We sat on our verdant patch enjoying the wild, grand scenery, the wind playing around us in concert with a little calf which had just been promoted to a bell. At length the figure of a tall young man flitted in front of a distant cross, and advancing toward us proved to be the solitary senner of Ober Kofel. As he was the lord of the domain, and moreover acquainted with Moidel, it was not many minutes ere he sat on the grass before us. After giving us a welcome, he began talking to Moidel about the military exercises which were to begin again this week. "The Ausserkofers," he said, "went down for the drilling immediately after their ascent of the Wild Gall: I am glad I was not drawn." Then Moidel communicated to him that Jakob must leave on the morrow for drill, and that Tilemaker Martin, Carpenter Barthel's son, would arrive in the morning to take his place as herdsman. The party now dropped into a dignified silence, which might have lasted as long as we had remained had it not appeared pleasanter to keep the senner intent on a story, rather than on each feature of our several faces. Speaking proper German, also proving to be understood by him, one of the group began: "Of course you have heard of the clever Tyrolese peasant, still living, Hans Jakob Fetz?" Neither he nor Moidel had ever heard of him, and as they both pricked up their ears, they learned the following: Fetz possesses a little farm called the Pines. It has, however, the disadvantage of lying on both sides of a wild rushing torrent, the Ache, a river given to inundations in the spring, and over which there is no bridge in his neighborhood. Thus, though Hans Jakob could sit at his door, and almost count the ears of corn in his fields across the river, he must make a circuit of five miles to reach them. Such an immense loss of time and labor troubled him no little, and, as he had no desire to sell his property, he determined by hook or by crook to remedy the evil. Day and night he turned the perplexing problem over in his mind. He might, to be sure, swim across, but then there were his tools to be carried. At last it flashed upon him: Why not make an aërial car? He bought for this purpose some very thick iron wire, stretched it in two parallel lines across the river, fastening the four ends very firmly; constructed a bench on iron rollers, which, sustained by the wire, ran across the river in a trice, and his aërial car was a reality. Here, indeed, was a triumph. It worked admirably, and the whole neighborhood became excited and astonished about the air-railway, as they called it. The news spreading, it brought finally some gentlemen from the town of Dornbirn, who were wild to have a ride across the river. Hans Jakob refused it: he doubted the strength being sufficient for more than one passenger; but they persisting in their urgent demand, he at last reluctantly consented. They would not, or else they could not, go without him.