A shot rang out, followed by another. They turned, sharply. Ruth, looking half frightened, was lowering the smoking rifle from her shoulder. Across the ravine a large stag was swaying on the edge; then he fell and rolled to the bottom. The hound, loosed, was off like an arrow, scrambling and tumbling down the side. The four hunters followed, somehow. Sepp got down first and sent back a wild Jodel. The stag lay there, dead, and his splendid antlers bore eight prongs. When Ruth came up she had her hand on her father’s arm. She stood and leaned on him, looking down at the stag. Pity mingled with a wild intoxicating sense of achievement confused her. A rich color flushed her cheek, but the curve of her lips was almost grave. Sepp solemnly drew forth his flask of Schnapps and, taking off his hat to her, drank “Waidmann’s Heil!”—a toast only drunk by hunters to hunters. Gethryn shook hands with her twenty times and praised her until she could bear no more. She took her hand from her father’s arm and drew herself up, determined to preserve her composure. The wind blew the little bright rings of hair across her crimson cheek and wrapped her kilts about her slender figure as she stood, her rifle poised across her shoulder, one hand on the stock and one clasped below the muzzle. “Are you laughing at me, Rex?” “You know I am not!” Never had she been so happy in her whole life. The game drawn and hung, to be fetched later, they resumed their climb and hastened upward toward the peak. Ruth led. She hardly felt the ground beneath her, but sprang from rock to moss and from boulder to boulder, till a gasp from Gethryn made her stop and turn about. “Good Heavens, Ruth! what a climber you are!” And now the colonel sat down on the nearest stone and flatly refused to stir. “Oh! is it the hip, Father?” cried Ruth, hurrying back and kneeling beside him. “No, of course it isn’t! It’s indignation!” said her father, calmly regarding her anxious face. “If you can’t go up mountains like a human girl, you’re not going up any more mountains with me.” “Oh! I’ll go like a human snail if you want, dear! I’ve been too selfish! It’s a shame to tire you so!” “Indeed, it is a perfect shame!” cried the colonel. Ruth had to laugh. “As I remarked to Rex, early this morning,” her father continued, adjusting his eyeglass, “hang the Gomps!” Rex discreetly offered no comment. “Moreover,” the colonel went on, bringing all the severity his eyeglass permitted to bear on them both, “I decline to go walking any longer with a pair of lunatics. I shall confide you both to Sepp and will wait for you at the upper Shelter.” “But it’s only indignation; it isn’t the hip, Father?” said Ruth, still hanging about him, but trying to laugh, since he would have her laugh. He saw her trouble, and changing his tone said seriously, “My little girl, I’m only tired of this scramble, that’s all.”