ed with his eye the distance to the cage, and muttered to himself
an assent. With a dexterity and speed which in his countrymen are
instincts, he fastened one handle of his scissors to the branch, and
tied a string to the other, making an implement like that used by the
grape-gatherers in the wine season. He examined it carefully, to try its
strength, and even experimented with it on the jessamine that grew over
the front of the cottage. His dark eyes glistened like burning coals as
the leaves and twigs were snapped off at a touch. He looked around him
to see that all was still, and no one near. The moment was favourable:
the Angelus was ringing from the little chapel, and all the Dorf was
kneeling in prayer. He hesitated no longer, but, lifting the branch,
he cut through three of the little bars in the cage; they were dry
and brittle, and yielded easily: in a moment more he had removed them,
leaving a little door wide enough for the bird to escape. This done, he
withdrew the stick, detached the scissors, and in its place tied on a
small lump of maple sugar--the food the bird loves best. Starling, at
first terrified by the intrusion, soon gained courage and approached
the bait. He knew not that a little noose of horse-hair hung beneath it,
which, no sooner had he tasted the sugar, than it was thrown over his
neck and drawn tight. Less practised fingers than the Engadiner's could
scarcely have enclosed that little throat sufficiently to prevent even
one cry, and yet not endanger life.

Every step of this process was far more rapid than we have been in
telling it. The moment it was effected, the Engadiner was away. No
Indian ever rose from his lair with more stealthy cunning, nor tracked
his enemy with a fleeter step: away over the wide plain, down through
the winding glens, among the oak-scrub, and into the dark pine-wood, who
could trace his wanderings?--who could overtake him now?

With all his speed, he had not gone above a mile from the Dorf when
Fritz missed his treasure. He went to take his bird into the house for
the night, when the whole misfortune broke full upon him, For a few
seconds, like most people under sudden bereavement, his mind could not
take in all the sorrow: he peered into the cage, he thrust his fingers
into it, he tumbled over the moss at the bottom of it; and then, at
length, conscious of nis loss, he covered his face with his hands, and
sobbed as though his heart was breaking.

Men and women m