all, with
your leave, tell it; calling our tale by the name of the little inn,

"MARIA HULF!"

Has our reader ever heard, or read, of those strange gatherings, which
take place at the early spring in the greater number of southern German
cities and are called, "Year Markets?" The object is simply to assemble
the youth of the mountain districts in Tyrol and Vorarlbreg, that they
may be hired, by the farmers of the rich pasture countries, as herds.
Thither they go---many a mile--some children of ten or eleven years
old, and seeming even still younger, away from home and friends, little
adventurers on the bleak wide ocean of life, to sojourn among strangers
in far-off lands; to pass days long in lonely valleys or deep glens,
without a sight or sound of human life around them; watching the bright
sun and counting the weary minutes over, that night and rest may come,
per* chance with dreams of that far-off home, which, in all its
poverty, is still cheered by the fond familiar faces! Some, ruddy and
stout-looking, seem to relish the enterprise, and actually enjoy the
career so promising in its vicissitudes; others, sad and care-worn, bear
with them the sorrows of their last leave-taking, and are only comforted
by the thought that autumn will come at last, and then the cattle must
be housed for the winter: and then they shall be free to wend their way
over mountain and plain, far, far away beyond Maltz--high in the wild
peaks of the Stelvio, or deep in the lovely glens below Meran.

It was in one of these "Markets" at Inspruck that a little boy was
seen, not standing with the groups which usually gather together under a
single leader, but alone and apart, seemingly without one that knew him.
His appearance bespoke great poverty; his clothes, originally poor,
were now in rags; his little cap, of squirrel skin, hung in fragments
on either side of his pallid cheeks; his feet--a rare circumstance--were
bare, and bloodstained from travel; want and privation were stamped in
every feature: and his eyes, which at that moment were raised with
eager anxiety as some Bauer drew nigh, grew wan, and filling at each new
disappointment to his hopes, for this was his third day to stand in the
market, and not one had even asked his name. And yet he heard that name;
ever and anon it met his ears in sounds which stirred his feeble heart,
and made it throb faster. "Fritzerl! ah, Fritzerl, good fellow!" were
the words; and poor Fritzerl would sto