artistically set.  To win them, he frequently had to spend more coins of the same value than the prize was worth—­especially as he was very generous with his money.  He also participated in all the chases of the surrounding country and won a name as a marksman.  Sometimes, however, he issued alone with his double-barreled gun and climbing irons, and once, it is said, returned with an ugly wound in his head.

In Millsdorf there lived a dyer who carried on a very notable industry.  His works lay right at the entrance of the town at the side toward Gschaid.  He employed many people and even worked with machines, which was an unheard of thing in the valley.  Besides, he did extensive farming.  The shoemaker frequently crossed the mountain to win the daughter of this wealthy dyer.  Because of her beauty, but also because of her modesty and domesticity she was praised far and near.  Nevertheless the shoemaker, it is said, attracted her attention.  The dyer did not permit him to enter his house; and whereas his beautiful daughter had, even before that, never attended public places and merry-makings, and was rarely to be seen outside the house of her parents, now she became even more retiring in her habits and was to be seen only in church, in her garden, or at home.

Some time after the death of his parents, by which the paternal house which he inhabited all alone became his, the shoemaker became an altogether different man.  Boisterous as he had been before, he now sat in his shop and hammered away day and night.  Boastingly, he set a prize on it that there was no one who could make better shoes and footgear.  He took none but the best workmen and kept after them when they worked in order that they should do as he told them.  And really, he accomplished his desire, so that not only the whole village of Gschaid, which for the most part had got its shoes from neighboring valleys, had their work done by him, but the whole valley also.  And finally he had some customers even from Millsdorf and other valleys.  Even down into the plains his fame spread so that a good many who intended to climb in the mountains had their shoes made by him for that purpose.

He ordered his house very neatly and in his shop the shoes, lace-boots, and high boots shone upon their several shelves; and when, on Sundays, the whole population of the valley came into the village, gathering under the four linden trees of the square, people liked to go over to the shoemaker’s shop and look through the panes to watch the customers.

On account of the love he bore to the mountains, even now he devoted his best endeavor to the making of mountain lace-shoes.  In the inn he used to say that there was no one who could show him any one else’s mountain boots that could compare with his own.  “They don’t know,” he was accustomed to add, “and they have never learned it in all their life, how such a shoe is to be made so that the firmament of the nails shall fit well on the soles and contain the proper amount of iron, so as to render the shoe hard on the outside, so that no flint, however sharp, can be felt through, and so that it on its inside fits the foot as snug and soft as a glove.”