226 CHAMOIS HUNTING. 



body only you must contrive to wind through them ; 

 the long pole in your hand and the rifle at your back 

 must also accompany you, and every twig then seems 

 a hand and fingers grasping and pulling them back. 

 But when your work is to be done quietly, you groan 

 inwardly at every step you take. Indeed the caution 

 which, in this respect, it is necessary to observe, adds 

 immeasurably to your difficulty. If you dared trample 

 across the loose debris at will, you would find the 

 passage much easier ; and if you were not obliged to 

 bend yourself into deformity, to achieve some yards of 

 open space over which you dare, on no account what- 

 ever, look like the biped that you are, you would cover 

 the ground in half the time, and every muscle would 

 ache much less. 



In going home that evening a beautiful appearance 

 presented itself. The valley in front of us, where 

 Baierisch Zell lay, was filled with a mystic radiance, 

 and no one saw whence it came. Por it did not 

 hover over one part only, as shed by a foreign influ- 

 ence, but it was in the air, and emanated from it ; it 

 was the very air itself, which by some wonderful 

 transfusion had become softened light. But as every- 

 where else it was dark, whence came the halo-like 

 brightness that filled all the vale ? It was as though 

 angels had descended there, leaving behind them those 

 faint traces of their glory long after they were gone. 



It was only the moon. Though she had not yet 

 risen on us, from the other side of the mountain she was 

 shining on the valley through a dip in the hills. Pre- 



