patience and foot-weariness he responded with a cheery, 'Mais courage, mon ami, courage! Nous sommes déjà arrivés!' which only added mild insult to injury. À la chasse comme à la

chasse!' we retaliated.

We mounted ridge after ridge of glorious mountain scenery, the air crisp and fresh, savoury to the nostril, frozen patches of autumnal snow lighting up the open glades, leaving plane tree and maple, chestnut and oak, and at last reaching a grand forest of beech and bracken with clumps of Coniferæ to add to the effect.

The mist which enshrouded certain parts of the trail was soon dispersed by the rising sun. We cried a halt at the edge of the forest quite on the summit of Mount Houmea, and strung out at once for our first drive. Thirty-one guns did we muster at the cover side a motley crew indeed. English and French in tweeds and homespun, Turkish soldiery topped with the fez, white-petticoated Albanians in fustian and fustinella, big-bagged Bulgars with silver buttons, shepherds, wood-cutters and charcoalburners, in sheep and goatskins of the wildest but most picturesque appearance-all armed with quaint flintlocks and percussions, pistols and yataghans.

Organisation there was none, only seven men condescended to beat the dripping beech-scrub, and all wanted to secure the likeliest post. Direction of wind was never entered in their journals, but they were all as keen as needles, and so richly deserved the failure they had through carelessness cultivated. Their pride intercepted their sport, of argument they would have none! Ignorant of their Bulgar patois, we were unable to advise or attempt the control of such independent Bashi Bazouks. A more vociferous, undisciplined crew could not have been collected. The seven beaters, dividing into two parties for mutual guidance and protection, walked up both sides of the vale, each in single file but together, shouting their weird, harmonious cow-calls and making the best of their way through the thickly wooded valley. To chance was left the direction the game was to break, and as we only lined one side of the cover, whatever showed over our crest of the ridge was purely accidental. The guns were extended at about 200 yards' interval, out of sight of each other in most cases, but even then rather too adjacent for ball practice.

Our first anxiety was to conceal our protecting attaché; too obdurate to be disposed of, we first removed his Snider carbine and then the white handkerchief round his fez, and at last persuaded him to hide behind the massive trunk of a fallen giant. We then

selected a spot just wide of the trail, evidently a well-used run by pig and deer, squatted low on the root of a tree, and peered through the wet mist. No objects could be seen distinctly at anything over twenty yards, even when clear of the dense beech scrub.

Meanwhile the beaters could be heard far below, their longdrawn howls coming and going in the fog, sounds weird enough to frighten everything for miles around out of the cover. The jump, jump, jump of a heavy deer made us quite forget how wet and cold we were getting; clutching our smoothbore we wondered whether our gabardine suit was a match for the tree trunk on which we were silently sitting.

But nose comes before eye

sight in a mist on the hill, and the tainted fog disclosed our proximity the same instant as the animal sprang into sight. Too indistinct to fire at, his great white chest offered a hazy target to draw a bead on, and before even the gun could be steadied to the shoulder, one startled bound took him back into cover.

As the phantom hart vanished like a dream, we were aroused by so loud a calling we fancied the brigands were on us; it was only Abrahim Bey attracting our attention to the disappearing deer, which at once broke into a hard gallop along the slope. We could have shot our noisy jack-in-the-box for altering the line of this fine beast, more especially as he would have passed within

shot of where we afterwards found the next gun in ambush. We waited in vain till the drive was over; but luck had departed from our side, not to return at all during that expedition. The next gun W. had fired at a roebuck a single shot, but the bullet was placed rather far back, and the game little buck held on for some miles before he was found by a wily beater. This Esau proved to be a cunning hunter, skilfully tracking the slot and occasional drops of blood without the aid of a dog, until he had worked out the puzzle and come up to his quarry. Nature had educated him from his youth up to supplement his wretched living by his knowledge of woodcraft, for by trade he was a charcoal-burner. His lessons had not been wasted. Fortunatus et ille qui novit

agrestes !'

The beaters had also fired several shots at pig breaking back, the old boars, cunningly enough, refusing to face the open with their sounders behind them, the breeze blowing off the ridge being contaminated by the strong scent of man. Armed with their very questionable firelocks, loaded with Turkish Régie powder (barely fit for squibs) behind a handful of slugs, the beaters knew themselves no match for an angry boar, of all animals the most courageous. A wolf, large though solitary, was never passed by on the other side. Several times did they own to having shirked a sounder of pig when led by a grizzly old boar; and these were bold hunters of all manner of game, sans peur if not sans reproche, and not likely to err on the side of discretion. One gun reported a fine stag having broken close to his post; he had missed him clean, and his neighbour had followed suit. Their six-foot bundooks were incapable of a pattern at the running deer, and still less at the wild animal on the jump.

A second drive moved more roebuck the wrong way, and the same grand-headed stag again faced the open, bravely running the gauntlet of other firelocks, but selecting those handled by the Régie powder brigade with penetrating discrimination.

Disgusted with the disorderly state of our desperadoes, we devoted our lunch-hour to drawing plans on the snow, our guide interpreting how beating should be carried out in its simplest form. This pantomimic display was treated with roars of ribald laughter, loud enough to disturb every head of game from Houmea to high Olympus; and their merriment was so genuine, so hearty, we were fain to join in, fashed as we were.

We sadly recalled a sambur drive we had taken part in fifteen years before, organised and conducted by the Sultan of Johore, through some of the stiffest jungle the tropics can produce. Not

a man out of place, portions of the forest enclosed with cane snares, the game driven to the six guns well posted in the open glades, and the work admirably executed; temperature 89° F. in the shade; latitude 1° N. To make it complete the finest head was secured by his Excellency the Governor of the Straits Settlements, for whom the sport was intended.

Here, with a bracing atmosphere of 30° F., over crisp snow, through covers open enough to render it facile preserving one's line, where the guns themselves divided the spoil amongst their own families, success was marred by the ignorant arrogance of these haughty Turks.

Little use was it shedding tears, such as angels weep, over the slovenly habits of these hill robbers. Not knowing ten words of their lingo, our remonstrance, 'disce aut discede,' fell wide of the mark, and as far as we personally were concerned, not a trigger was touched from first to last.

Our third drive was a little more satisfactory, but the beaters were too slow starting, and the old stag, now thoroughly on the alert, broke cover like an old Jack hare directly they began, and trotted across the open meadow where we had just had lunch. Two of the troopers instantly opened with their Sniders at an almost impossible range; adjusting their sight and judging their distance were mere details not mentioned in their drill-book, so their fire was directed rather handy to the beaters, and did no harm to the grand stag that had pulled up short to watch the proceedings. He carried a royal head, and had evidently been hunted more than once before. His respect for the musketry course Abrahim and Yousouf had passed through could not have been increased. But their noisy shouts annoyed him most, and must have put him in mind of the midnight howl of his silent enemy, Brer Wolf; so he calmly cocked his tail and trotted over the ridge back into the very forest whence he came.

Another two-year-old stag, afraid to break in the face of such a fusillade, was pushed along by the beaters right up to the guns. Winding danger close ahead, he hesitated in his broken canter, and stopped in a thicket just twenty yards short of the next man to us. We watched the gun pitched up and the trigger dwelt on till a fairer chance was presented; but the motion was enough; a deer's eyesight is better than ours, and the white haunches were in the act of vanishing when a spherical ball was lodged just clear of the spine, but too high to be effectual. The blow on his counter twisted him round, and making downhill in tremendous jumps, he came face to face with a sporting Snider held ready and