THE HIGHLANDS OF THE SWEDISH DIVIDE. 247 
heavy ground, steep and intercepted with interminable 
ravines. The trio wandered aimlessly upward ; for some 
reason they never laid down—at any rate, not for more 
than an hour—and at 4 p.m. they had turned and 
commenced feeding back, down-wind. This, of course, 
trebled the work on our part, owing to the endless 
detours now necessary ; but we stuck in, and late in 
the evening knew by Jeta that we were coming up. 
The elk were then (we assumed) feeding down-wind 
towards an abrupt crag that rose like a Gibraltar in the 
forest. A treeless bog flanked the crag, and by a hard 
run around this (nearly a mile), skirting the forest- 
fringe, Johannes reckoned we should gain the weather- 
gauge and so meet the game, coming in, face to face. 
All this we actually performed ; all that we had 
anticipated and striven for actually occurred. 
We accomplished that terrible sprint, gained the 
wind, and climbed the steep. Half-way up that crag, 
in a hollow amphitheatre of rocks, we had all three elks 
within fair shot. But we did not know it. The light 
shifting air in a confused ravine now played us a trick 
as false as ever hunter suffered ; not only did the traitor 
breeze refuse the required scent to Jeta right in its 
course, but it conveyed it to the cow-elk directly to wind¬ 
ward and a hundred feet above us. She went off with 
a crash, followed by her calf. I just distinguished the 
hornless heads, and sank down on a rock, “ pumped ’ 
with the long run and hard climb. The bull at that 
moment stood even nearer—within eighty yards, and 
on the same level. Something like a great grey patch 
of the mountain-side began moving—within the instant 
the rifle was at my shoulder, covering the next opening. 
