156 HUNTING CAMPS. 



companionship gave me an immense amount of pleasure, 

 and who was responsible for such success as I obtained. 

 Early in our acquaintance a suspicion arose that the 

 dog, who, as I was proudly told by Peder, was account- 

 able for the death of sixteen elk, acted in months other 

 than September the part of bird hound that is to say, 

 he was accustomed to bay beneath trees on which caper- 

 cailzie or hjerpe were perched, until his master arrived 

 with a gun and shot them. But for all that he was a 

 useful dog with a fine nose. One of the interesting 

 points about Bismarck showed itself gradually as the 

 season advanced. A marked alteration took place in 

 his character day by day he went back more and more 

 to the mood of savage nature. At the outset an 

 affectionate animal, with a wagging tail and a keen eye 

 to the main chance, by the end of the three weeks 

 he would growl even at his master, and he ended the 

 season by attacking a farmer upon whose ground 

 we killed an elk. Undoubtedly the original strain 

 was strong, and perhaps not so very many genera- 

 tions have elapsed since the ancestors of Bismarck 

 chased the elk in wolf-packs as the wolves do to-day 

 during winter snows, though in the summer time they 

 withdraw to the higher ground of the mountains 

 towards Sweden. 



It is strange that the wolf, above all his brothers of 

 the wild, remains the chosen hero of legend and romance 

 from the nursery tale of Red Riding Hood up to the 

 present. His very name calls up a vision of the North, 

 and even those who know the slinking, nor always 

 mangeless, creature of fact are conscious of the touch of 

 glamour that hangs about his name. 



But though at that season no wolf was likely to be 



