142 Idylls of the FMd. 



forest ; now he takes wing, and with laboured flight 

 plunges down among the green waves below. 



Among the pines on the edge of the clearing, a 

 party of crested tits alight. Clinging with their tiny 

 feet to the brown clusters that hang thick under the 

 boughs, they split off the loose scales from the cones 

 in search of insects, or rummage among the long tufts 

 of grey lichen that drape these patriarchs of the forest. 

 Now climbing among the fir-cones, now swinging head 

 downwards, full of grace and life, they have the busy 

 lively ways of all their race, but they have less to say 

 to each other as they work, and the notes they utter 

 now and then are quite unlike the familiar voices of 

 their more common relations. 



There are generally a few black redstarts flitting 

 about among the rocks near the house, and if you keep 

 still they may even alight on the balcony by you as 

 you sit looking out over the landscape. 



It is but a few paces from the hostel to the lake. 



You make your way down to the water through a 

 group of swarthy mountaineers, who loiter round the 

 doorway. Picturesque of dress and pleasant of speech, 

 they are a turbulent race, these wild dwellers by the 

 lonely lake — slayers of the King's deer, smugglers of 

 contraband goods over the border, at feud with the 

 foresters and the frontier guard. 



Round the broken coastline runs a fringe of stones, 

 then a bright green line of grass and ferns, and every- 

 where a dense growth of pines that crowd to the shore 

 as if to bar the way. 



