THE KROTENKOPF AND THE KRAMER. 307 



and some chamois on one side of the Bischof. What 

 luck ! We crept along over the ground, as though we 

 feared to hurt the blades of grass ; and, carefully avoid- 

 ing the stones, stole softly onwards. And now the spot 

 is reached whence the game will surely be visible, and 

 we shall be able to get a shot ; and lifting our heads 

 slowly and carefully, our eyes sweep over the sides of 

 the hollow, expecting every moment to light on the 

 object of our hopes. But there is no need of all this 

 care, for not a creature is to be seen. We then ex- 

 amined the slot, and found that the stag had, at most, 

 eight points on his antlers ; he had gone over a shoulder 



himself might venture down. At last he too jumps from the brink into 

 the bed of the snow. He flounders out as best he can, and on and on, 

 desperately venturing everything to save himself from a dreadful death 

 of cold and hunger in those regions of torpor and solitude. But it must 

 not be forgotten that he had been walking the whole of the preceding day 

 and night, and again that day, without rest and with but little food ; and 

 it is not surprising therefore that at length his strength succumbed to 

 the overpowering exertion of wading through the snow. And he sank 

 at last, unable to move further. He had reached the lower part of 

 the mountain, just above the Eib See, and here he was found lying by 

 some smugglers, who by dangerous circuitous paths evade the look-out 

 men of the Custom-house. 



Bauer has never been like his former self since this adventure. I 

 met him a year or two ago at Berchtesgaden, where the King had 

 given him a place as under-forester, and the worthy fellow's face grew 

 quite radiant when he saw me waiting for him on the shore of the lake. 

 Nor was I less pleased to meet him again. His frank countenance wore 

 the same mild expression, but it bore deep traces of what he had under- 

 gone. His chest too hurt him. 



But since then another sad accident has befallen him. He was always 

 venturesome, and the most daring of climbers still. At seven in the 

 morning of the 21st of July, 1855, while after the chamois, he fell from 

 a wall of rock — the Kehlstein— sixty feet high, turning over tliree times 

 in his descent, into the Schatzkohl Alpe. He dragged hhnself to a hut, 

 where he was found still alive, though his head and back were terribly 

 mangled and bruised. His fall was occasioned by the loosening of a 

 stone. 



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