“Have you an alp of your own?” asked Hamilton.
“No; but I have rented one for the last two years, and find it answers very well, the greater part of my cattle are there now. It was not, however, of my cows and calves that I was thinking, but of the chamois on the mountain near the alp, of which the Förster from G— told me this morning. Now, as you acquitted yourself so well to-day at the Scheiben-Schiessen, I do not see why you should not become a sportsman at once.”
“Do you think I should have any chance?”
“Why not? You must make a beginning some time or other.”
“I suppose game is very plentiful here?” said Hamilton.
“Not what you call plenty, at least we have not grouse or black cocks as my wife tells me you have in Scotland.”
“But I have heard of splendid battues in the neighbourhood of Munich.”
“I dare say, in the royal chase, where eight or nine hundred hares, and other game in proportion, have been shot in one afternoon—but that is not my idea of sport. I prefer a chamois hunt to all others, next to that, black cock; and I am quite satisfied if I shoot three or four during the season.”
“Are the black cock so difficult to get at?”
“More troublesome than difficult, though I have occasionally found them almost as high on the mountains as the chamois! It is the waiting and watching—the being up before sunrise, that gives me an interest, though it generally disgusts others whose actual profession it does not happen to be.”