hat the boy's eyes, when raised in prayer, rested
longer on the spot where the striped banners of Tyroler chivalry
waved overhead, or that an expression of wild excitement rested on his
features as the different groups, before entering the church, deposited
their broadswords and rifles in the porch,--every clank of the weapons
seemed to thrill through Hans' heart.

The devotional observances over, Easter Monday came with all the joyous
celebrations with which the villagers were wont to _fete_ that happy
day. It was a time for families to assemble their scattered members, for
old and attached friends to renew the pledges of their friendship, for
those at variance with each other to become reconciled; little children
paid visits to their grandfathers and grandmothers, with bouquets of
spring flowers, repeating the simple verses of some village hymn to
welcome in the morning; garlands and wreaths hung from every door-porch;
lovers scaled up the galleries to leave a rose, or an Alp daisy, plucked
some thousand feet high among the snow-peaks, at their sweethearts'
window. Pious souls made little presents to the Cure in the chapel
itself. The cattle were led through the village in a great procession,
with garlands on their heads and fresh flowers fastened to their horns;
the villagers accompanying them with a Tyrol song, descriptive of
the approaching delights of summer, when they could quit their dark
dwellings and rove free and wild over their native hills. It was joy
every where: in the glad faces and the glancing eyes, the heartfelt
embraces of those who met and saluted with the well-known "_Gott
grilse dich_--God greet thee!" in the little dwellings pranked with
holly-boughs and wild flowers; in the chapel glittering with tapers on
every altar, pious offerings of simple hearts; in the tremulous accents
of age, in the boisterous glee of childhood, it was joy.

It was the season of gifts, too. And what scenes of pleasure and delight
were there, as some new arrival from the valley displayed before the
admiring eyes of a household some little toy, the last discovery of
inventive genius: Bauer-houses, that took to pieces and exhibited all
their interior economy at will; saw-mills, that actually seemed to
work, so vigorously did they perform the incessant time that mark their
labour; dolls of every variety of attraction, but all in Tyrol taste;
nutcrackers that looked like old men, but smashed nuts with the activity
of the yo