The path had become broader and more beaten. There was a gradual sense of some human being, either from personal or unselfish interests, having once been at work to make the woods still more attractive and enjoyable. Benches of flat stones were raised at points where snow-fields, fantastic and stern dolomite peaks and wooded slopes formed exquisite pictures set in frames of stately, well-grown fir trees--here a smooth lawn with its little shrine and wooden seat for the wayfarer to meditate on the Flight into Egypt, which Jörgel called the "witches' ground;" there, under a spreading tree, a rural table and seats--proofs that we must be approaching the bath-house; and no little were we pleased by these signs of care and judgment, especially as none of the rural bowers were either bran-new or in a state of decay, but harmonizing with the tidy negligence of the woods themselves. "These paths promise well for the baths," we remarked to Jörgel. "Might have done so once," he replied, "but it was the old Frau Wirthin who put them up. She was a woman with a head and a will, and she took a pride in the place, seeing that the baths are as old as the mountains, and they had been in her family since the Lord made the Tyrol. Now they are in the hands of her son Seppl and his sister Moidel. However, I never mix myself up in what does not concern me. The master is at liberty, and so is she, and it is not for me or my old Nanni to speak against unmarried people. Both they and we are bound for _Herzing_ when we die, the spinsters to howl in the moor and we men in the wood. That is what the lads and lasses say of us;" and he gave a dry little laugh. "Ask my opinion of the water, and I'll answer you straightforward. It's an elixir, a perfect elixir;" and he repeated the sentence with the proud consciousness of using a dictionary word. "As for the house, the master and the old maid, judge for yourselves, or ask them that sent you here." So saying, he sturdily marched on ahead, as if fearing to be compromised. We did not feel encouraged, especially with night steadily falling down upon us. Still less was the future hopeful when Jörgel pointed with his stick in advance, exclaiming, "Arrived at last!" Yes, arrived at an old weatherbeaten chalet, with a crazy barn to keep it company, dilapidated and tottering as if in the bankruptcy court, standing abruptly on the borders of the black fir wood, the air filled with the odor of concentrated pigstye; dark male figures playing at skittles on the path, and having to stop the game to enable us to reach the door; black male figures playing at cards and drinking wine in the dusky, close old parlor or _stube_, made still more gloomy by the large, projecting brick stove, unlighted at this season of the year. We should never have proceeded on a voyage of discovery had not the thick folds of a woman's yellow petticoat flickered before us on the steps of a smoke-stained ladder.