I.

Mr. Julius Hahn and his son Fritz were on a summer journey in the

Tyrol. They had started from Mayrhofen early in the afternoon, on two

meek-eyed, spiritless farm horses, and they intended to reach Ginzling

before night-fall.

There was a great blaze of splendor hidden somewhere behind the

western mountain-tops; broad bars of fiery light were climbing the

sky, and the chalets and the Alpine meadows shone in a soft crimson

illumination. The Zemmbach, which is of a choleric temperament, was

seething and brawling in its rocky bed, and now and then sent up a

fierce gust of spray, which blew like an icy shower-bath, into the

faces of the travellers.

"_Ach, welch verfluchtes Wetter!_" cried Mr. Hahn fretfully, wiping

off the streaming perspiration. "I'll be blasted if you catch me going

to the Tyrol again for the sake of being fashionable!"

"But the scenery, father, the scenery!" exclaimed Fritz, pointing

toward a great, sun-flushed peak, which rose in majestic isolation

toward the north.

"The scenery--bah!" growled the senior Hahn. "For scenery, recommend

me to Saxon Switzerland, where you may sit in an easy cushioned

carriage without blistering your legs, as I have been doing to-day in

this blasted saddle."

"Father, you are too fat," remarked the son, with a mischievous

chuckle.

"And you promise fair to tread in my footsteps, son," retorted the

elder, relaxing somewhat in his ill-humor.

This allusion to Mr. Fritz's prospective corpulence was not well

received by the latter. He gave his horse a smart cut of the whip,

which made the jaded animal start off at a sort of pathetic mazurka

gait up the side of the mountain.

Mr. Julius Hahn was a person of no small consequence in Berlin. He was

the proprietor of the "Haute Noblesse" Concert garden, a highly

respectable place of amusement, which enjoyed the especial patronage

of the officers of the Royal Guard. Weissbeer, Bairisch, Seidel,

Pilzner, in fact all varieties of beer, and as connoisseurs asserted,

of exceptional excellence, could be procured at the "Haute Noblesse;"

and the most ingenious novelties in the way of gas illumination,

besides two military bands, tended greatly to heighten the flavor of

the beer, and to put the guests in a festive humor. Mr. Hahn had begun

life in a small way with a swallow-tail coat, a white choker, and a

napkin on his arm; his stock in trade, which he utilized to good

purpose, was a peculiarly elastic smile and bow, both of which he

accommodated with extreme nicety to the social rank of the person to

whom they were addressed. He could listen to a conversation in which

he was vitally interested, never losing even the shadow of an

intonation, with a blank neutrality of countenance which could only be

the result of a long transmission of ancestral inanity. He read the

depths of your character, divined your little foibles and vanities,

and very likely passed his supercilious judgment upon you, seeming all

the while the personification of uncritical humility.

It is needless to say that Mr. Hahn picked up a good deal of valuable

information in the course of his career as a waiter; and to him

information meant money, and money meant power and a recognized place

in society. The diplomatic shrewdness which enabled him to estimate

the moral calibre of a patron served him equally well in estimating

the value of an investment. He had a hundred subterranean channels of

information, and his judgment as to the soundness or unsoundness of a

financial enterprise was almost unerring. His little secret

transactions on the Bourse, where he had his _commissionaires_, always

yielded him ample returns; and when an opportunity presented itself,

which he had long foreseen, of buying a suburban garden at a bankrupt

sale, he found himself, at least preliminarily, at the goal of his

ambition. From this time forth, Mr. Hahn rose rapidly in wealth and

power. He kept his thumb, so to speak, constantly on the public pulse,

and prescribed amusements as unerringly as a physician prescribes

medicine, and usually, it must be admitted, with better results. The

"Haute Noblesse" became the favorite resort of fashionable idlers,

among whom the military element usually pre-ponderated, and the flash

of gilt buttons and the rattle of swords and scabbards could always be

counted on as the unvarying accompaniment to the music.

With all his prosperity, however, Mr. Hahn could not be called a happy

man. He had one secret sorrow, which, until within a year of his

departure for the Tyrol, had been a source of constant annoyance: Mrs.

Hahn, whom he had had the indiscretion to marry before he had arrived

at a proper recognition of his own worth, was not his equal in

intellect; in fact, she was conspicuously his inferior. She had been

chamber-maid in a noble family, and had succeeded in marrying Mr. Hahn

simply by the fact that she had made up her mind not to marry him. Mr.

