ii4 RAMBLES OF A VOfMINIS 



The notes grew fainter, and were lost. There was 

 no sound along the shore. No nutcrackers wrangling 

 in the tree-tops, no tits swinging on the long brown 

 cones, no buzzard on the solitary sky. 



At last the boat grated on the shingle, and we filed 

 into the shadows of the forest. 



Few tenants are there of these gloomy depths. 

 Roebuck rarely venture so far down. Stags seldom 

 leave their higher haunts unless to harry the green 

 crops of some solitary homestead. It is long since the 

 last bear was killed on this side the frontier. Under 

 the broad eaves of one of the houses in the village below 

 hangs still the trophy of the chase. Seventy years 

 the bare and grinning skull has mouldered on the 

 wall. 



We followed through the forest the footsteps of our 

 silent leader, crossed belts of straggling pines, stumbling 

 over unseen boulders, scrambling up slippery steeps of 

 rock. So dark was it when we reached the hut that we 

 had to feel for the door. 



It was a cosy nook. Behind it towered a sheltering 

 wall of rock ; on either side stood groups of pines, ghost- 

 like in the gloom. In the dim valley, three thousand 

 feet below us, a light was twinkling in some distant 

 village : a far-off belfry sounded the midnight hour. 



Round the red pine logs on the open hearth we slept 

 that night the hunter's sleep, and when the forester 

 roused us from our lair among the hay, the sky was 

 brightening to the dawn. 



We made a hasty meal. No fire was kindled now, 



