THE RISS. 147 



feeling, a hunt of this kind hardly ever passes without 

 an accident of some sort happening to the men employed. 

 Occasionally too the mists -will rise suddenly, and spread 

 their impenetrable covering over the whole mountain- 

 range. They lie upon the air like a solid thing, and then 

 to move even is indeed perilous : a single step, and the 

 beater may tread, not on the firm ground, but on yield- 

 ing cloud, and toppling over go sinking through an ocean 

 of vapour to the craggy bottom. 



About such matters I heard much from my guide as 

 we walked on towards the Kiss ; for as soon as I found 

 there was nothing more to be done at Kreuth, I packed 

 a few things in my rucksack, and driving to Glass Hut- 

 ten, took thence a bye-path leading into the valley of the 

 Isar. The peasant who accompanied me was an intel- 

 ligent fellow, and knew many a story about those merry 

 times when the mountains were fuller of game than now. 

 And Prince Lowenstein ! how often had he been out with 

 him when he hunted there, and what sport they 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 recounting 

 about the past, as one does who has a yearning after re- 

 membered joys; at moments cheerily and with bursts 

 of pleasure, and then with somewhat of sadness in think- 

 ing 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 



