The Herr Vicar grew grave. This was a case, indeed, not for humouring and coaxing, but for the sternest admonition. And he administered it without stint. With the simple directness of the Tyrolese priest, accustomed to deal with coarse, straightforward natures, he spoke the plain truth; he brought her future sin home to her with homely force and unvarnished language. In the first place, this young man clearly meant no good by her. That was obvious to everyone. Now, if he were one of her own sort, a faithful son of the Church, and a Tyrolese jäger, well, the Herr Vicar might, in that case, have been disposed, no doubt, to be somewhat more lenient. He admitted, while he deplored, the temptations and difficulties of a _sennerin’s_ life, and was never too hard on them. And besides, in such circumstances, the young man might mean in the end to marry her. But this Engländer assuredly meant nothing of the kind; and, what was worse, even if he did, the Herr Vicar could by no means approve of such a union. The Holy See, acting as ever on the Apostolic advice, “Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers,” disallowed and discouraged the union of Catholics with Jews, heretics, infidels, and other schismatics, under one or other of which unholy categories (and the Herr Vicar frowned) he must needs place her Engländer. True, the Holy Father was sometimes pleased, on good cause duly shown, to grant certain persons an exceptional dispensation. But even if the Engländer desired to marry her, which was scarcely likely, and even if he consented to invoke such aid, which was still more improbable, how could _he_, the Herr Vicar, knowing the young man’s circumstances, back up such a request?—how consign a lamb of his flock to the keeping of an infidel? Every sentiment of gratitude should bind her to Herr Andreas. Every feeling of a Catholic should turn her instinctively away from the false wiles of a schismatic. To all which theological argument, Linnet, raising her head, and wringing her hands, only answered once more, in a wildly despairing voice, “But I love him, I love him!” The priest saw at once this was a case for strong measures. Unless he adopted them, a lamb might slip from his pastoral grasp, a doubtful soul might stray for ever from the fold of true believers. He put on at once the set tone and manner of the confessional. It was no longer a question now of merely meeting Herr Andreas’s wishes—though Herr Andreas’s aid would be most useful indeed in the affairs of the parish; it was a question of preserving this poor sheep of his flock from everlasting perdition. What are a few fleeting years, with this lover or that, compared with an eternity of unceasing torment? The Herr Vicar was an honest and conscientious man, according to his lights; this poor girl was in deadly danger of her immortal soul—and that window for the chancel, which Herr Andreas vowed, would be a work of piety most pleasing to their holy patron saint, the blessed Valentin.