"How did you get the cart in?" asked
Kester.

"Why, made the piebald back it in, before I
unharnessed him. The door's wide enough.
But I can't leave these things like this all nignt.
They must be secured, somehow."

"Oh," sneered Josef, "they're so very
precious, are they?"

"Yes; that they are," answered Fritz, simply.
"Whatever is in trust, is precious. And these
things are in trust to me. If you can't lock the
door, I must sleep here all night along with them,
that's all."

Kester began to relent. His sulky fits seldom
lasted long, they gave him too much trouble,
and he was yielding to the fascination of his old
liking for Fritz, and the young fellow's pleasant
straightforward manner.

"Nay, nay, we'll manage better than that,"
he said. "You would be found dead of cold in
the morning. What are the things? Are they
too heavy to be moved?"

"Not a bit too heavy; only I had a thundering
long job strapping and packing them all on
this morning, and I didn't want to have it to do
over again. However," he added, after a glance
at old Josef's helpless face, "it's no use standing
talking all night, is it? Hang the trouble!
A little more, a little less, it won't kill me, I
dare say. If you'll iust be so good as hold the
lantern, that's all I'll ask you to do."

And Fritz set to work energetically, undoing
buckles and cords, and soon had the luggage
unpacked.

"There! That was easier to undo than to
do," said he, laughing, "and there ain't many
things in this world a man can say that of."
The packages consisted of two tolerably heavy
trunks, and a small square box. covered with
leather. With the landlord's help, Fritz dragged
them all across the yard, and piled them in one
corner of the kitchen; and then, after some
ablutions performed in an adjoining back chamber,
he returned to sit down to whatever supper
might be forthcoming. It was a better one than
might have been expected from old Josef's cry
of poverty; and over the meal Fritz Rosenheim
related how and why he happened to be making
that mountain journey so late in the year, with
but one horse and no travellers. The foreign
lady and gentleman with whom Laurier had
travelled as courier, and whom Fritz had driven
to Salzburg, had there met with some country-
people of their own, and had given them a glowing
account of the lake and mountain scenery
on the route. So charmed were the ladies of
the party with the description, that they resolved
on going by the same way to Ischl.

"They had too much luggage for a carriage
to take," said Fritz, "so they wanted part of it
sent on by carrier. They were not staying at
the Golden Cross in Salzburg, or I dare say I
should have got the job of driving them to Ischl;
but I know the Kutscher employed by their
landlord, he's one Hans Koch, a good sort of
fellow. He came to me one night, and
said that if I liked to undertake it, the landlord
of the Archduke Charles, where these
foreigners were staying, would employ me to
convey the heavy boxes to the hotel at Ischl.
Of course I said 'Yes.' It don't do to let
a chance of a job slip; especially as these are
about the last travellers we shall see till next
summer. The roads are getting very bad, as it
is. I thought I never should pull up that last
hill just before you come to Altenau, and
my load's none so heavy, either. However, here
I am, safe and sound, and the worst is over.
You see I was a little anxious, because they
specially warned me that that little leathern box
had valuables in it, and of courseâ??â??"

He stopped abruptly. Happening to look up,
he had caught Liese's lacklustre eyes fixed
unwinkingly on his face. She was drinking in
his words in her dull slow way, but with an
eager interest apparent in her heavy
countenance.

"Good evening, Liese," said Fritz. "I didn't
see you before."

"No; I've only just come in. Just this
minute I was up at the saw-mill with Heinrich
Amsel's mother. You were talking, and didn't
hear me come in. I don't know what you were
saying."

The last sentence was a piece of characteristically
clumsy cunning. Rosenheim laughed.

"Well, then," said he, "you must have
grown deaf since I saw you last, Liese.
However, I was not talking any great secrets."

But he did not resume the subject he had
been speaking of; and presently, when supper
was over, and the two women had washed and
put by the plates and dishes, Liese went off to
bed, saying she was tired; and her broad,
heavily shod feet were heard making the old
wooden staircase creak beneath their tread.

"I think our Liese is a great fool," said old
Josef, vithout taking his pipe from between his
teeth.

Fritz looked up with an amused smile, and
knocked the ash off the end of his cigar
against the stove, as he answered, "Well, I
don't just think she's the wisest woman in the
world, myself."

"No; but she's a great fool in one special
thing. She's always with those Amsels up at
the saw-mill. They're a bad lot, mother and
son. Heinrich is a wood-cutter by trade, but
four days out of six he is not at work in the forest
at all. He just hangs about here and there and
everywhere, skulking like a fox; and Liese is
with him every spare moment she has.

"But I thought she was betrothed to him,"
said Fritz.

"Didn't I say she was a great fool?" retorted
the old man.

Then he bade Kätchen get to bed, and hung
his smoked-out pipe by its green cord on a
nailâ??an infallible signal of his being ready to
go to rest. Kätchen took up her little copper
lamp with its wick floating in oil, and said,
"Good night," tripping up-stairs with a step
which her love-troubles had not yet robbed of
its spring.