He smiled and said, "Do your work betimes, and then rest; and where better than under the shadow of the cross?" "Yes, and the crucifix which you have chosen is more pleasing than the generality which are sown broadcast over the fields of the Tyrol. Why are they made so hideous and revolting?" We spoke out freely, because the unusually intelligent face before us evidently belonged to a thinker. Candor of speech pleased him. Nevertheless, he answered as if musing, "They appear ugly to you: well they may be. Ja, but the most who look upon them are men and women acquainted with many sorrows--sudden deaths by falls from precipices, destruction of house and home by lightning, floods, avalanches, failure of crops, and many another visitation--and it soothes their perhaps selfish natures to see these anguished features, these blood-stained limbs--signs of still greater suffering--whilst they pray that only such crosses may be laid on them as will keep them in obedience to His will. Just before you came up the hill I was thinking of a strange history connected with a crucifix--one that I read only ten days ago in the house of a Hochmair himself." It merely needed silence for Schuster Alois to repeat the tale, and he soon began: "It is the Tyroler Adolph Pichler who narrates it. He says that once in his rambles he came to a little chapel, over which hung a blasted larch--such a desolate wreck of a tree that he naturally asked the guide he had with him why it was not cut down. Now, the guide was an old man who knew every, tradition and legend, besides all the family histories in that part of the Tyrol. 'That tree,' said he, 'is left there purposely, as the reminder of a great crime, and nobody would think of touching it. If you look into the chapel, you'll see a Christ on the cross which has been shot through the breast. That was once a crucifix under this very tree.' Then the guide made a remark which had often struck myself--that there are some families in which everything that is strange and dreadful happens, whilst there are others that go on for generations and are no more distinguishable than the very weeds themselves. In that valley were the Hochmairs, and they were of this prominent sort, and odd enough, as I said before, it was at a Hochmair's house that I read this account. Well, some generations back there was a Hochmair who was a regular ruffian. He cared no more for the life of a man than that of a chamois. The government kept the game strictly on the mountains, and he was suspected of having put more than one of their keepers out of the way. In short, he had such a bad character that when he went to confession the priest would not give him absolution. This put him in a great rage, and it is remarkable that from that day his luck in hunting forsook him. He could not take aim--a sort of mist was ever before his eyes, his hand trembled. People believed that he was perpetually haunted by the ghost