Thus gravely intent she was indeed a child; but unconsciously, and in her beauty, grace, and stature, already a woman. “There’s none but my kin hereabout,” she said, and looked with shining eyes over the graves. She felt happy here, as she felt happy sitting between her father and mother at table, and lifting her spoon to her shapely mouth. She followed Andreas’s eyes: her look could be as steady as an animal’s, and, as it were, carry the look of another as it wandered.

Built into the church wall behind the Finazzer graves there was a big, reddish tombstone, with the figure of a knight on it, armed cap-à-pie, helm in arm, a little dog at his feet, with its paws touching a scutcheon. She showed him the little dog, the squirrel with the crown between its paws, and crowned itself, as a crest.

“That is our ancestor,” said Romana. “He was a knight, and came over from the Italian Tyrol.”

“So you are gentry, and the arms painted on the sundial are yours?” said Andreas.

“Why, yes,” said Romana with a nod. “It is all painted in the book at home that is called The Roll of Carinthian Nobles. It goes back to the time of Emperor Maximilian I. I can show it to you if you like.”

At home she showed him the book, and took a real child’s delight in all the handsome crests. The wings, leaping bucks, eagles, cocks, and a green man—nothing escaped her, but her own crest was the finest, the little squirrel with the crown in its paws—it was not the most beautiful, but she loved it best. She turned over the pages for him, leaving him time to look. “Look! Look!” she cried at each page. “That fish looks as fierce as a fresh-caught trout—what a hideous buck!”

Then she fetched another book: the pains of hell were pictured there, the tortures of the damned arranged under the seven deadly sins, all engraved on copper. She explained the pictures to Andreas, and how each punishment arose exactly from its sin. She knew everything and said everything, frankly and artlessly, and Andreas felt as if he were looking into a crystal holding the whole world, but it was innocent and pure.

They were sitting side by side in the big room on the window-seat running round the embrasure; then Romana stopped and listened, as if she could hear through the wall. “The goats are home. Come and look at them.” She took Andreas by the hand, the goatherd put down the milking-pail, the goats crowded round it, trying to get their swollen udders in. There were fifty of them; the goat-boy was quite beleaguered. Romana knew them all. She pointed out the most vicious and the quietest, the one with the longest hair and the best milker. The goats knew her too, and came running to her. Over by the wall there was a grassy spot. Hardly had the girl lain nimbly down when a goat was standing over her to let her drink, and struggled to stay there till she had sucked, but Romana sprang behind a barrow, drawing Andreas by the hand. The goat could not find the way, and bleated piteously after her.

Meanwhile Romana and Andreas climbed the spiral staircase of the turret looking towards the mountains. At its top there was a little round room, where an eagle was huddled on a perch. Across its stony face and lifeless eyes a light flashed, it raised its wings in faint joy, and hopped aside. Romana sat down beside it and laid her hand on its neck. Her grandfather had brought it home, she said, when it was barely fledged. For as to clearing out eyries, he had not his like for that. He never did much else, but often he would ride far away, climb about, track down the eyrie somewhere in the rocks, rouse the countryfolk, the cowherds, and huntsmen, and make them tie the longest ladders together or let him down on ropes almost out of sight.