EIGHTH DAY. L39 



steadily on in a wide sweep, and passing close by me to the 

 right disappeared in the wood at my back. 



Some moments of suspense had passed, when I suddenly 

 heard on the hillside, a few hundred yards above me, a loud 

 disturbance like the noise of a stag rolling down through the 

 bushes. I did not know what this could be, and never for an 

 instant thought of the vulture ; but fancying that a wolf had 

 got hold of a deer, I hurried down to the valley to ask 

 the forester about it. I met him coming along breathless, 

 for he had heard the sharp cracking of the branches half a 

 mile away, and said to me, with a satisfied look, that he 

 thought it was caused by the falling vulture. 



We now climbed up the hill again to the place whence the 

 noise had appeared to come. Just above the nest the slope 

 of the hill was almost perpendicular, and we had some diffi- 

 culty in forcing our way through the thick copses of hazel ; 

 but on reaching a point several hundred yards above my 

 former ambush, we saw in one of them the vulture jammed 

 between two young beeches, with its wings stretched out 

 and quite dead. We hurried up to it in a pleasant state of 

 excitement, and by dint of hard work dragged it down the 

 rough hillside to our carts, which were standing by the brook 

 just at the very edge of the forest, about half a mile away. 



We had been shooting to-day a long distance from Cere vie, 

 in a district where the mountain-woods run pretty far back 

 into the interior of the country, and a broad belt of bare stony 

 outlying hills divides the true Fruska-Gora from the Danube. 

 Towards these hills we now drove through a charming valley 

 diversified with stony slopes, meadows, pastures, vineyards, 

 walnut-trees, and blossoming orchards. 



In about half an hour we came in sight of a village pictu- 

 resquely situated on the crest of the height. Flags were 

 flying on the church-towers, and merry music sounding in 

 the streets, for there was a sort of country fair going on after 



