As for its class and order, you must go elsewhere | grad Kögle right before us-and hang him, we 'll for them; I know them not; nor the name either dine on his head! which the Latins would have called it if they had been aware of its existence. Joseph called it "gemsenkraut," or chamois herb, and that was enough for me.

Having finished our botanical investigations, we pushed on to the upper end of the valley, and found that the cliffs, and screes, and snow patches looked uglier and steeper the nearer we approached them. However, there was no retreat-onwards we must go, or be declared "nidding" through the length | and breadth of the Tyrol.

Oh! those screes-those screes! lying at an angle of goodness knows how much with the horizon-sharp, slaty, angular pieces of stone, like savage hatchets, slippery as glass, glancing from under our feet, and casting us down sideways on their abominable edges," sliddering" down by the ton, carrying our unfortunate persons yards below where we wanted to go, crashing and clattering, and then dancing and bounding far down into the valley, like mischievous gnomes, delighted with the bumpings and bruisings they had treated us to How Joseph did anathematize! For my part, mine was a grief" too deep for swears!"

The ridge on which we found ourselves was but a few feet broad and about a hundred and fifty feet above the snow on each side. It was composed of innumerable irregular pillar-like masses of rock, of different heights and distances, impossible to descend at the point where we found ourselves, but as it ran at the same general level, we fancied that we could get on the sloping mass of snow which lay on the side of the peak at some distance on. Jumping from one small table of rock to another— now only saved from "immortal smash" by Joseph's strong arm, and now swaying doubtfully on a plateau the size of a small dumb-waiter top, uncertain whether we should be off or not—we hopped along, wishing we were kangaroos, till we found a crevice which seemed practicable, and down which I went with a run-or rather a slide, much quicker than was agreeable, being only brought up by my feet coming on Joseph's broad shoulders, he taking, as I must confess he generally did, the first place, whereby he always came in for a double allowance of stones and gravel, but about which he seemed utterly indifferent.

On reaching the bottom, we found that, as usual, After crossing, still ascending, two or three beds the snow had melted some distance from the rock, of screes, we came to the edge of the first snow-leaving a mighty pretty crack to receive us. field; not very broad, it is true, but lying at a higher angle than I ever thought possible, and frozen as hard as marble on the surface-one sheet of ice, with an agreeable fall of some hundred feet at its lower edge. We were in despair! We had now got excited and confident-our "blood was up ;" and here came "the impossible" to stop us. "But what is it that Joseph has picked up from the snow, and is examining so carefully?"

"No matter-'t was not what we sought," but it was something closely connected with it.

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Yes, there is no doubt of it; they have been here, and lately too! See the sharp-hoof prints just above! They must have crossed this morning! Go it, ye cripples, (in prospectu,) we must cross this, come what may!"

However, a lucky jump landed us safely, and for a moment erect, on the snow, and then, head over heels, rolling, and bumping, and kicking, we spun over the slippery surface till we managed to bring ourselves up about fifty yards below where we had started. But in spite of tumbles we were in high spirits; there were no gems to frighten, and no more tottering avalanches, ready to fall on our heads if we as much as ventured to use our pockethandkerchiefs.

We toiled up the terribly steep snow paths merrily enough, not without retracing our path several times in a manner at once undignified and unexpected-though it certainly was not to be com plained of as far as speed went-and reached, at last, utterly blown and sick with exertion, the base We got along steadily, without any slides, of the rock forming the summit of the mountain. though with many slips, always sticking our staves Hardly giving ourselves time to recover, we climbed convulsively into the snow the moment our heels up the last sixty or seventy feet of cliff, and I found seemed to have the slightest disposition to assume myself-first this time, for a wonder-on a small the altitude of our heads. It was nervous work-platform, the summit of the Wildgrad Kögle. one slip, one moment too late in thrusting our staff perpendicularly in the snow, as an anchor, and away we should have shot like a meteor over the glistening surface for a hundred terrible yards, and then with a wild bound have been launched into the abyss below. However, we could not have turned back if we had wished it, and at last, to our intense satisfaction, we grasped the rough rock that bounded the further side of the field. Grasped it! -we embraced it !-we clung to its rough surface as if we had been six months at sea and had landed in the Hesperides!

