rvel! On the darken'd page
The verse which thrice she had essayed to read
Now shone illuminate, silver-clear, as though
God's hand had written it with the flash of stars.

MARGARET J. PRESTON.

OUR HOME IN THE TYROL.

CHAPTER V.

We had not gone many yards when we noticed a grand old mansion with
gray slopes of roof and stone galleries on arched pillars, and, asking
its history, learned that it was a deserted seat of the counts of
Arlberg, inhabited now by our guide in quality of forester, and where
he had his sister Nanni and brother Hansel to live with him.

We kept gradually ascending by the side of deep, turfy meadows,
passing many a rich brown wooden chalet, with views ever and anon of
our distant village and its stately Hof. Soon we turned into a woody
gorge and began climbing the steep saddle of the Scharst; and as we
slowly toiled upward in the pleasant summer air, amongst the aromatic
fir trees, some verses came into my head out of a little German book,
_Jakob Stainer_, by Herr Reif, which we had given as a parting present
to Schuster Alois:

The fiddle-maker Stainer
Goes whistling on his way:
A master like to Stainer
Is not found every day.

He passes lofty beech trees,
And old oaks stout and good,
Because that which he seeks for
Grows not in every wood.

But yonder in the sunshine,
Above the dark green shade,
Behold a hazel-fir tree--

"Joergel," said I, "as you are a forester and know all the trees in the
wood, I wish you would show me a hazel-fir tree."

"_Wohl gut_," he replied. "Higher up the chances are small but what we
pass one. I only pray the gracious Fraeulein to say those verses over
again."

When I had done so he wished to know whether the fiddle-maker Stainer
were a real man or no.

"Why, good Joergel," I replied, "he was a real Tyroler like yourself,
only you are not likely to have met with him, seeing that he died and
was buried some two hundred years ago. Yes, a very real man, who did
his work well, but to little profit. He was a peasant lad of Absam,
who, probably going to Innspruck whilst the archduke Leopold and
his Italian consort, Claudia dei Medici, kept their gay court there,
thought Italian violins were harsh and unsatisfactory in tone, and so
quietly worked out one of a different make from his own principles;
which has since gained for him the name of 'the father of the German
violin.' He never expected to earn such a