guns might be hauled to pound the armies of the Austrian than a dozen houses, all of rough pine logs, but solid and snug. The roofs are well Kaiser. Now the guns are pitched, and the floors cleanly tiled. A couple or three wooden barns cluster around each dwelling, and rough wooden hurdles keep the cattle together at night. The arm of the bureaucracy has penetrated far enough to install a "starost," on whose gable hangs the familiar crowned white eagle. Law and order demanded that he should scrutinise gun licenses and shooting permits. That night the talk turned on the latest economic crisis: the fall of the currency and the prospects of an imminent revolution. It was early next morning when the waggon turned out again to take the party into the forest. Once more guncases were piled on the hay, and dogs hauled in unceremoniously by their leashes. A couple of miles of frozen, rutty, country track and some water splashes precede a genuine corduroy road of the most uncompromising sort. Appreciation of the dawn as it dissipates the gloom of the vast forests is somewhat marred by the clatters and jolts of the waggon wheels on the rough tree trunks transversely laid, of which the track is composed. For this road, like many others in that region, is a relic of the Russian Imperial Armies, whose sappers drove them, league upon league, through the forests, so that the Tsar's rust, the gunners' bones are dust, but the roads remain. But such roads. The tumult of the waggon's progress calls to mind a vision of two skeletons fighting on a corrugated iron roof. A firm hand is needed on artificial dentures. The driver's tongue comes into its own, and seems to provide something like 40 per cent of the total propulsive power more in emergencies, as when the rear wheels skid sideways on the frozen logs towards a clammy ditch. Now and again one's thoughts incline towards the Gadarene swine. The forest is huge, almost beyond the conception of those newly arrived from Western Europe. One harks back to the pages of Grimm and Hans Andersen, and to the scenes of the Nibelung. It is not wholly savage. Indeed, it is divided up into more or less even blocks, to some of which the corduroy roads form the bounds, whilst narrow rides constitute minor sub-divisions. The great bulk of the trees are pines, though here and there glades of birch thin out the sky, but clog the earth with their thicker undergrowth. The snow still lies in the most delightful King Wenceslaus fashion. At an intersection of tracks the party met a dozen beaters, thick set and heavy limbed for the most part, but short in stature. There are two or three exceptions. These are that intersect the forest, be it road or minor block boundary. move around to the opposite side of the block, and advance through it in extended order, beating the undergrowth with sticks. tall, raw boned, blue eyed The beaters with the dogs hobbledehoys, with notably narrow skulls. One of them has spent several years in Winnipeg, and speaks some of the King's English as modified for use west of the Atlantic, though happily not undiluted "United States." Their habiliments are for the most part still based either on khaki serge or on field grey cloth, for here brother fought brother in the army of one Emperor or another. One of them sports not only a collar and tie but a shoulder belt, such as we call in India a "chaprass," together with its massive brass badge. This still displays an emperor's blason, and an inscription incised in a forbidden tongue. This is a sign of his official status as a sub-ranger. More stimulating traces of the old Empires remain too in the form of soldiers of the three late Imperial Armies who rose superior to the departmental machineries of demobilisation, retained their rifles, and now eke out a livelihood of the Robin Hood category. At first they and the dogs work in silence, but, as the beat progresses, both give tongue, and now and then a head beater winds his horn. The music of the hounds tells the guns what sort of animal has been started. Now it may be a hare, or a fox, or a roebuck still in velvet. There is no mistaking the baying that marks the presence of a boar, still less the deep note which, later on one was to learn, told of a real tusker. The first day's beats all drew blank in that particular forest. On the second day a significant trail of fresh blood explained the reason. Every sign showed the presence of a poacher, and that circumstance spoilt the value of the forest for some days to come. The poacher could be dealt with at leisure, so all that remained to be done was to shift the venue to another forest in a valley in the higher mountains which form the southern frontier of the country. The change was discussed over the standard hunting lunch of huge sandwiches of boar meat and rye bread, The procedure of the hunt is washed down with schnapps. simple enough. The " guns, The transfer was carried out or rather rifles," are posted that same evening by means at intervals of a hundred yards of a dozen miles' jolting in the along one of the cleared lines the same familiar waggon. Most of them are personalities, some are mildly "wanted " by the police for more or less multiple homicides, others write poetry, but all burn sacrifices on the altars of Diana. 66 This took the party to an empty shooting lodge of wood, built of the local pine after the style of a Swiss chalet. That night everyone slept on trusses of hay spread out on the wooden floor around the solitary table. The evening had passed merrily enough, in spite of the previous lack of sport. The flowing bowl flowed freely to compensate for lack of tune in the songs that accompanied the passing of the glass. A portrait of Shevtchenko, complete in sheepskin bonnet, the national revolutionary poet of that country, a Rouget de l'Isle or Körner, looked down with an air of bewilderment on a Lancastrian Colonel of the great War, informing the world that "He'd lost his rifle and bayonet, Shevtchenko's was spirit probably still more bewildered to hear a young man of leisure, in what is now a capitalistmonarchist country, sing «Царь Николай ведалъ манифестъ Мёртвымъ свободу: живымъ подъ аресть > ("The Tsar Nicholas gave the order that the dead were to be set at liberty, the survivors placed under arrest.' This refers sardonically to the sequel to a Russian massacre of political insurgents in the old pre-war days.) was up early, in spite of the evening's carouse, and breaking the ice in basins and buckets. Somehow or other