THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
skilful Zaftchuk employed was brought to nought, and I am scarcely a 
novice at the art of timber hunting, yet we were utterly defeated at Magura 
by two of the cleverest stags with whom I have ever crossed weapons. They 
were fine antagonists, but I do not consider that they quite played the 
game on those two mornings when they glided away simply on the chance 
of our being there. 
Nicolo was one of those men who must always be working. To him 
the calling of a hunter was the only thing worth living for. Even when 
he was sitting still he was working his brain and thinking out all sorts 
of weird plans. His stern expression never relaxed. He would light his foul 
brass pipe, take two or three hard puffs, and gaze at his sharp -pointed 
cowhide veldt schoens with intense absorption. Then he would spring up, 
place my coat on the ground, and command me to lie down with an ex- 
pression that seemed to imply that he would surely kill me if I moved 
before he returned. Whereupon he would creep off into the forest for one, 
two or three hours, returning with a broken twig, a piece of frayed velvet 
from an antler, or some fresh dung, significant emblems of the proximity 
of game. All the while he would mutter in an unintelligible language to 
himself as if arguing out a difficult problem in which he was both ques- 
tioner and answerer. Sometimes he would take me for tremendous walks 
through the mountains on the chance of hearing the voice of some travelling 
stag, and in one of these we came across the dead body of a large wolf. It 
is a great misfortune to be unable to converse with your companion in 
the forest, and I never felt it more than in the presence of Zaftchuk. He 
was a man above the rest, and I should have loved to have heard the story 
of his early life and adventures, when he went in daily fear of death or 
imprisonment. Poaching in Austria is not what it is in England to-day. 
A man there does not do it for gain, but purely out of love of adventure and 
the joy of the chase. In the mountains of Hungary, the Carpathians, and the 
Tyrol, the poacher is a man in the best sense of the word, and knows that 
he takes his life in his hands when he creeps across the frontier at dawn to 
have a shot at some stag or chamois buck he has marked across the march. 
The gamekeepers and forest watchers are equally fine fellows and are 
also armed. If the two meet they both shoot to kill, for it is one man’s 
life or another’s. Of the many stories of heroic combat the following, told 
me by Prince Franz, is one of the best, and can be attested, as the incidents 
occurred in his forest in the Tyrol. 
Karl was a famous poacher of great strength, skill and daring. He lived 
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