Breakfast over, the whole party went out and up into the high woods. The sport at Hohenszalras always gave fair play to beast and bird. In deference to the wishes of his wife, Sabran would have none of those battues which make of the covert or the forest a slaughterhouse. He himself disdained that sort of sport, and liked danger and adventure to mingle with his out-of-door pastimes. Game fairly found by the spaniel or the pointer; the boar, the wolf, the bear, honestly started and given its fair chance of escape or revenge; the steinbock stalked in a long hard day with peril and effort—these were all delightful to him on occasion; but for the crowded drive, the horde of beaters, the terrified bewildered troop of forest denizens driven with sticks on to the very barrels of the gunners, for this he had the boundless contempt of a man who had chased the buffalo over the prairie, and lassoed the wild horse and the wild bull leaning down from the saddle of his mustang. The day passed off well, and his guests were all content: he alone was not, because a large brown bear which he had sighted and tired at twice had escaped him, and roused that blood-lust in him which is in the hearts of all men.
'Will you come out alone with me to-morrow and try for that grand brute?' he said to Vàsàrhely, as the last of his guests took their departure.
Vàsàrhely hesitated.
'I intended to leave to-morrow; I have been here too long. But since you are so good, I will stay twenty-four hours longer.'
He was ashamed in his own heart of the willingness with which he caught at the excuse to remain within sight of his cousin and within watch of Sabran.
'I am charmed,' said his host, in himself regretful that he had suggested a reason for delay; he had not known that the other had intended to leave so soon. They remained together on the terrace giving directions to the jägermeister for the next day.
Vàsàrhely looked at his successful rival and said to himself: 'It is impossible. I must be mad to dream it. I am misled by a mere chance resemblance, and even my own memory may have deceived me; I was but a child.
In the forenoon they both went out into the high hills again, where the wild creatures had their lairs and were but seldom troubled by a rifle-shot. They brought down some black grouse and hazel grouse and mountain partridges on their upward way. The jägers were scattered in the woods; the day was still and cloudy, a true sportsman's day, with no gleam of sun to shine in their eyes and on the barrels of their rifles. Sabran shooting to the right, Vàsàrhely to the left, they went through the grassy drives that climbed upward and upward, and many a mountain hare was rolled over in their path, and many a ptarmigan and capercailzie. But when they reached the high pine forests where the big game harboured, they ceased to shoot, and advanced silently, waiting and reserving their fire for any large beast the jägers might start and drive towards them from above. In the greyness of the day the upper woods were almost dusky, so thickly, stood the cembras and the Siberian pines. There was everywhere the sound of rushing waters, some above some underground.
'The first beast to you, the second to me,' said Sabran, in a whisper to his companion, who demurred and declared that the first fire should be his host's.
'No,' said Sabran. 'I am at home. Permit me so small a courtesy to my guest.'