She looked back once more. The snowy peaks of the Ferner glowed around in the morning light. "Still it is beautiful up here," she said with lingering footsteps. "Art sorry to come down yonder with me?" asked Joseph. "If thou wast to lead me into the deepest pit under the earth where no gleam of day ever shone, still I'd go with thee and never question nor complain," she said, and her voice sounded so wonderfully soft that Joseph's eyes were moist. There was a sudden rush down from the roof of the hut. "Oh, my Hansl--I'd almost forgotten thee!" cried Wally. "And thou--?" she said smiling at Joseph, "thou must make friends with him, for now you two are brothers in fate. I fetched thee from the precipice as well as him." So they went down the mountain side. It was a modest wedding procession, no splendour but the golden crown that the morning sunshine wove around the bride's head--no follower but the vulture that circled high in the air above them--but in their hearts was hardly-won, deeply-felt, unspeakable joy. * * * * * Up yonder on the giddy height of the Sonnenplatte where once "the wild Highland maid looked dreaming down," where later on she let herself into the depths of the gloomy abyss to rescue the beloved one, a simple cross stands out against the blue sky. It was erected there by the village community in memory of Wallburga the Vulture-maiden and Joseph the Bear-hunter--the benefactors of the whole neighbourhood. Wally and Joseph died early, but their name lives and will be praised so long and so far as the Ache flows. The traveller who passes through the gorge late in the evening when the bell rings for vespers and the silver crescent of the moon stands above the mountains, may see an aged couple kneeling up yonder. They are Afra and Benedict Klotz, who often come down from Rofen to pray by this cross. Wally herself it was who brought their hearts together, and to-day on the brink of the grave they still bless her memory. Below in the gorge, white, misty forms hover around the traveller and remind him of the "phantom maidens." Down from the cross there is wafted to him a lament as it were out of long-forgotten heroic legends, a lament that the mighty as well as the feeble must fade and pass away. Still this one thought may comfort him--the heroic may die, but it cannot perish from off the earth. Under the splendid coat of mail of the Nibelungen hero, beneath the coarse peasant frocks of a Vulture-maiden and a Bear-hunter--still we meet with it again and again. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: Lamb.] [Footnote 2: In most foreign countries the law provides that a certain portion of a man's estate is inalienable from his natural heirs.] THE END. * * * * * PRINTING OFFICE OF THE PUBLISHER. * * * * *