ages and
ranks squeezed against each other and peeped into each other's windows
with the greatest familiarity. In one of the largest of these Frau
Sieger lived. Her husband was the royal imperial tobacco agent, and the
house was crammed full of chests of the noxious and obnoxious weed, the
passages and landing being pervaded with a sweet, sickly smell of
decomposing tobacco. In the parlor, however, where Frau Sieger sat
drinking coffee with her lady friends, the aromatic odor of the beverage
acted as a disinfectant. The hostess drew us aside, listened
complacently to our message, and then graciously volunteered to let us
rooms under her very roof.

We should have chosen chemical works in preference! There was, then,
nothing to be done but to take leave with thanks. Accompanied by the
little Lina, we passed under the town-gate, and whilst sorely perplexed
perceived a pleasant village, at the distance of about a mile, lying on
the hillside in a wealth of orchards and great barns. The way thither
led across fields of waving green corn, the point where the path
diverged from the high-road being marked by a quaint mediaeval shrine,
one of the many shrines which, sown broadcast over the Tyrol, are
intended to act as heavenly milestones to earth-weary pilgrims.

[Illustration: ADELSHEIM--OUR HOME IN THE TYROL.]

That was the village of Adelsheim, Lina said, where their own
country-house was situated, and Freieck, belonging to Frau Sieger; and
there, at the farther extremity of the village, was Schoenburg, where old
Baron Flinkenhorn lived. The biggest house of all on the hill was the
Hof, and that below, with the gables and turrets, the carpenter's.

The bare possibility of finding a resting-place in that little Arcadia
made us determine to go thither. We would try the inn, and then the
carpenter's.

The inn proved a little beer-shop, perfectly impracticable. A woman with
a bright scarlet kerchief bound round her head, who was washing outside
the carpenter's, told us in Italian that she and her husband, an
overseer on the new railway, occupied with their family every vacant
room, which was further confirmed by the carpenter popping his head out
of an upper window, and in answer to Lina's question giving utterance to
an emphatic "_Na, na, I hab koan_" ("No, no, I have none").

Lina was so sure that the Hofbauer would not let rooms, for he was a
wealthy man and owned land for miles around, that she stayed at a
respectful