THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
hear him. Besides, worst of all, we could not possibly see him until we were 
within twenty yards, and no deer would stand ‘ at gaze ’ so close as that; 
he would spring from his bed, and we should never see him again.” 
“ Well,” said Kristian doggedly, “ I know elk; he is an utter fool when 
the wind is like this, and if you would come now you would see we should 
have him.” 
I would not budge, however, till the elk got up and moved into a better 
position, and for the present, though I used my glass from various points 
to get a better view, nothing beyond a grey spot could I make out. In the 
meantime I sent Kristian high up the mountain to my left, to a point which 
I knew must command a view of the whole valley and its seven -foot 
birches, and after about an hour’s absence he returned with the intelli- 
gence that the beast was a four-year-old bull with a poor head. 
Two hours passed away; then a third, and I was chilled to the bone with 
the bitter wind now sweeping off the snows — very impatient, too, for it 
seemed as if the beast was never going to rise again in this world, as, in 
fact, he never did. At last, much against my better judgment, Kristian 
overcame my scruples, and we started towards the elk, now some 400 
yards distant. During the subsequent stalk up the bed of the stream and 
through the birch -copse I must have called myself at least twenty times 
an ass of the first magnitude and more than once I all but determined to 
return and wait, for I felt all the time that in transgressing the laws of 
venery where deer are concerned I was only courting disaster. We crept 
on, however, win or lose, until I knew that we must be within 100 yards of 
our quarry, and then, taking a line to follow through the bushes, I parted 
the opposing twigs as if my life depended upon doing so without noise. 
At last I reached the rock which from our spying -point seemed almost to 
touch the quarry, and to my great relief I caught sight of a long grey back 
lying on the ground before me, barely twenty yards away. Raising the rifle 
to my shoulder, I pressed the trigger, and without a move my second 
elk lay stone dead. 
“ Did not I tell you what a fool he is sometimes ? ” remarked Kristian, 
with a delighted smile as he beckoned to Elias to join us. He certainly did, 
and I was not in the least disposed to lessen his joy at the verification of 
his words; but, though conscious that from the Norwegian point of view 
arguments about other deer did not apply, I could not refrain from saying, 
“ There is no other deer on earth that would have allowed such a liberty.” 
After the gralloch down by the waterside, we were soon on the go again, 
274 
