From the door by which Grete had disappeared, there issued a faint murmur of voices and a strong odour of tobacco-smoke. Hermann went forward and opened this door, meeting there a picture with which he was quite familiar, but which it is wholly impossible to describe. The chief room of the inn, monopolising all the ground-floor, and lighted by ten or twelve small windows, was almost filled with a cloud of pale-blue smoke, in which picturesque groups of men were seen seated round the long narrow tables. Brown-faced, bearded men, they wore the foresters’ dress of green and grey, with a tall beaver hat in which were stuck some capercailzie feathers, with a large cartridge-pouch of roe-skin slung over their shoulder by a green strap, with a horn slung round their neck by means of a twisted green cord with tattered tassels, and with a long killing-knife lying on the table before them, with which they from time to time cut a lump off the brown loaf. All round the low-roofed room, forming a sort of cornice, ran a row of deers’ horns, tastefully mounted, each marked with the date on which the animal had been shot. These were, for the most part, the product of Hans Halm’s personal skill; though the finest pair had been presented to him by Hermann. Besides the under-keepers, there were one or two villagers, and in a corner sat young Gersbach, his spectacles firmly fixed on the book before him, except when Margarethe Halm happened to pass before him, as she brought in fresh chopins of white wine to the swarthy, sinewy, picturesque foresters. Of course Hermann’s entrance was the signal for a general uproar, all the keepers starting from the benches and crowding round him to bid him welcome. At last he managed to get clear of them, and then he sat down on one of the benches. "Listen, friends!" he said, in a loud voice, bringing down his hand with a bang on the table. There was instant silence. "The Herr Graf and his friend go shooting to-morrow morning. Every man will be here by four o’clock—four o’clock, do you understand? In placing the guns, you will take care that the Herr Graf, and the other Englander, have the _Haupt-platz_² alternately. Four o’clock, every one of you, remember. And now, in God’s name, Hans Halm, let us have some of your white wine, that I haven’t tasted for many a day!" ² The Haupt-platz is the point at which the deer are most likely to break cover, and therefore the best position for the sportsman. There are generally one or two of those good places, which are invariably given, as a compliment, to strangers. There was a new life in the big forester, now that he had sniffed the resinous odour of his native woods, and was once more among his own people. He languished in the dull solitude of Kent; here he knew his business, he was respected of men, and he speedily showed that there was none of the old swing and vigour gone out of him.