138 CHAMOIS HUNTING. 



he thought himself very lucky to have escaped with his 

 life." 



It is hardly possible to conceive a more terrible situa- 

 tion : the prospect of death, the solitude of the mountain, 

 the pains of hunger and cold during the long dreary 

 night, as he lay bound hand and foot, the thoughts of 

 home, and many other thoughts, — it must indeed have 

 been a state of mental agony. It seems to me that the 

 possibility of being saved, poor as the chance was, — for 

 who was likely to pass over the mountain ? — must have 

 added to his torment. The constant expectation, the 

 hope from hour to hour, still unrealized and yet clung 

 to with desperate tenacity, — all this, I think, was calcu- 

 lated to make his sufferings 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 passion- 

 ately fond of the chase, was always out on the mountains, 

 sometimes with the foresters, sometimes alone. He had 

 one day given a rendezvous to Max Solacher, and was al- 

 ready 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 circumstance. Soon after he went toward a spot 



* Probst has since married Maxl's eldest sister. 