At length on the summit of the ridge, we were able to crouch down and look through a crack in the rock into the next valley. Round and about, above and below, we examined every hole and corner; half-a-dozen times some villanous stone made our hearts leap to our mouths. But alas! "it was no go;" there was not a living thing in sight-barrenness, barrenness, and desolation.

Our chance of chamois was utterly over for the day. N'importe. Better luck to-morrow. Who can feel out of spirits in that brisk mountain atmosphere? There is the highest peak of the Wild

The platform was some ten or twelve feet square, and the only approach to it was on the side we had ascended; on every other the cliff ran down in a sheer wall, how deep I know not, for I never could judge of distances from above.

As for describing what we saw from our elevated dining-table, it is clean out of the question; we saw nothing but mountains-or rather the tops of mountains, for we were far above the general level of their crests; one wide sea of rock and snow surged around us; shoreless, no bounding range, no sweet glimpses of broad green valleys and glistening rivers in the distance; no pretty villages nestling cosily under the pine forest-nothing but peak on peak, ridge on ridge; bright pinnacles and clusters of pinnacles shooting up here and there far above the rest into the calm blue sky-deep grooves marking the course of distant valleys, like tidemarks on the sea. But no trace of man or beast, herb or tree; the very wind that whistled past us brought no sound or scent from the valleys it had passed, but sounded harsh, and dry, and dead. Vain, indeed, would be the effort to convey the slightest idea of the solemn grandeur of that scene!

a species of ptarmigan, a pack of which very slow birds were running stupidly in and out amongst the rocks-and hurried on. It was growing very dark, the snow fell heavily, and the wind began rushing and eddying round us, depositing the largest and coldest of snow-flakes in our ears and eyes, till we

to look serious, and hunted about for a small torrent he knew of, to serve as a guide; and after some trouble and anxiety we found it, and stumbled down its rocky banks till we came to a solitary sennhutt, which was to be our resting-place for the night.

Manfred Manfred gives the finest and truest | who looked every whit as conceited in death as he picture ever perhaps painted of Swiss Alpine scene-did when alive, and re-commenced our descent. ry, as seen looking towards the mountains, or from On our way we shot a brace of "schnee huhner," the cliffs bordering some rich pastoral valley; but we had passed all that long ago-we were in the very heart of the range. Alp was still piled on Alp, but we had reached the summit of the pile. The only valleys we saw were fearful scars in the mountain flank, half filled with eternal snow, and the crumbling skeletons of dead Alps. No sound-were half-blinded and wholly deaf. Joseph began no herdsman's jödle-no cow-bell's tinkle ever reached to half way up our rocky perch; we were far above the vulture and the chamois. We were alone with the rock, and snow, and sky! It seemed profanity to whisper;-and yet there was Joseph, after a glance round, and a short "schöne panora- After some trouble, we got the door open, and ma!" whistling and fishing up the eatables and found that the hut was fortunately not entirely drinkables from the bottom of his wallet, as coolly filled with hay; a space about six or eight feet as if he was seated in his own smoky, half-lighted broad had been boarded off between it and the cabin. He had been born in it and was used to it. outer wall for the use of the wild-hauer. This I doubt whether I myself felt the grandeur of the was to serve us as parlor and kitchen and all, exscene as much then as I have often done since, on re-cept bed-room, which was to be sought for in the calling it bit by bit to my recollection. The really hay-stack itself. Our floor was the bare earth; grand gives one at first a sort of painful feeling that the logs which formed the wall were badly jointed, is indescribable. One cannot think-one only feels and the wind whistled through the gaping cracks with that strange undescribed sense, that strives, in the most uncomfortable manner; one could alalmost to heart-breaking, to bring itself forth, and most fancy that it was trying to articulate the yet stays voiceless. dreaded word, rheu-matism.

