shaven face was kind and strong and he was in genial touch
with the by-standers, to whom no doubt such a figure was not novel.
Incongruously enough, the friar held over his head in the pouring rain
a modern umbrella, his only concession to the storm and to modernity.
Presently we climbed in for the journey, and I was a trifle taken
aback when the monk by chance followed me directly, and as we settled
into our seats was my close _vis-a-vis_. As we bumped along
the rough road our legs became dove-tailed together, I as well as
he wrapped in the coarse folds of his monkish robe, the rosary as
convenient to my hand as to his, and as the vehicle swayed our heads
dodged each other as we rocked back and forth. Thrown thus, as it were
into the embrace of the past, I made the most of it and got as far
as might be into the mediaeval. I found my friar charmingly
companionable. His Bavarian _patois_ was not easy to follow, nor
could he catch readily the speech I had been learning in the schools.
But we made shift and had much talk as we drove through the storm
into the highlands. He was a brother in the monastery at Salzburg,
but being out of health, was making his way to a hospice of his order
above the valley. He had heard of America, and knew there were houses
of his order in that strange land. He was doubtful of its location,
and possibly an American was a creature with whom he had never till
then been in touch. Under the scrutiny of his mild eyes I was being
studied as a queer outlandish specimen, as he certainly