her feeling was engaged here. A sense of religious exaltation
worked within him, that he had laboured in a great cause; a thrill of
ecstasy trembled at his heart that another voice than his own was asking
aid for him, and incessantly invoking the Virgin's protection on his own
head. Happy had it been for him that no other sentiment had intervened,
and that he had not also indulged a vain pride in the accomplishment of
his pupil!

It so chanced, that among those who passed the hut and stood to wonder
at this astonishing creature, was a tall, ragged-looking, swarthy
fellow, whose dress of untanned leather, and cap ornamented with the
tail of many a wood squirrel, told that he was an "Engadiner," one from
the same land Fritz came himself. A strange wild land it is! where in
dress, language, custom, and mode of life, there is no resemblance to
any thing to be seen throughout Europe. A more striking representative
of his strange country need not have been wished for. His jacket was
hung round with various tufts of plumage and fur for making artificial
birds, with whistles and birdcalls to imitate every note that ever
thrilled through a leafy grove; his leathern breeches only reached to
the knee, which was entirely bare, as well as the leg, to below the
calf, where a rude sandal was fastened; his arms, also, copper-coloured
as those of an Indian, were quite naked, two leathern bracelets
enclosing each wrist, in which some metal hooks were inserted: by these
he could hang on the branch of a tree, or the edge of a rock, leafing
his hands at liberty. He wore his coal-black hair fer down on his back
and shoulders, and his long moustache drooped deep beneath his lank jaw.
If there was something wild almost to ferocity in his black and flashing
eyes, the mouth, with its white and beautifully regular teeth, had a
look of almost womanly delicacy and softness,--a character that was
well suited to the musical sounds of his native language ~one not less
pleasant to the ear than Italian itself. Such was he who stopped to
listen to the bird, and who, stealing round to the end of the hut, lay
down beneath some scattered branches of firewood to delight his ear to
the uttermost.

It may be doubted whether a connoisseur ever listened to Orisi or Jenny
Lind with more heartfelt rapture than did the Engadiner to the Starling;
for while the bird, from time to time, would break forth with its newly
acquired invocation, the general tenor of its so