perfect safety so far as the keepers were concerned, if we gave them a fee in the event of our meeting them, we agreed that we would make the excursion. We had only to go to the gunsmith’s in the town to borrow a couple of capital rifles, and to Karl was left the task of providing everything else we required. We were met by Ludwig at a hut on the side of the mountain, where, at Karl’s suggestion, we stopped to get a drink of milk. He was by no means so prepossessing in appearance as Karl; there was an air of recklessness about him which seemed to indicate greater familiarity with the pursuit of game in opposition to natural risks and gamekeepers. The first day was spent in climbing without either of us getting a shot, and towards evening, when we were all so tired that we could scarcely put one foot before the other, Ludwig led us to a cavity hollowed out of the friable stone which formed the side of the mountain at this place. The material displaced in this operation was heaped up in front of the cavity, and thus served not only to make it a more comfortable place of shelter, but also to screen the interior from the view of persons even at a short distance. Being heated and tired, we requested Karl to light a fire at once and make some tea; but before he did so he and Ludwig set to work to dig up the ground beneath the spot whereon it had been lighted on some previous occasion. On our inquiring the reason of their doing this, Karl told us Ludwig would explain it presently. At last the fire was lighted, the tea made, and our evening meal finished, and we were adding considerably to the smoke from the fire—which pervaded the hollow to an extent anything but agreeable—by that from our pipes, when I thought of the preliminary digging to which the hearth had been subjected.
My question on this matter was replied to by Ludwig.
“Between three and four years ago,” said he, “there was a man named Fuchs who lived in a hut lower down. He had one cow and some goats, and was not badly off; but he had a great passion for hunting, and he used to gratify this at all risks, but by a lucky chance the keepers could never lay hold of him. He had himself been a keeper some years before, and had been dismissed, it was supposed through information given by another keeper who had courted the girl Fuchs had married, that he was in the habit of shooting game for his own use. This keeper, who was better known as the Black Bear than by his real name, for some time after the dismissal of Fuchs, kept out of the way of the latter, fearing, and not without good reason, that in the event of their meeting in the mountains it might fare ill with him; and though the law was on his side, he was too much of a coward to trust himself within gunshot of the man he had injured. Years even had passed, and both had travelled from the sunshine of life into the shade, and yet they had never once spoken to each other; on the contrary, the enmity of the Black Bear seemed as strong as ever, for he was often heard to declare that if he ever caught Fuchs poaching on the mountains, he would shoot him with no more reluctance than he would a wild cat. It was perfectly well known to everybody round, that Fuchs did not keep his rifle for target shooting only, but though everybody knew this, he continued to set the law at defiance with impunity, till the occurrence of an event which terminated his career as poacher and farmer.
“One morning his wife came down in great affliction to the village nearest his hut to ask for help to seek her husband, who had been away among the mountains for four days, and to whom she feared some accident had happened. Her son had started in search of his father some hours before, and had not returned. Several men immediately left their work, and, staff in hand, began their journey through the woods and up and down the mountains in search of the missing man. They had divided themselves into parties of two each, and travelled in different directions. One of these parties found themselves at sunrise the next morning on the verge of a wood, into which they entered. The first rays of the sun penetrated between the trees here and there, and lighted up a golden path, till it was stopped by the trunk of a tree. To men in search of an object in the gloom of a forest, these glowing tracks were so many lures to attract the eye. Following one of them, it led to their perceiving the man they were seeking. He was sitting on the ground, his left side leaning against the trunk of a tree, and his head hanging down, as though he were asleep. Beside him lay his rifle, and about him numerous birds were hopping, as if aware he was no longer capable of injuring them, or else attracted to the spot by the sight or smell of the body of the chamois which lay behind him. His neighbours spoke to him, but he made no answer, and on one of them raising his head he had but just strength enough to open his eyelids and faintly murmur the words, ‘Bear—shot;’ and then he closed them again, to open them no more. He had been shot through the body.
“The men shouted, to attract the attention of their fellow-seekers; but instead of their calls being responded to by these, three foresters, among whom was the Black Bear, presented themselves. One of the men directly charged the last-named keeper with having caused the death of Fuchs, and he admitted it, but asserted that he had not fired till after Fuchs had fired at him. Of course the keeper was not punished. Fuchs was in the act of breaking the law, and not only that, but, according to the statement of the keeper, was the aggressor. This assertion neither the son nor the friends of Fuchs believed; and though his rifle had been fired, and the wadding was picked up close to his body, they asserted their belief that the Black Bear had himself fired it off after shooting its owner.
“Ernest Fuchs, the son, was at this time sixteen years of age. He was not much esteemed by his associates, being regarded as effeminate, a character he had acquired chiefly through his love of reading romances. After his father’s death he left off reading, and took to wandering about among the mountains, so that many thought the tragical end of his father had completed what romance-reading had begun, and that his brain was disturbed.
“Some eight or nine months after the event