We sat long, drinking in alternate draughts of sublimity and Slibowitz, (as Joseph called the brandy,) till the Berg-geist kindly put an end to our ecstasies by drawing a dark gray veil over the whole picture, and pelting us with snow-flakes, as a gentle hint to be off and leave him to his own cogitations. It began, indeed, to snow in real earnest, and the weather looked mighty dark and uncompromising, so we scrambled hastily down the way we came, and leaning well back on our alpenstocks with our feet stretched out before us, shot down the long sheet of snow, at a considerably quicker rate than we had ascended; and, gliding scornfully past our columnar friends, whose fantastic capitals had given us so much trouble in the morning, we reached, with many a tumble and much laughter, the stony ravine at its foot.

Scorning to finish the day without drawing blood from something besides ourselves, we determined to commit slaughter on whatever came across us. We soon heard the shrill signal-whistle of the marmot, and, for want of better game, determined to bag at least one of these exceedingly wide-awake gentlemen. Creeping to the top of a neighboring ridge, we peeped cautiously over into a little valley floored with a confused mass of mossy stones and straggling alpen-rosen. Here several of these quaint little beasts, half rat, half rabbit, were frisking in and out of their burrows, cutting all sorts of what Joseph called "Burzelbaume,” Anglicè, capers; little suspecting that the all-destroying monster, man, had his eye upon them. One fellow, the sentinel, took my particular fancy as he sat up on his nether end on a large stone. There was an expression of unutterable self-conceit and conscious wide-awakefulness about his blunt muzzle and exposed incisors that was perfectly delicious. Him I determined to bring to bag, and cautiously raising my carbine-crack! Over he rolled, I have no doubt, too astonished to feel any pain, his friends tumbling madly head over heels into their burrows, whilst the astonished echoes repeated crack! crack! again and again, in all sorts of tones and modulations, till warned to silence by the harsh rattle of an old mountain a mile off. We bagged our friend,

However, the ever-active Joseph, bustling about, found some dry wood, and we made a blazing fire on the floor at the imminent risk of burning our beds, and having slightly thawed ourselves, we continued our researches, and found a shallow wooden pail, carefully covered over, holding some two gallons of sour milk, left by the charitable hayman some fortnight before, for the use of any benighted hunter who might have the luck to stumble on the hut, and one of those abominable one-legged milking stools, so common in that part of the world, which, having vainly endeavored to sit on, and having tumbled into the fire in consequence, to Joseph's intense amusement, I hurled madly over the hay out into the storm.

As the clatter made amongst the shingles of the roof by its hasty exit subsided, we heard a noise which struck terror into both our hearts, and would doubtless have chilled our very marrow, if it had not been below freezing-point already. Devils! Berg-geister! Fly! out into the black storm! over the precipice! into the torrent! before some fearful mopping and mowing face, too ghastly horrible for human eye-ball to see without bursting, or human brain to conceive without madness, gibber out upon us from that dark corner! Listen; there it is again! And-mew-w-w-w-w! down tumbled between us a miserable, half-grown, gray-kitten, nearly dead with cold and starvation, doubtless absent on some poaching expedition when the hut was deserted, and not thought worth the going back for. Oh! the joy of that unfortunate little beast at seeing man and fire once more! How she staggered about, with tail erect, vainly trying to mew and purr at the same time! having to be perpetually pulled out of the fire, and "put out," to prevent her playing the part of one of Samson's foxes with our beds, filling the cabin with unspeakable smells of singed hair! And now she would persist in walking up our backs, and tickling us to madness with her scorched tail!

Having disposed of "Catchins," as she was immediately named, as well as we could, by tossing her by the tail to the top of the hay, whenever she descended to thank us, which happened about three

mountain air and our hard work the day before, and just as the first cold chill of the approaching dawn began to be felt, we left the cabin, shutting up Catchins, and hanging the marmot on a peg out of her reach, till our return.

times in every two minutes, we "fixed" our sup- | were beginning to run short, thanks to the keen pers, broiling the schnee huhner over the bright fire, and enjoyed ourselves mightily. After a smoke and a short cross-examination from Joseph as to our friends, family, and expectations, and particular inquiries for the shortest overland route to England, and the number of years required for the journey, we climbed up into the hay, and grubbed and wormed our way for two or three feet below its surface, and, making unto ourselves each a spiracle" or blow-hole over our respective noses, tried to slumber.