Hahn, however, was not a man to be baffled by opposition. When the

pert Mariana had cut him three times at a dancing-hall, he became

convinced that she was the one thing in the world which he needed to

make his existence complete. After presenting him with a son, Fritz,

and three rather unlovely daughters, she had gradually lost all her

pertness (which had been her great charm) and had developed into a

stout, dropsical matron, with an abundance of domestic virtues. Her

principal trait of character had been a dogged, desperate loyalty. She

was loyal to her king, and wore golden imitations of his favorite

flowers as jewelry. She was loyal to Mr. Hahn, too; and no amount of

maltreatment could convince her that he was not the best of husbands.

She adored her former mistress and would insist upon paying respectful

little visits to her kitchen, taking her children with her. This

latter habit nearly drove her husband to distraction. He stamped his

feet, he tore his hair, he swore at her, and I believe, he even struck

her; but when the next child was born,--a particularly wonderful

one,--Mrs. Hahn had not the strength to resist the temptation of

knowing how the new-born wonder would impress the Countess von

Markenstein. Another terrible scene followed. The poor woman could

never understand that she was no longer the wife of a waiter, and that

she must not be paying visits to the great folks in their kitchens.

Another source of disturbance in Mr. Hahn's matrimonial relations was

his wife's absolute refusal to appear in the parquet or the proscenium

boxes in the theatre. In this matter her resistance bordered on the

heroic; neither threats nor entreaties could move her.

"Law, Julius," she would say, while the tears streamed down over her

plump cheeks, "the parquet and the big boxes are for the gentlefolks,

and not for humble people like you and me. I know my place, Julius,

and I don't want to be the laughing-stock of the town, as I should be,

if I went to the opera and sat where my lady the Countess, and the

other fine ladies sit. I should feel like a fool, too, Julius, and I

should cry my eyes out when I got home."

It may easily be conjectured that Mr. Hahn's mourning covered a very

light heart when the dropsy finally carried off this loving but

troublesome spouse. Nor did he make any secret of the fact that her

death was rather a relief to him, while on the other hand he gave her

full credit for all her excellent qualities. Fritz, who was in cordial

sympathy with his father's ambition for social eminence, had also

learned from him to be ashamed of his mother, and was rather inclined

to make light of the sorrow which he actually felt, when he saw the

cold earth closing over her.

At the time when he made his summer excursion in the Tyrol, Fritz was

a stout blond youth of two and twenty. His round, sleek face was not

badly modelled, but it had neither the rough openness, characteristic

of a peasant, nor yet that indefinable finish which only culture can

give. In spite of his jaunty, fashionable attire, you would have put

him down at once as belonging to what in the Old World is called "the

middle class." His blue eyes indicated shrewdness, and his red cheeks

habitual devotion to the national beverage. He was apparently a youth

of the sort that Nature is constantly turning out by the

thousand--mere weaker copies of progenitors, who by an unpropitious

marriage have enfeebled instead of strengthening the type.

Circumstances might have made anything of him in a small way; for, as

his countenance indicated, he had no very pronounced proclivities,

either good or bad. He had spent his boyhood in a gymnasium, where he

had had greater success in trading jack-knives than in grappling with

Cicero. He had made two futile attempts to enter the Berlin

University, and had settled down to the conviction that he had

mistaken his calling, as his tastes were military rather than

scholarly; but, as he was too old to rectify this mistake, he had

chosen to go to the Tyrol in search of pleasure rather than to the

Military Academy in search of distinction.

At the mouth of the great ravine of Dornauberg the travellers paused

and dismounted. Mr. Hahn called the guide, who was following behind

with a horse laden with baggage, and with his assistance a choice

repast, consisting of all manner of cold curiosities, was served on a

large flat rock. The senior Hahn fell to work with a will and made no

pretence of being interested in the sombre magnificence of the

Dornauberg, while Fritz found time for an occasional exclamation of

rapture, flavored with caviar, Rhine wine, and _pate de foie gras_.

"_Ach, Gott_, Fritz, what stuff you can talk!" grumbled his father,

sipping his Johannisberger with the air of a connoisseur. "When I was

of your age, Fritz, I had--hush, what is that?"

Mr. Hahn put down his glass with such an energy that half of the

precious contents was spilled.

"_Ach, du lieber Gott_," he cried a moment later. "_Wie wunderschon_!"

