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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

cess of sport depends upon 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, 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

nachtsbäume " on both sides. These little trees are most especially attractive to the 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 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

form with a great curving spiny back crashed out of the thicket a stone's throw to his right, looming as large as a young bullock against the snow.

He threw the big .375 magnum to his shoulder. There was a satisfying crack almost as of a field-gun, followed by a still more satisfactory grunting roar of anguish. There was a conclusive timbre about this that made it appear unnecessary to go and look at the result in amongst the trees. Two or three more shots resounded on either side, a bullet or so whistled amongst the twigs, then one or two again. The baying of the hounds had become almost too exhilarating. S. remembered with a twinge that he had not been too solicitous about the position of the "gun" on his right when he fired his shot. Then the beaters suddenly appeared, the headmen winded their horns, and the baying and tumult died down. S. ran over to find his beast, and as he did so a sounder of small squeakers slipped past him.

His boar was a fine big animal, the heaviest of the five that had been killed in that very successful drive, though with small tusks.

The omens had been successful. Every one's face was covered with smiles, and all felt that luck had turned. As it was S.'s first boar, he had to be blooded. The "ober-förster " smeared his cheeks and forehead with the animal's gore, and thrust a bloody pine-shoot

into the band of his hat; thus his initiation was complete.

The success of that beat seemed to call for an early lunch with "schnapps" accompaniment.

Someone told the story of the commercial magnate who had taken part in a previous shoot there. He had let a good boar through without a shot at him and was full of explanations as to how his rifle had missed fire. These explanations were listened to until someone else noticed that the tree under which he had been standing had had all the snow rubbed off it for quite a way up its trunk.

The scene of that afternoon's efforts lay higher up in a rather loftier valley amongst great birch-trees. Rude traces of the old war between Tsar and Kaiser sprang to the eye here and there amongst the silver trunks. A mouldering breastwork revetted with great logs ran along the foot of a slope. Farther on a few cunningly hidden machine - gun emplacements cleverly built of timber showed where their murderous flanking fire had once swept the wooded slopes. The myriad shell craters of more familiar fronts were happily absent, which fact made some of the party reflect that perhaps this war was not such a vulgar brawl as the other had been. The youngest member of the party described incidents of the most recent war of all, or rather, of the most recent but one. He drew a vivid picture of hordes of shaggy unwashed Cossacks swarming into the villages of the rich plains. This was the famous or notorious First Cavalry Army of the swashbuckler Budienny. Their technique included the practice of throwing away their scabbards, and leaving blood to cake on their uncleaned sabres, which dangled from knots at their belts, or were used to slash and beat the unarmed peasants and their women. Another interesting habit of theirs was that of forming secret ammunition dumps in the villages of the territory which they were about to invade. This was carried out by underground agencies, and most often by the cooperation of the moneylender class, the local "gombeen men. The results were successful enough for an operation of this sort, and helped to enable Budienny to move his twenty thousand sabres over big distances without being tied down to lines of communication. An occidental quartermaster - general would shudder in horror at the unorthodoxy.

Both the afternoon's beats were fruitless, but this was not enough to spoil the general satisfaction at the morning's results. So supper back in the cottage was merrier than ever, and the party looked upon the wine when it was of divers colours, nor was song hindered by minor questions of tune.

The next day it was deemed expedient to return to the

original forest. The poacher was on the run," and boar were reported plentiful. Rumour proved a lying jade, and two days' hunting only produced a couple of roebuck, which had dashed through the line. On one early morning a silver fox stole quietly up to S., and looked calmly at him from five yards off. S.'s upbringing would not permit the sin of vulpicide, and still less that of discharging a great .375 at such a small animal, and so he had to bear the reproaches of having lost a skin worth forty dollars, for here they reckon in American currency as often as not. Somewhat of an insult to the pound sterling, which has been looking the dollar in the face for some time now.

The party had to break up that night, with the exception of H. and S. H. had not yet shot a boar, whilst S. was anxious to bag a big tusker. The other three had to return to work in the city. The pair decided to try another high valley leading over the main range of the southern frontier. This was full of Jews of all sorts and types, and their presence there was explained by the smuggling which goes on between the two countries. Not that the Jew ventures out on to mountain tracks and into forests in the snow, still less within range of a frontier guard's rifle; but there are ways of making money when the Gentile runs the risks.

So opportunities of seeing Jews were good, and maidens were not absent. H. and S. kept a good look-out and careful count.

They had started very early, and the distance was not great, so a couple of drives could be managed during the forenoon. This valley was rather different in type. As it approached the main backbone of the mountains, the valley walls were not so high. They were covered in a cloak of mixed fir and birch thick with undergrowth, whilst a rapid torrent stream ran down to the Vshaped valley bottom. The beaters were small boys, whose enthusiasm for the death of boars who ravaged the parental fields hardly balanced their awe of the said boars' tusks. Small blame to them, when a tiger will leave a wounded boar alone at the best of times. It is easier to be brave when you have a great big rifle in your hands rather than an ash staff.

The morning's beats produced nothing except a certain clamour about a more or less apocryphal boar, who appears to have treated the beaters with contempt, and proceeded across the frontier obviously without a passport.

Another beat in the afternoon met with no better luck. Finally, as a last resort, it was decided to drive down the valley as a whole. S. was stationed on the edge of the stones of the stream-bed at the foot of the western slope, and H.

climbed up a couple of hundred feet amongst the thick birch saplings and undergrowth of the eastern. The "oberförster," who had a twelvebore loaded with "Lethal" bullets, took up his stand a little uphill from the centre.

The boys took a very long time to climb sufficiently far up to the head of the valley, so long that H. and S. feared that oncoming darkness might spoil the drive.

At last the shouts and crashing commenced. Then a loud and deep baying gave the joyful news of a tusker.

The clamour and tumult became near and louder. An occasional yell or so seemed to show that the nerves of some of the boys were showing signs of the stress. Then, to the accompaniment of a very spasm of shouts, a boar broke through the line, and S. saw him in the far distance between two pine clumps, silhouetted against the snow, and going fast and far out of reach. He looked a gigantic animal, and so it was with a sad heart that S. turned his back, made up his mind that the day was over, and commenced to unload his rifle.

Suddenly, as he was doing this, and listening to the recriminations of the "oberförster" and the shrill excuses of the boys, a large boulder detached itself from the opposite hillside and commenced crashing hidden descent through the saplings and

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