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Our day's route lay more round to the left of the Wildgrad Kögle. The scene was for some time a repetition of that of the day before, but the cliffs were still more precipitous and the ravines narrower and more difficult to traverse. Many a tumble we got for the first hour amongst the boulders Now, a bed of short, sweet Alpine grass, fra- covered with treacherous moss and cowberry grant with the spirits of a thousand departed flow-plants, but before sunrise we had left all vegetation ers, is as warm, cozy, and elastic as a bed can be, behind us again, and were up amongst the crags but it has one unfortunate drawback-the small and the snow. straws and dust, falling down the before-mentioned spiracle, tickle and titillate one's unfortunate face and nose in a most distracting manner; and as you utterly destroy the snug economy of your couch, and let in a rush of cold mountain air, as often as you raise your hand to brush away the annoyance, some fastidious persons might possibly prefer a modest mattress, with a fair allowance of sheets and blankets.

we got to where Joseph expected to fall in with a chamois, when we called a halt, and, sheltering ourselves behind a mass of rock from the keen morning wind, waited for the clearing of the mist.

As we ascended, we saw a valley to our left, filled to the brim with dense mist, which, as soon as the sun began to tinge the highest peaks, rose in swirling columns, and shut out everything that was not in our immediate vicinity. This was advantageous, as, although it prevented our seeing, it at the same time prevented our being seen from the cliffs before we reached our best ground. We toiled on steadily, crossing vast beds of snow, and At last, however, I was dozing off, tired of hear- occasionally the roots of some glacier, that threw ing Joseph muttering what certainly were not his itself into the valleys to our left, climbing, scramprayers, rustling fretfully, and sneezing trumpet-bling, and slipping, but still steadily ascending, till like at intervals, as some straw, more inquisitive than usual, made a tour of inspection up his nostril, when I suddenly heard a round Tyrolese oath rapped out with great fervor, and something whirled over my head and plumped against the The Alp-spirit seemed to be amusing himself timbers of the roof. Dreamily supposing that it mightily with this same mist! at one moment, was the aforesaid cumbrous Tyrolese execration, catching it up in huge masses, he piled it on the which Joseph had jerked out with such energy as sharp peaks, as if to make himself a comfortable to send it clean across the cabin, I was gliding cushion; and then, sitting suddenly down to try its back into oblivion, when something with an evil efficacy, drove it in all directions by his "lubber smell, and making a noise like a miniature stocking- weight." Enraged, he tossed and tumbled it machine, tumbled down my spiracle, plump into about for some time, and at last spread it into one my face. Waking fully, I at once perceived that broad level plain, with the higher peaks standing it was the cat, not the oath, I had heard fly over out clear and sharp, like rocks from a calin sea. me shortly before, she, in the excess of her grati- Now and then the mist would disappear entirely tude, being determined to stick as closely to us as for a few moments, leaving everything clear and possible. Following Joseph's example, I seized bright; then a small cloud, "like a man's hand," her by the tail, and whirled her, purring uninter- would form on the side of some distant peak, and, ruptedly, as far as I could. Ere many minutes spreading out with inconceivable rapidity, would had elapsed, she was again launched forth by the envelop us in its boiling wreaths, while the wind, infuriated Joseph, and backwards and forwards she ever and anon rushing down some unexpected gully, flew at least half-a-dozen times between us, with-cut a tunnel right through it, giving us glimpses out appearing in the least disconcerted, perhaps, of distant mountains and snow-fields, looking near indeed, finding the exercise conducive to the assim- and strange as if seen through a telescope. ilation of the sour milk, till nature could stand no At last the sun began to shine out cheerily and more, and we fell fast asleep. steadily, and the breeze gave a freshness and Whether she spent the night on our faces, in al-buoyancy to our spirits never to be felt except on ternate watches, I know not, but I had ghastly dreams, and when I woke in the morning, I found my hand and arm thrust forth from the hay, reposing on a cool and clean counterpane of snow, which had drifted in during the night, as if I had been repelling her advances in my sleep.

