"There was a keeper at Schlier See—
Bromberger was his name—he once met a
whole band of poachers, and among them was
a notorious rascal; he, therefore, thought it
better not to lose so good an opportunity,
but to make sure of him; and, picking him
out from the rest, sent a bullet through his
body.

"'That,' remarks another, 'was in the
old times, perhaps. It was by far the best
way. The poachers expected nothing else:
they risked their lives, and we risked ours;
they knew beforehand that should we happen
to meet one ot them he was a dead man, and
in some places they treated us in the same
manner.'"

Even the Bavarian foresters, it seems, look
back towards their good old times. It is not
now lawful for them, to increase the sport of
their mountains by regarding poachers as
another sort of game, the hunting of which
is even livelier amusement than the hunting
of the chamois. As a sailor loves sea life the
better for its perils of the wreck, so we
are told a gamekeeper enjoys his calling all
the more for the excitement provided by
a moderate stock of poachers.  Without
poachers," said a young man, who had been
almost beaten to death in the woods, "without
poachers a forester's life would be
nothing!"

The Bromberger, before mentioned, was out
on the mountains with a young count looking
for chamois, when they saw some of the
nobler heads of human game below them.
With their glasses they recognized among the
herd, a noted buck, or poacher of the name of
Hofer. He had been fired at before but
missed. Bromberger waited. When the men
came out of the hollow, and stood exposed
against the sky line, with Hofer a little in
front, the keeper folded his handkerchief, laid
it on the rock as a rest for his rifle, and pre-
pared to fire. "It is a long distance," he said
to the count, who had his glass up to observe
the effect of the shot, "so"—we quote again
—"so, I'll aim rather high, and somewhat to
the right, to allow for the wind coming up
from below. If I take him just between the
shoulder and the throat, you will see I shall
hit in the very centre of his chest." And a
second after, the rifle cracked, and down rolled
the poacher, with the ball crashing through
his shoulder.

A green knoll rising from a valley was
crossed by a path along which a young
forester saw a noted poacher coming. He sat
down and waited. As the poacher's head
appeared over the top of the knoll he took
his aim, and when he stood at his full height
on the summit, then the youth fired. The
poacher, shot in the very centre of the
chest, pulled open his shirt suddenly as if
surprised, looked at the shot wound, and
fell down dead.

A young forester's assistant, Kothbacher,
was going along the ridge of the Geidauer
Eibel Spitz, when, looking down, he saw
twenty-three men standing by a mountainhut.
He watched them precisely as he would
have watched a herd of game, only with
more intense desire to get a shot at one of
them. A little path led from the hut over
the Eibel Spitz, and he saw presently that they
were coming up, one after the other. He,
therefore, lay in wait for them perfectly
concealed among the bushes. After he had
waited there for about an hour he heard their
voices; and, having suffered them to approach
to within a distance of some eighty yards, fired
at the foremost, and struck him in the middle
of the breast. He dropped dead instantly. The
others, seeing no one, ran back for the rifles,
and paused to deliberate what they should do.
Some were for going back, one braver man
urged that it would be shameful for so many
to be put to flight by one chance shot: and,
grasping his rifle, led the way forward.
Kothbacher let him advance to within sixty paces
and then fired. The man, turned quite round
on one side by the shot, stopped short and
fell. The others fled. Kothbacher crept away
among the bushes, and, taking an unusual
path home, stopped by a mountain stream
along which there was a narrow path and
across which there was a plank bridge. He
there loaded his gun, puttiug ball into one
barrel and a handful of shot into the other.
Then he sat down to watch among the bushes,
for he thought that the herd of poachers he
had seen upon the mountains might come
home that way, and be obliged to cross the
plank. They came, and just as they were all
crowded together, before crossing the bridge
one by one, Kothbacher fired his shot-barrel
into the midst of them. One man was wounded
badly in the breast. Of the two shot on the
mountain the second lost only his arm at the
shoulder, the first lost his life. The poor
fellow was the son—the only son—of a rich
peasant at Schlier See. His companions dared
not face his parents; but at night the old
couple heard a knocking at the window, and a
man said to them in a strange voice that, if
they would go up to the Eibel Spitz, there
they would find their son.

In the preceding narrative mention was
made of a hut upon the mountains. It should
be understood that the peasant girls, the
Sennerinnen, when with their cattle they
leave the mountain pastures for the plains, are
accustomed carefully to set their huts in order,
to leave their floors swept, wood stacked,
pans cleaned, and matches ready for the use of
any hunter on the mountain. The hunter on
the other hand is expected, after he has used
the accommodation of the hut, to leave everything
behind him as tidy as he found it, to
scour any pan in which he may have cooked
his meals, to sweep the floor with a broom
left for the purpose, lock the door when he
goes out, and to put the key where the new
comer can find it. The mountaineers are
thoroughly good people, and never would of