UP THE MOUNTAIN. 243 



the place where the corpse lay, asked, before the body, 

 1 Were you not out in the mountains V ' Yes,' he an- 

 swered, 'but not on Thursday/ 'You lie!' they all 

 shouted : ' you shot him/ They then beat him so un- 

 mercifully that he was soon unable to speak, and could 

 only hold up his hand imploring mercy." 



"And what became of the poor fellow?" I asked. 



" He was ill for a long time, and will never quite re- 

 cover ; he must have received some very severe internal 

 injury, for though he still goes about, he is quite a dif- 

 ferent person to what he was before." 



" And were any of the men punished ?" 



" The doctor, who was a thorough radical, said the 

 injuries the young forester had received were slight, and 

 the punishment therefore was also a slight one, as for a 

 misdemeanour only. Among the mob were two or three 

 common-councilmen (Gemeinde Rathe), and there they 

 are still." 



We were going onwards up the stony road, when 

 Neuner said, " Yonder to the left is a salt-lick : it is as 

 well to look if anything is there." 



We left the path accordingly, and passed among the 

 firs with which all this part of the mountain was covered. 

 There was little need of choosing our way here, for in 

 front a mountain torrent rushed along so boisterously, 

 as completely to drown the sound of our footsteps over 

 the dry prickly leaves. We came to the edge of the 

 bed of the stream, a deep and broad gulley torn and 

 broken up, and desolated by the swollen torrents which 

 come sweeping down from the mountain-tops in spring- 

 time. Heaps of rock and large stones were piled in the 

 middle of the broad bed, besides whole trees, dried and 

 sapless as the very stones themselves, which had been 

 flung there like wrecks. 



R 2 



