ttle must be postponed at least a
week," he said, "for snow had fallen at the huts the depth of a man;
and the river had swollen to such a height that it had carried two
houses away in St. Wolfgang, the highest mountain-village; and even
life had been lost."

This delay caused a respite from hard work. The next morning
Alois's arms did not move like unwearying machinery, and, the ten
o'clock-dinner being over, we saw him seated at his ease on the
adjoining hillside. Should we go and speak to him? He appeared
different from the ordinary run of his class (though cobblers are
often clever men enough), and moreover of a decidedly friendly turn of
mind. We determined that we would. We joined Alois on the stony, waste
hillside, crowned by two trees with a crucifix in the centre, which
formed from the house, with its background of mountains, ever a
melancholy, soul-touching little poem.

"You have not quite such hard work to-day, Schuster?"

He smiled and said, "Do your work betimes, and then rest; and where
better than under the shadow of the cross?"

"Yes, and the crucifix which you have chosen is more pleasing than the
generality which are sown broadcast over the fields of the Tyrol. Why
are they made so hideous and revolting?"

We spoke out freely, because the unusually intelligent face before
us evidently belonged to a thinker. Candor of speech pleased him.
Nevertheless, he answered as if musing, "They appear ugly to you: well
they may be. Ja, but the most who look upon them are men and women
acquainted with many sorrows--sudden deaths by falls from precipices,
destruction of house and home by lightning, floods, avalanches,
failure of crops, and many another visitation--and it soothes their
perhaps selfish natures to see these anguished features, these
blood-stained limbs--signs of still greater suffering--whilst they
pray that only such crosses may be laid on them as will keep them in
obedience to His will. Just before you came up the hill I was thinking
of a strange history connected with a crucifix--one that I read only
ten days ago in the house of a Hochmair himself."

It merely needed silence for Schuster Alois to repeat the tale, and he
soon began: "It is the Tyroler Adolph Pichler who narrates it. He says
that once in his rambles he came to a little chapel, over which hung a
blasted larch--such a desolate wreck of a tree that he naturally asked
the guide he had with him why it was not cut down. Now, the guid