Feeling very cold and damp, we turned out as soon as we woke, and, blowing up the embers of the fire, warmed ourselves as well as we could, and took a peep out into the night. The storm had passed away, leaving everything covered with a veil of snow, that gleamed faintly under the intense black-blue sky. The stars were beginning to assume that peculiar sleepy, twinkling appearance which shows that their night-watch is drawing to a close, and everything lay in still, calm rest around us.

We breakfasted sparingly, as our provisions

high mountains. The heavy atmosphere of the valleys squeezes one's soul into its case, and sits on the lid like an incubus. That blessed mountain spirit is the only power who takes the lid off altogether, and lets the soul out of its larva-case to revel in the strange beauties of his domain without restraint!

After a time, we found ourselves in a region of snow-fields, filling up broad valleys, lying calm and shadowless in the bright sunshine. Here and there, they were marked by delicate blue lines, where the crevasses allowed the substratum of ice to be seen, showing that these apparently eternal and immovable plains of snow were slowly but steadily flowing downwards, to appear as splintered glaciers in the valleys far below; and here and there again, dark ridges, standing sharply up from the snow-bed, marked the course of buried moun

tain ranges, and gave some idea of the vast depth of the deposit.

But wonderfully beautiful as these plains were, and strange and wild as they appeared to an English eye, with a brilliant August sun pouring his whole flood of light and warmth upon them, they were not the great points of interest to us. Those mighty ranges of cliff, rising tier above tier to our right, fretted with a pure white lace-work of fresh fallen snow, with here and there vast beds of screes shot from above, giving promise of gemsenkraut, were the bits we scanned with the greatest eagerness. We had come for chamois, and I am afraid, looked upon the rest as of very secondary impor

tance.

our faces every now and then, till we got about half-way up, when, just as we were resting for a moment to take breath, we heard a tremendous roar, followed by a splintering crash just above our heads, and had the pleasure of seeing the fragments. of some half-a-ton of ice, which had fallen from the glacier above, fly out from the shelf of rock under which we were resting, and spin down the rugged path we had just ascended.

Thinking that this was quite near enough to be pleasant, and "calculating" that by every doctrine of chances the same thing would not happen twice in the same half hour, we scrambled up as fast as we could before the next instalment became due, and at last reached safely the top of the precipice.

We were advancing along the base of the lowest We certainly had not much to boast of as far as tier of cliff, which had a sort of step of snow run- walking went, when we got there, for the snow ning along it about half-way up for some half-a- and rocks were tumbled about in a very wild manmile, bounded at one end by an immense mass of ner. If we slipped off a rock, we tumbled waistscrees and precipice, and at the other by a sudden deep into the soft, melting snow-drifts, and when we turn of the rock, when Joseph suddenly dashing tumbled on the snow, there was always some lurkoff his hat and throwing himself prostrate behind a ing rock ready to remind us of his presence by a stone, dragged me down beside him, with a vice- hearty thump; however, as we were fairly above like grasp, that left its mark on my arm for many the chamois, our excitement carried us on. I da a day after. Utterly taken aback at the suddenness not think that Joseph swore once; we found afterof my prostration, I lay beside him, wondering at wards indeed, to our cost, that in one of his invol the change that had come over his face; he was as untary summersets, he had broken the bottle, and white as marble, his moustache worked with in-narrowly escaped being bayoneted by the fragments; tense excitement, and his eyeballs seemed starting however, we did not know it then, and so scram from their sockets as he glared at the cliff. Fol- bled on in contented ignorance, until we reached the lowing his line of sight, I glanced upwards, and spot on the cliffs to our right, which we had marked my eye was instantly arrested by something-it as being above our prey. Here, however, we moved-again-and again! With shaking hand found that it was impossible to get near enough to I directed the telescope to the point, and there, at the edge to look over, as the fresh-fallen snow the end of it, hopping fearlessly on the shivered threatened to part company from the rock, and carmountain side, scratching its ear with its hind foot, ry us with it, on the slightest indiscretion on our and nibbling daintily the scattered bits of gemsen- parts. Crouching down in the snow, we listened kraut that sprung up between the stones, stood for some hint of our friend's whereabouts, and had fearless and free-a chamois ! not waited more than a minute when the faint clatter of a stone far below convinced us that he was on the move : keeping low, we wallowed along tilf we came to where the crest of the cliff, showing a little above the snow, gave us a tolerable shelter carefully crawling to the edge, we peeped over, and saw, as we expected, that the gems had shifted his quarters, and, as luck would have it, was standing on the snow-bed half-way up the cliff, immedi ately below us.

