BETWEEN the Danube and the Neckar, high in the bleak hill country known as The Rough Alp, perched the hamlet Hexenfels. Grim rocks grouped in evil counsel dominated the barren land peasants flat roofs would have whirled away were they not freighted with heavy stones and nothing man, mouse, or moss could well exist unless hardy enough to defy the long sweep of icy winds that bat tled here with fury all unspent, though they had rushed from the far frozen north across a continent. Close behind the poor cottage of Dionysius the weaver towered the Witch-Tooth, a formid able crag, sparsely overgrown with patches of straggling bushes, vines, stout small leaves, and a few flowers of undismayed tempera ment. The child Vroni born naughty when sent in the legitimate course of things to feed hens was wont to dash off to the allur ing rocks and loiter royally. Climbing swift and sure where seemed no foothold for a goat, she busily would amass a large store of treas ures leaves, bits of moss, an owl s feather, a trailing stem quite bare but good for skippingrope, a gaunt wiry stalk most excellent for a switch, and from the crevices pretty arabis. Always seeking to grasp more, she would let fall and lose her precious hoard, since desir able things were legion, and of greedy little hands she had but two, these indeed in great demand, as, monkey-like, she clung, hung, swung, and lifted herself along her zig-zag course. In midsummer she would venture high, and higher, for gay wild pinks, quot quot weather-pinks, say the Suabian Highlanders, until recalled to earth by her irate mother down below, shouting, when fate willed, against the wind, and clapping soundless but portentous palms. The great chidingvoice was now so wee and impotent, the powerful stature so unintimidating, the child felt bound to stop short, hold her sides and laugh, flinging down from her cyry peals of wicked glee and mockery, Heart s Dearest 3 floating haply on the wind, while ostensibly scrambling earthward, yet never too fast for manifold dalliance with brambly delights. Vroni herself was not unlike a mountain pink, bold, lithe, lawless, vivid in color, careless of wind and weather. Perchance a stray goat, chased from afar by some breathless peasant lad, and overtaken at last in these witchy wilds, first traced with inconsequent nibbling the site of Hexenfels. Surely no less erratic, no more responsible spirit ever could have chosen so inhospitable a spot of earth for the struggle for life, and even a moderately well-endowed goat ought to have done better for himself. Had the place possessed conceivable advantages, the ruins at least of a feudal castle would have haughtily affirmed them. But not even a Potz-Blitz robber knight had found it worth while to establish in this desolate region the lofty and lineal seat of his depredations. Far from the high-road, difficult of access, unmolested by tourists, quite beyond the strenuous hum of modern progress, Hexenfels remained what it had been for centuries, an isolated and humble community of toilers. Thirty mean cottages, or rather huts, with 4 Dionysius the Weaver s their clumsy, stone-laden roofs dulness, tame- ness, dreariness beyond words, pessimistic fowls slowly strutting across a dirty street, an oppressive torpor, a singular dearth of popu lation in short, a squalid travesty of the sleeping palace of enchanted beauty, and noth ing at all alive except themind, thus would the urban stranger who never arrived behold Hexenfels...