KREUTH. 119 



"It's two hundred yards," replied Solacher, "but 

 there is nothing else to be done. We cannot get 

 nearer to them : 'tis a chance if you hit ; however you 

 can but try." 



I therefore sat down, and resting my elbow on my 

 knee, prepared to fire. 



" Tell me which one you aim at." 



"The one to the left of the rock," I answered. 

 " Now he 's moving, that one," and my rifle thun- 

 dered in the hollow as if the whole mountain was 

 shaken down. " It 's missed, I know," I said at the 

 same moment. 



" It was a venture," he replied ; "at that distance I 

 too might have shot twenty times and missed. There 

 they go, but slowly," and the whole herd passed 

 along the bottom of the stony hollow. 



It was a wild place, that hollow ! We stood on the 

 brink of it; and before us, reaching up to the very sky- 

 line, was the rent in the mountain that frost or water, 

 or some other of the powerful agents by which Nature 

 works her changes, had made in its steep side. It 

 was like a stone-quarry, but of gigantic size, wild, 

 forlorn, and desolate. 



" There they go, but slowly," said Solacher, watch- 

 ing the retreating herd. " Now they stop and graze. 

 There 's one lying down, the maledite brood !" 



" Could we not get down to the right, and stalk up 

 round the mountain, and so meet them?" I asked, 

 not knowing the ground. 



" Yes, we might, but the wind is now coming up- 