After watching him with intense interest for some moments, we drew back, scarcely daring to breathe, and, sheltering ourselves behind a large stone, held a council of war. It was evidently impossible to approach him from where we were: we could not have moved ten steps towards him without the certainty of being discovered; our only chance was to get above him, and so cut him off from the higher ranges. Crawling backwards, we managed to place a low range of rock between ourselves and the cliffs, and then making a wide sweep, we reached their base at some distance from where the chamois was feeding.

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Trembling, partly with excitement, and partly from the under-waistcoat of half-melted snow we had unconsciously assumed in our serpentine wrigglings, we lay and watched the graceful animal After examining the precipice for some time, we below us. He evidently had a presentiment that found that the only mode of access to its summit, there was something no canny" about the mounhere some three or four hundred feet above us, was tain-side; some eddy had perhaps reached his deliby a sort of ravine, what would be called in the Swiss cate nostrils, laden with the taint of an intruder. Alps a cheminée, a species of fracture in the strata, With his head high in the air, and his ears pointed the broken edges of which would give us some forwards, he stood examining-as wiser brutes than foot and hand hold at its upper termination we he sometimes do-every point of the compass but could see the end of a small glacier, slightly over- the right. One foot was advanced; one moment hanging the cliff, from which a small stream leapt more, and he would have gone; when crack! close from ledge to ledge, only alive in the last hour or to my ear, just as I was screwing up my nerves for two of sun-warmth, giving promises, which certain-a long shot, went Joseph's heavy rifle. With a ly were faithfully fulfilled, of additional slipperiness sinking heart I saw the brute take a tremendous and discomfort. But we had no choice; we had bound, all four hoofs together, and then, like a rialready spent nearly an hour in our cautious cir- fle-ball glancing over the bosom of a calm lake, cuit. Our scramble, wherever it took place, would bound after bound carried him away and away over cost us nearly another before we got above our ex- the snow-field, and round the corner to our right, pected prey, and if we hesitated much longer, he before I had recovered my senses sufficiently to might take a fancy to march off altogether in search take a desperate snap at him. of the rest of the herd. So up we went, dragging What we said, or felt, or how we got over the ourselves and each other up the wet slippery rocks, face of that cliff, I know not. A dim recollection getting a shivering "swish" of ice-cold water in' of falling stones and dust showering round us

pieces of treacherous rock giving way in our hands | and under our feet, bruising slides, and one desperate jump over the chasm between the cliff and the snow-and there we were both, standing pale and breathless, straining our eyes for some scarcely expected trace of blood to give us hope.

Not a drop tinged the unsullied snow at the place where he had made his first mad bound, nor at the second, nor at the third; but a few paces further on, one ruby-tinged hole showed where the hot blood had sunk through the melting snow.

But as for the unfortunate gems, we rejoiced over him exceedingly; we shook hands over him; we sat beside him, and on him; we examined him, carefully, minutely, scientifically, from stem to stern. I firmly believe that I could pick him out at this moment from the thousand ghosts that attend the silver-horned Gemsen König, if I had but the good luck to fall in with his majesty and his charmed suite.

Joseph's ball had struck him high up on the neck, but had not inflicted anything like a severe wound. Had we fired on him from below, he would have scaled the cliffs in a moment, and been no more seen, at least by us; but as he knew that the mischief was above him, he dared not ascendto descend was impossible; and so, getting to a certain extent pounded, he gave me the rare chance of a second shot.