From a mighty cliff overhanging the road, about a hundred feet

distant, came a long yodling call, peculiar to the Tyrol, sung in a

superb ringing baritone. It soared over the mountain peaks and died

away somewhere among the Ingent glaciers. And just as the last faint

note was expiring, a girl's voice, fresh and clear as a dew-drop, took

it up and swelled it and carolled it until, from sheer excess of

delight, it broke into a hundred leaping, rolling, and warbling tones,

which floated and gambolled away over the highlands, while soft-winged

echoes bore them away into the wide distance.

"Father," said Fritz, who was now lying outstretched on a soft Scotch

plaid smoking the most fragrant of weeds; "if you can get those two

voices to the 'Haute Noblesse,' for the next season it is ten thousand

thalers in your pocket; and I shall only charge you ten per cent. for

the suggestion."

"Suggestion, you blockhead! Why, the thought flashed through my head

the very moment I heard the first note. But hush--there they are

again."

From the cliff, sung to the air of a Tyrolese folk-song, came this

stanza:

Tell me, Ilka on the hill-top,

While the Alpine breezes blow,

Are thy golden locks as golden

As they were a year ago?

(Yodle) Hohli-ohli-ohli-ho!

Hohli-ohli-ohli-ho! Hohlio-oh!

The effect of the yodle, in which both the baritone of the cliff and

the Alpine soprano united, was so melodious that Mr. Hahn sprang to

his feet and swore an ecstatic oath, while Fritz, from sheer admiring

abstraction, almost stuck the lighted end of his cigar into his mouth.

The soprano answered:

Tell me, Hansel in the valley,

While the merry cuckoos crow,

Is thy bristly beard as bristly

As it was a year ago?

Hohli-ohli-ohli-ho!

Hohli-ohli-ohli-ho! Hohli-oh!

The yodling refrain this time was arch, gay--full of mocking laughter

and mirth. Then the responsive singing continued:

_Hansel_: Tell me, Ilka on the hill-top,

While the crimson glaciers glow,

Are thine eyes as blue and beaming

As they were a year ago?

_Both_: Hohli-ohli, etc.

_Ilka_: Hansel, Hansel in the valley

I will tell you true;

If mine eyes are blue and beaming,

What is that, I pray, to you?

_Both_: Hohli-ohli, etc.

_Hansel_: Tell me, Ilka on the hill-top,

While the blushing roses blow,

Are thy lips as sweet for kissing

As they were a year ago?

_Both_: Hohli-ohli, etc.

_Ilka_: Naughty Hansel in the valley,

Naughty Hansel, tell me true,

If my lips are sweet for kissing,

What is that, I pray, to you?

_Both_: Hohli-ohli, etc.

_Hansel_: Tell me, Ilka on the hill-top,

While the rivers seaward flow,

Is thy heart as true and loving

As it was a year ago?

_Both_: Hohli-ohli, etc.

_Ilka_: Dearest Hansel in the valley,

I will tell you, tell you true.

Yes, my heart is ever loving,

True and loving unto you!

_Both_: Hohli-ohli-ohli-ho!

Hohli-ohli-ohli-ho! Hohli-oh!

For a few moments their united voices seemed still to be quivering in

the air, then to be borne softly away by the echoes into the cool

distance of the glaciers. A solitary thrush began to warble on a low

branch of a stunted fir-tree, and a grasshopper raised its shrill

voice in emulation. The sun was near its setting; the bluish evening

shadows crept up the sides of the ice-peaks, whose summits were still

flushed with expiring tints of purple and red.

Mr. Hahn rose, yawned and stretched his limbs. Fritz threw the burning

stump of his cigar into the depths of the ravine, and stood watching

it with lazy interest while it fell. The guide cleared away the

remnants of the repast and began to resaddle the horses.

"Who was that girl we heard singing up on the Alp?" said Mr. Hahn,

with well-feigned indifference, as he put his foot in the stirrup and

made a futile effort to mount. "Curse the mare, why don't you make her

stand still?"

"Pardon, your honor," answered the guide stolidly; "but she isn't used

to the saddle. The girl's name is Ilka on the Hill-top. She is the

best singer in all the valley."

"Ilka on the Hill-top! How--where does she live?"

"She lives on a farm called the Hill-top, a mile and a half from

Mayrhofen."

"And the man who answered--is he her sweetheart?"

"Yes, your honor. They have grown up together, and they mean to marry

some time, when they get money enough to buy out the old woman."

"And what did you say his name was?"

"Hansel the Hunter. He is a garnet polisher by trade, because his

father was that before him; but he is a good shot and likes roving in

the woods better than polishing stones."

"Hm," grumbled Mr. Hahn, mounting with a prodigious effort.