ounding like a hunted chamois; now creeping like
an insect; now clinging like a root of ivy; now dropping like a
squirrel:--he reaches the fainting monarch just as he relaxes his grasp
on the jutting rock. Courage, Kaiser!--there is a hunter's hand for
thee, a hunter's iron-shod foot to guide thee to safety. Look! They
clamber up the face of the rock, on points and ledges where scarce the
small hoof of the chamois might find a hold; and the peasant-folk still
maintain that an angel came down to their master's rescue. We will,
however, refer the marvellous escape to the interposing hand of a
pitying Providence.

Zyps, the outlaw, becomes Count Hallooer von Hohenfeldsen--"Lord of the
wild cry of the lofty rock;" and in the old pension-list of the proud
house of Hapsburg may still be seen an entry to this effect: that
sixteen florins were paid annually to one "Zyps of Zirl." As you look up
from the base of the Martinswand, you may, with pains, distinguish a
cross, which has been planted on the narrow ledge where the Emperor was
rescued by the outlaw.

There is another vision, an imperial one also. The night is dark and
wild. Gusty winds come howling down from the mountain passes, driving
sheets of blinding rain before them, and whirling them round in hissing
eddies. At intervals the clouds are rent asunder, and the moon takes a
hurried look at the world below. What does _she_ see? and what do _we_
hear? for there are other sounds stirring besides the ravings of the
tempest, in that wild cleft of the mountains, which guard Innsbruck, on
the Carinthian side.

There is a hurried tramp of feet, a crowding and crushing up through the
steep and narrow gorge, a mutter of suppressed voices, a fitful glancing
of torches, which now flare up bravely enough, now wither in a moment
before the derisive laugh of the storm. At the head of the melee there
is a litter borne on the shoulders of a set of sure-footed hunters of
the hills; and around this litter is clustered a moving constellation of
lamps, which are anxiously shielded from the rude wrath of the tempest.
A group of stately figures, wrapped in rich military cloaks, with helms
glistening in the torch-light, and plumes streaming on the wind,
struggle onward beside the litter.

And who is this reclining there, his teeth firmly set to imprison the
stifled groan of physical anguish? He is but fifty-three years of age,
but the lines of premature decay are ploughed deep along brow