Too excited to feel any uprising of envy, hatred, or malice against my more fortunate companion, I raced along the white incline, leaving him behind reloading his rifle-which was always a sort of solemn rite with him-and following, without difficulty, the deep indentations of the animal's hoofs, I came to where the cliffs receded into a sort of small bay, with its patch of snow on the same plane Long we sat and gazed at the chamois; and the with the one I was on, but separated from it by a wild scene before us-never shall I forget it!—shut rugged promontory of cliff and broken rock. Cau- in on three sides by steep and frowning cliffs, in tiously I scrambled round the point, removing many front the precipice, and far, far down, the wild, a stone that seemed inclined to fall and give the rocky valleys, divided by shivered ridges, rising alarm to the watchful chamois, and peeping cau- higher and higher till they mounted up into the tiously round the last mass of rock that separated calm, pure snow-range, set in the frame of the me from the snow patch, I saw the poor brute, jutting promontories on each side of us-looking standing not more than sixty yards from me, his the brighter and the "holier" from the comparative hoofs drawn close together under him, ready for a shade in which we were. Not a sound but the desperate rush at the cliff at the first sound that occasional faint "swish" of the waterfall that reached him; his neck stretched out, and his muz-drained from the snow-bed-not a living thing now zle nearly touching the snow, straining every sense to catch some inkling of the whereabouts of the mischief he felt was near him.

but our two selves standing side by side on the snow. We had killed the third, and there he lay stiffening between us!

With my face glowing as if it had been freshly But, hillo! Joseph! we are nearly getting senblistered, a dryness and lumping in my throat, as timental, after all, over this brute, (that I should if I had just escaped from an unsuccessful display say so!) who has all but broken our necks already, of Mr. Calcraft's professional powers, and my heart and who in all human probability will do so enthud-thudding against my ribs at such a rate that I tirely before we have done with him. Fish up the really thought the gems must hear it in the still- decanter, and let us have a schnaps over our quarness, I raised my carbine. Once, at the neck just ry; my throat and lips are burning, as if I had behind the ear, I saw the brown hide clear at the lunched off quick-lime. Well, what are you end of the barrel, but I dared not risk such a chance; fumbling at? Oh, horror! Joseph's hand returns and so, stringing my nerves, I shifted my aim to empty from the bag, with a large cut on one of the just behind the shoulder-one touch of the cold fingers-weeping tears of blood! The bottle is trigger, and as the thin gases streamed off, rejoic-smashed!-smashed to atoms! and the unconscious ing at their liberation, I saw the chamois shrink Joseph has had the celestial liquor trickling down convulsively when the ball struck him, and then his back-how long we know not, and care not; it fall heavily on the snow, shot right through the is "gone, and forever!" heart. With a who-whoop! that might have been heard half-way to Innspruck, I rushed up to him;one sweep of the knife--the red blood bubbled out on to the snow that shrunk and wasted before its hot touch, as if it felt itself polluted, and there lay stretched out in all its beauty before me the first gems I ever killed-just as Joseph came up, panting, yelling and jodling, and rejoicing at my success, without a shade of envy in his honest heart.

Now I believe, in all propriety, we ought to have been melancholy, and moralized over the slain. That rich, soft black eye, filming over with the frosty breath of death, and that last convulsive kick of the hind legs, ought perhaps to have made us feel that we had done rather a brutal and selfish thing; but they did not. This is a truthful narrative, and I must confess that our only feeling was one of unmixed rejoicing.

Like the summer-dried fountain,
When our need is the sorest!

But it is of no use blaspheming in that manner, Joseph; not one of those ten hundred and fifty millions of bad spirits you are invoking so freely will bring us back one drop of our good ones; so we must e'en "girn and bide." But still it is as bad as bad can be-not a drop of water for hours to come, perhaps.

Water, water, everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink.

Munching snow only chars one's lips like hot cinders, and the cool "swish" of the waterfall there below us only makes one the more thirsty. Let us be off out of ear-shot of it, at any rate. Take up the gems, and let us dream of cool, bub

I have occasionally moralized over a trout, flop-bling runlets and iced sour milk as we go. ping about amongst the daisies and buttercups, and dying that horrible suffocation death of my causing but it was never, if I remember right, the first trout I had killed that day. My feelings always get finer as my pannier gets fuller, particularly if it be a warm afternoon, and I have lunched.

Dream! quotha! we must dream of how we are to go at all, first, and a very nightmarey sort of dream it promises to be; we are regularly pounded; not a vestige of a crack or crevice up which to worm ourselves in the whole face of the sem.-eircular range of cliffs beneath which we stand; and,