if Rudy will become an agile chamois hunter in a few years?
He has every disposition for it!" said his uncle, and instructed him
how to hold a rifle, how to aim and to fire. In the hunting season, he
took him with him in the mountains and made him drink the warm chamois
blood, which prevents the hunter from becoming dizzy. He taught him to
heed the time when the avalanches roll down the different sides of the
mountain--at mid-day or at night-fall--which depended upon the heat of
the rays of the sun. He taught him to notice the chamois, in order to
learn from them how to jump, so as to alight steadily upon the feet.
If there was no resting place in the clefts of the rock for the foot,
he must know how to support himself with the elbow, and be able to
climb by means of the muscles of the thigh and calf, even the neck
must serve when it is necessary. The chamois are cunning, they place
out-guards--but the hunter must be still more cunning and follow the
trail--and he can deceive them by hanging his coat and hat on his
alpine stick, and so make the chamois take the coat for the man.

One day when Rudy was out with his uncle hunting, he tried this sport.

The rocky path was not wide; indeed there was scarcely any, only a
narrow ledge, close to the dizzy abyss. The snow was half-thawed, the
stones crumbled when trodden upon, and his uncle stretched himself out
full length and crept along. Each stone as it broke away, fell,
knocked itself, bounded and then rolled down; it made many leaps from
one rocky wall to another until it found repose in the black deep.
Rudy stood about a hundred steps behind his uncle on the outermost
cliff, and saw a huge golden vulture, hovering over his uncle, and
sailing towards him through the air, as though wishing to cast the
creeping worm into the abyss with one blow of his wing, and to make
carrion of him. His uncle had only eyes for the chamois and its young
kid, on the other side of the cleft. Rudy looked at the bird,
understood what it wanted, and laid his hand on his rifle in order to
shoot it. At that moment the chamois leaped--his uncle fired--the ball
hit the animal, but the kid was gone, as though flight and danger had
been its life's experience. The monstrous bird terrified by the report
of the gun, took flight in another direction, and Rudy's uncle knew
nought of his danger, until Rudy told him of it.

As they now were on their way home in the gayest spirits--his uncle
playing one of