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Rh coy hero was hauled off to more commodious quarters across the way.

"That's the other side of the question," said I.

"What is?" said my pessimist.

"What that bit of copper stands for."

"The God that lives in man."

"The God that is born of war?"

"The God that is born of conflict."

"Did you ever see the Passion Play?" said my friend.

"I saw it once at Oberammergau," said I.

"Yes, I know," said he. "But it seemed to me so much of a business there, so much of a spectacle in a theater. I saw it many years ago in a more remote Bavarian village—a place visited by very few tourists."

"Do you mean Oberfells?" said I, for I had a vivid recollection of the place, with its vineyards, its cow-bells, its calvaries, and the circle of snow-covered sentinel mountains; its rushing torrent, whose roar, in the gorge below, only emphasized the sleepy quiet of the tiny hamlet. Just now I recalled too a charnel-house in the church, the walls lined with thousands of skulls and a life-size group of the Nativity in the crypt.

"Yes," said he, "Oberfells. You have been there?"