shaving was attractive only to the boldest. Most of the sportsmen resembled the gentleman who shaved on Wednesdays: Tuesday to-day. Sun, snow, and shaving do not harmonise in combination. A light railway, used for logging in the forests, curved around the spurs of the pineclad valley, just below the chalet-like shooting-box. One of the "guns was the engineer in charge, and he had arranged for a rail-motor to be available to take the whole outfit up to the valley where the "dzicki were to be driven. The vehicle, looking far too broad for the tiny narrow gauge, arrived with almost uncanny punctuality and a rattle of brake - rods. It was propelled by a German motor-car engine of great age but undoubted power, and ran equally in either direction, reversing being done by the simple process of seating the in the required direction, and passengers and driver facing then going in reverse. The journey seemed a little hazardous as the car slithered and screeched round the abrupt curves. There was perhaps hardly leisure to admire the dark-green slopes that merged into the blues and purples of the higher mountains, which in turn met the turquoise of the clear winter sky, and con Next morning all the party trasted with the broad, grey, stony bed of the tumbling cess of sport depends upon river. Now and again the car clattered past great swathes cut in the forests like huge scars. Piles of fresh yellow logs by the side of the line were the fruits of the lumberers' work. The valley seemed almost empty and bare of people, until in a siding there passed a long train of midget trucks crowded with high-booted, furcapped workmen, going, axe and saw in hand, to their felling. The "guns clambered out of the hard-seated "Druzhin," where a side stream tumbled foaming in from the west. The next process was to restore circulation by blowing on finger tips, beating of arms, and rubbing of noses and ears, besides restoring flexibility to that end of each of the party which had suffered by being sat on too long and on timber of too hard a variety. Then some one remembered to thank the driver for not having repeated his effort of the week before, whereby, going too fast round a sharp bend, he had caused the premature demise of two promising engineers. Hopes ran high that morning. The sun was out, and the railway peril was past and over. But more important still had been the omens of the day before during the drive to the chalet. In this country the belief has been positively accepted for many centuries that the suc Fortune, and that Fortune may be wooed, or rather tested, principally in two ways. The first and most reliable demands the co-operation of a village maiden or preferably maidens. The hunter should meet her or them in the early morning on his way to the sport. He must say to her politely, "Pakazhish kolano " ; in English, 'Show a knee." The damsel, not being civilised up to the level of London, Paris, or New York, will feel considerable diffidence, accentuated by absence of stocking. She will, however, at once comprehend the reason for the request. A few minutes will probably elapse, wherein her maiden modesty will struggle, with blushes, against her desire to assist the interests of sport. The latter usually wins, and after several false starts and many rosy suffusions, she will pull up her skirt inch by inch to afford a momentary glimpse of a well-rounded white knee. That morning several maidens had been accommodating. The other essential, or, shall we say, very necessary, factor to ensure luck is to see a Jew, or Jews, out early in the morning. There are many Jews in this region, but special circumstances are needed to get them out of their frowzy beds. Not any Jew will do. The majority of sportsmen are decidedly of opinion that the modern kind with a celluloid collar and dickey, diamond rings, billycock hat, frockcoat, and yellow button boots, emphatically will not do. Some reactionaries go so far as to suggest that no self-respecting boar, even the wildest, would remain in the same parish with such a one. Perhaps not. The desirable kind, or, to be more precise, the kind which it is advisable to encounter, are the old-fashioned sort, with long black caftan or gaberdine, a little black peaked cap, ringletty hair and beard, and a general aspect of Urim and Thummim. The Jewish augury had been auspicious, as well as that of the maidens. The sportsmen climbed up a ridge out of the side valley, and discussed the omens as the bright morning sun lit up the patches of green herbage, showing vividly where the snow had melted on the southern slopes of the spurs. The western side of each ridge was thick covered with birch and pine, the latter being mainly what the more locally acclimatised sportsmen termed "Weihnachtsbäume," they being precisely of the size and symmetrical form most adapted for supporting coloured candles and bags of sweets on each branch at a children's Christmas party. About fifteen hundred feet of climb made most of the party wonder whether they were not overdressed. Then when panting had ceased and tongues no longer hung out, the rifles were disposed at hundred-metre intervals along a ride which ran on the crest of a level-topped ridge, clothed with 'Weihnachtsbäume" on both sides. These little trees are most especially attractive boars, who nibble the young green shoots. So what with maidens, Jews, and "Christmas trees," everything looked hopeful. The dozen or fifteen beaters moved out to the foot of the west-facing slope, taking a long circuit, complete with dogs, staves, and horns. One was a little disappointed not to see any old-fashioned boar-spear. It was twenty minutes or so before the "rifles" heard anything of the beaters. Then distant shouts were wafted up to the crest of the ridge. Now and again there came a note from a horn, and occasionally the music of a hound. These became became gradually more distinct to the tense ears of the hunters, especially those like S., who were new to boar. Then there came a little lull. A moment or two later a deep baying signified that the hounds had found a boar. Then S. heard a shot away to his left, then another moment's silence, and then, it seemed only a few yards to his right front, a loud crackling and crashing in the undergrowth. For an instant it seemed to S. to be too mundane and concrete to be connected with a beast carrying with it the glamour of the wild boar. He seemed to expect something preternatural, with a sound and fury peculiar to itself. A moment later a big brown |