Haspinger, the brave Capuchin, escaped unhurt to Vienna, in which Joseph Speckbacher, the greatest hero of this war, also succeeded, after unheard-of suffering and peril.--The Bavarians in pursuit of him searched the mountains in troops, and vowed to "cut his skin into boot-straps, if they caught him." Speckbacher attempted to escape into Austria, but was unable to go beyond Dux, the roads being blocked up with snow. At Dux, the Bavarians came upon his trace, and attacking the house in which he had taken refuge, he escaped by leaping through the roof, but again wounded himself. During the ensuing twenty-seven days, he wandered about the snow-clad forests, exposed to the bitter cold and in danger of starvation. During four consecutive days he did not taste food. He at length found an asylum in a hut in a high and exposed situation at Bolderberg, where he by chance fell in with his wife and children, who had also taken refuge there. The watchful Bavarians pursued him even here, and he merely owed his escape to the presence of mind with which, taking a sledge upon his shoulders, he advanced toward them as if he had been the servant of the house. No longer safe in this retreat, he hid himself in a cave on the Gemshaken, whence he was, in the beginning of spring, carried by a snow-ravine a mile and a half into the valley. He contrived to disengage himself from the snow, but one of his legs had been dislocated and rendered it impossible for him to regain his cave. Suffering unspeakable anguish, he crept to the nearest hut, where he found two men, who carried him to his own house at Rinn, whither his wife had returned. But Bavarians were quartered in the house, and his only place of refuge was the cow-shed, where Zoppel, his faithful servant, dug for him a hole beneath the bed of one of the cows, and daily brought him food. The danger of discovery was so great that his wife was not made acquainted with his arrival. He remained in this half-buried state for seven weeks, until rest had so far invigorated his frame as to enable him to escape across the high mountain passes, now freed by the May sun from the snow. He accordingly rose from his grave and bade adieu to his sorrowing wife. He reached Vienna without encountering further mishap, but gained no thanks for his heroism. He was compelled to give up a small estate that he had purchased with the remains of his property, the purchase-money proving insufficient, and he must have been consigned to beggary, had not Hofer's son, who had received a fine estate from the emperor, engaged him as his steward. [Footnote 1: Without any attempt being made on the part of the government to prepare the minds of the people by proper instruction, the children were taken away by force in order to be inoculated for the smallpox. The mothers, under an idea that their infants were being bewitched or poisoned, trembled with rage and fear, while the Bavarian authorities and their servants mocked their dismay.]