148 CHAMOIS HUNTING. 



constant expectation, the hope from hour to hour, still 

 unrealized and yet clung to with desperate tenacity, 

 all this, I think, was calculated to make his suffer- 

 ings greater than if there had been no hope. With 

 what intense longing, with what an acute sense, must 

 he have listened for a sound ! And through the 

 night, as he lay looking up to the stars, how must he 

 have yearned for the morning, and have been solaced 

 when at last he saw it stealing upwards over the 

 sky*! 



But although the poachers always took signal ven- 

 geance on the gamekeepers whenever they got them 

 into their power, on one occasion they refrained from 

 ill-treatment; it is true, however, in this case the 

 person whom they met was not a forester : it was the 

 young Count D * * *, then quite a youth, and who, 

 being passionately fond of the chase, was always out 

 on the mountains, sometimes with the foresters, some- 

 times alone. He had one day given a rendezvous to 

 Max Solacher, and was already on the mountain near 

 the place of meeting, when he heard a shot. He 

 fancied it was Max, who on his way had fired at a 

 vulture or some bird, and took no notice of the cir- 

 cumstance. Soon after he went toward a spot where 

 he thought he might find Max, and coming to a 

 kind of " saddle" in the mountain, looked over. His 

 dog had been for some minutes very restless, and 

 thinking it was game he had scented, he reproved 

 him silently by a sign with his hand. But in peering 



* Probst has since married Maxl's eldest sister. 



