Then quoth Charlie sturdily, glowering with his red-brown eyes: 'She loves the gipsies, like to me.' 'Charles, Charles!' said the vicar, 'I will not bandy words with thee. Forsake such evil company, and stick to thy Latin more.' 'I don't love Latin, Master Vicar, an' never shall.' 'Goodsooth, thou wilt and shall. What wouldst thou be? Wouldst idle here all thy days?' 'I'd be a soldier.' 'A soldier? An ungodly set!' 'Father says the priests are the ungodly ones.' At this the vicar held his peace in despair. 'I'd be a gipsy queen,' chimed in Deborah's treble voice. 'Dost not love the gipsies, Master Vicar? When I am a woman grown I'll run off and travel over the world--I will! Charlie does not love Latin; no more do I love Dame Marjory's lessons.' And forgetting her fear, she nestled up to the vicar's side and gazed up with her laughing dauntless eyes. At that moment the clank of horse's hoofs resounded on the stones of the court-yard. A TYROLESE CATASTROPHE. Many and varied are the calamities to which those people are exposed who have their abodes among the grim mountain fastnesses of Switzerland and the Tyrol, or indeed who live in any similarly situated region, where Nature still reigns in undisputed majesty, and manifests her power by those swift and awful catastrophes which strike terror to the hearts of all who come within their influence. In winter the snow falls heavily and constantly, and forms a huge overhanging mass, that overtops the often narrow pass below, and is suspended, like the sword of Damocles, by the slightest possible retaining hold; a trifling noise, such as the discharge of a rifle or even the prolonged blast of the Alpine horn, being sometimes sufficient to dislodge the vast snow-wreath, and send it gliding on its silent but deadly course towards the valley beneath. The destruction caused by the overwhelming avalanche is too well known to need description. Scarcely a Swiss hamlet or mountain pass but has its record of some sad calamity caused by the resistless force of those fatal snow-falls. Single travellers, parties varying in number, châlets, and even entire villages, have on different occasions been buried under the snow; no warning having been afforded to the hapless victims till the icy pall of death descended relentlessly upon them, and hid them, sometimes for long months, sometimes for ever, from their fellow-men.