5 1 6 Notes on Sport and Travel x 



pail, carefully covered over, holding some two gallons 

 of sour milk, left by the charitable hay-man some 

 fortnight before, for the use of any benighted hunter 

 who might have the luck to stumble on the hut, and 

 one of those abominable one-legged milking-stools, 

 so common in that part of the world, which, having 

 vainly endeavoured to sit on it, and having tumbled 

 into the fire in consequence, to Joseph's intense 

 amusement, I hurled madly over the hay out into 

 the storm. 



As the clatter made among the shingles of the 

 roof by its hasty exit subsided, we heard a noise 

 which struck terror into both our hearts, and would 

 doubtless have chilled our very marrow if it had not 

 been below freezing-point already. Devils ! Berg- 

 geister ! Fly! Out into the black storm, over the 

 precipice, into the torrent, before some fearful mop- 

 ping and mowing face, too ghastly horrible for 

 human eyeball to see without bursting, or human 

 brain to conceive without madness, gibber out upon 

 us from that dark corner ! Listen, there it is again ! 

 And — mew-w-w-w-w ! down tumbled between us a 

 miserable, half-grown, gray kitten, nearly dead with 

 cold and starvation, doubtless absent on some poach- 

 ing expedition when the hut was deserted, and not 

 thought worth the going back for. Oh, the joy of 

 that unfortunate little beast at seeing man and fire 

 once more ! How she staggered about, with tail 

 erect, vainly trying to mew and purr at the same 

 time ! having to be perpetually pulled out of the fire, 



