158 CHAMOIS HUNTING. 



found there was nothing more to be done at Kreuth, 

 I packed a few things in my rucksack, and driving 

 to Glass Hiitten, took thence a bye-path leading 

 into the valley of the Isar. The peasant who accom- 

 panied me was an intelligent fellow, and knew many 

 a story about those merry times when the mountains 

 were fuller of game than now. And Prince Lowen- 

 stein 1 how often had he been out with him when he 

 hunted there, and what sport % they had had ! He 

 talked about the gentlemen who used to join the 

 shooting parties, and was pleased to find that I knew 

 most of them. He had, it seems, been employed 

 as beater, and knew the mountains well, and every 

 Wand and difficult place. And still he kept on re- 

 counting about the past, as one does who has a yearn- 

 ing after remembered joys ; at moments cheerily and 

 with bursts of pleasure, and then with somewhat of 

 sadness in thinking that such days would never come 

 again. 



I was all the while admiring his nimbleness, as he 

 sped on before me over the broken ground. There 

 was an elasticity of step and an evenness in his pace 

 that never varied up hill or down, across the stony bed 

 of a torrent or over the smooth sward. He wore the 

 usual short leathern breeches, and as I looked at his 

 red-brown legs I well understood how, in former times, 

 the English gave the name they did to their north- 

 ern neighbours as a distinctive appellation ; and this 

 led me to think how in Scotland the whole country 

 used to be roused by just such messengers as he who 



