the wind she has slipped down to the stream, and has crept along through
the cresses to get to the underwood. But for those two footsteps she
would have sold us completely."

We had just reached the edge of a pine-forest. In woods of this
description the snow never reaches the ground except in the open spaces
between the trees, the dense foliage intercepting it in its fall. This
was a difficult part of our enterprise. Sperver dismounted to see our way
better, and placed me on his left so as not to be hindered by my shadow.

Here were large spaces covered with dead leaves and the needles and cones
of the fir-trees, which retain no footprint. It was, therefore, only in
the open patches where the snow had fallen on the ground that Sperver
found the track again.

It took us an hour to get through this thicket. The old poacher bit his
moustache with excitement and vexation, and his long nose visibly bent
into a hook. When I was only opening my mouth to speak, he would
impatiently say--

"Don't speak--it bothers me!"

At last we descended a valley to the left and Gideon pointing to the
track of the she-wolf outside the edge of the brushwood, triumphantly
remarked--

"There is no feint in this sortie, for once. We may follow this track
confidently."

"Why so?"

"Because the Pest has a habit every time she doubles of going three paces
to the right; then she retraces her steps four, five, or six in the other
direction, and jumps away into a clear place. But when she thinks she has
sufficiently disguised her trail she breaks out without troubling herself
to make any feints. There now! What did I say? Now she is burrowing
beneath the brushwood like a wild boar, and it won't be so difficult to
follow her up."

"Well, let us put the track between us and smoke a pipe."

We halted, and the honest fellow, whose countenance was beginning to
brighten up, looking up at me with enthusiasm, cried--

"Fritz, if we have luck this will be one of the finest days in my life.
If we catch the old hag I will strap her across my horse behind me like a
bundle of old rags. There is only one thing troubles me."

"And what is that?"

"That I forgot my bugle. I should have liked to have sounded the return
on getting near the castle! Ha, ha, ha!"

He lighted his stump of a pipe and we galloped off again.

The track of the she-wolf now passed on to the heights of the forest by
so steep an ascent that several times we had to dismount and