n who elevated the Host: the village priest, in white
surplice and Hessian boots, swung the censer at his side. The men were
in front, the women, a long, broad file, divided in the procession by
the priests from their male relations, followed--a dense black mass,
but relieved in color by the whiteness of their short linen sleeves.

Men and women, carefully severed in their prayers and on the very
steps of the altar by Holy Church, were soon able to come together
again under the spacious, hospitable roof of Herr Kappler, the wirth.
Innumerable clean wooden tables, forms, and stiff, high-legged wooden
chairs were ranged up stairs and down stairs and in the orchard
without, for the accommodation of the scapularists and their friends.

We sat at a side-table in an upper room partaking of grilled fowl and
salad, whilst _buben_ and their _dirnen_, or lads and their lasses,
middle-aged couples, old men and women, poured into the house,
filling every chair, bench and table. They came thither from all
the country-side, and endless were the greetings amongst cousins and
cousins' cousins. The Tyrolese, like the Scotch, keep up every link
of relationship, claiming the fiftieth cousin. Relationship, in fact,
never does die out; and though it may become an abstract during busy
seasons of ploughing and sowing, it becomes a strong reality at
wakes and festivals. Thus, at Kappler's, on this scapulary afternoon,
Barthel's brother-in-law's cousin drank with "Cousin Barthel," and
Seppl's sister-in-law's niece was treated by "Onkel Seppl." There was
one square-built, good-humored old man who appeared to be the whole
world's cousin: he passed from table to table, and had to sip from
fifty offered glasses.

With our delicious coffee and boiled cream we ordered the host, as a
suitable person, to find us a guide to carry our valise and shawls to
Bad Scharst. Probably the perpetual and loud demands for pints of wine
left him but little time to make a wise selection, seeing that there
soon stood before us a small man with so subtle and malignant a look
that his exorbitant demand made us only too gladly dismiss him. Our
confidence shaken in the landlord's powers of discrimination, we sent
word below that if Anton had returned we should be glad to speak with
him. He had been in the village to visit his cousins, but was waiting
our orders below. Although his native shyness made it hard for him
to step forward and address ladies under the curious g