of human laughter, or how a troubled, helpless, and melancholy reflection of this appears and vanishes again to give way to the stigmata of fear and embarrassment, and then how it once more makes its wry appearance. . . . But it is best to pause here and not involve myself deeper in detail. I must not allow my descriptions to exceed the limits which I have set. I merely wish to show my hero in all his glory and in his natural elements and in that position in life in which he is most himself and which casts the most favourable light upon his various gifts and accomplishments—that is to say, the hunt or chase. I must, however, as a preliminary, make the reader more closely acquainted with the scene of these joys—our hunting-grounds—my landscape along the river. For there is a strange affinity between this and the person of Bashan. This strip of land is as dear to me as it is to him—it is intimate and full of meaning—like himself. Therefore, without further ado or novellistic preciosity, let the following suffice in the way of description:— THE HUNTING-GROUNDS CHAPTER IV THE HUNTING-GROUNDS In the gardens of our small but spaciously arranged colony of villas there are huge trees—ancient giants which tower above the roofs. They offer a marked contrast to the tender saplings but recently planted. There can be no mistaking the fact that these trees are the original growth—the aboriginal inhabitants of this region. They are the pride and beauty of this still youthful settlement. They have been carefully preserved and tended—as far as this was possible. At those points where they happened to come into conflict with the surveyor’s lines or with the fences dividing the various lots or tracts of land, that is to say, where some mossy, silvery, venerable trunk happened to be standing precisely on the lines of demarcation, you will find that the fence has made a little loop around the tree-trunk or that a gap has been left in the concrete of the garden wall. In these openings the Old Ones now tower, half privately, half publicly, their naked branches loaded with snow or bedizened with their small-leafed, late-sprouting foliage.