id Stent briefly.

They unslung their rifles, seated themselves in the warm sun amid a deep
thicket of alpine roses, and remained silent and busy with pencil and
paper for a while--two inconspicuous, brownish-grey figures, cuddled close
among the greyish rocks, with nothing of military insignia about their
dress or their round grey wool caps to differentiate them from
sportsmen--wary stalkers of chamois or red deer--except that under their
unbelted tunics automatics and cartridge belts made perceptible bunches.

Just above them a line of stunted firs edged limits of perpetual snow, and
rocks and glistening fields of crag-broken white carried the eye on upward
to the dazzling pinnacle of the Col de la Reine, splitting the vast, calm
blue above.

Nothing except peaks disturbed the tranquil sky to the northward; not a
cloud hung there. But westward mist clung to a few mountain flanks, and to
the east it was snowing on distant crests.

Brown, sketching rapidly but accurately, laughed a little under his
breath.

"To think," he said, "not a Boche dreams we are in the Carnic Alps. It's
very funny, isn't it? Our surveyors are likely to be here in a day or two,
I fancy."

Stent, working more slowly and methodically on his squared map paper, the
smoke drifting fragrantly from his brier pipe, nodded in silence, glancing
down now and then at the barometer and compass between them.

"Mentioning big game," he remarked presently, "I started to tell you about
the ibex, Jim. I've hunted a little in the Eastern Alps."

"I didn't know it," said Brown, interested.

"Yes. A classmate of mine at the Munich Polytechnic invited me--Siurd von
Glahn--a splendid fellow--educated at Oxford--just like one of us--nothing
of the Boche about him at all----"

Brown laughed: "A Boche is always a Boche, Harry. The black Prussian
blood----"

"No; Siurd was all white. Really. A charming, lovable fellow. Anyway, his
dad had a shooting where there were chamois, reh, hirsch, and the king of
all Alpine big game--ibex. And Siurd asked me."

"Did you get an ibex?" inquired Brown, sharpening his pencil and glancing
out across the valley at a cloud which had suddenly formed there.

"I did."

"What manner of beast is it?"

"It has mountain sheep and goats stung to death. Take it from me, Jim,
it's the last word in mountain sport. The chamois isn't in it. Pooh, I've
seen chamois within a hundred yards of a mountain macadam highway. But the
ibex? N