A small detachment of Bavarian infantry, now stationed at the Pontlatzer Brücke, made it unsafe to venture often, as before, into the valley. Such frequent coming and going would have excited suspicion; and the interval between suspicion and a drum-head tribunal was a short one, and generally had a bloody ending. Hans could do little more, then, than sit the livelong day on the brow of the cliff, watching the valley, straining his eyes along the narrow glen towards Landeck, or gazing over the wide expanse to the Kaunser-Thal. How often did his imagination people the space beneath with an armed host! and how did he build up before his mind’s eye the glitter of steel, the tramp and dust of mounted squadrons, the long train of ammunition waggons, the gorgeous staff--all the “circumstance of glorious war!” And how strangely did it seem, as he rubbed his eyes and looked again, to see that silent valley and that untrodden road, the monotonous tramp of the Bavarian sentry the only sound to be heard! On the chapel door the previous Sunday some one had written in chalk, “_Ist zeit?_--Is it time?” to which another had written for answer, “_Bald zeit_--It will soon be!” “Oh,” thought Hans, “that it were come at last!” And a feverish eagerness had so gained possession of him, that he scarcely could eat or sleep, starting from his bed at night to peep out of the window and see if the signal fire was not blazing. The devotional feeling is, as I have remarked, the most active and powerful in a Tyroler’s heart; and deeply intent as each was now on the eventful time that drew nigh, the festival of Easter, which intervened, at once expelled all thoughts save those pertaining to the solemn season. Not a word, not a syllable, fell from any lip evincing an interest in their more worldly anxieties. The village chapel was crowded from before daybreak to late in the evening; the hum of prayer sounded from every cottage; and scarcely was there time for the salutations of friends, as they met, in the eagerness to continue the works of some pious ritual. I know not if Hans Jörgle was as deeply impressed as his neighbours by these devout feelings; I only can tell that he refrained as rigidly as the others from any allusion to the coming struggle, and never by a chance word shewed that his thoughts were wandering from the holy theme. A very prying observer, had there been such in the Dorf, might perhaps have detected that the boy’s eyes, when raised in prayer, rested longer on the spot where the striped banners of Tyroler chivalry waved overhead, or that an expression of wild excitement rested on his features as the different groups, before entering the church, deposited their broadswords and rifles in the porch,--every clank of the weapons seemed to thrill through Hans’ heart.