“Look at that beard—Nimrod!” she said. Her voice rang with an excitement she had not shown at her own success. “It _is_ a fine beard,” said Rex, bending over it. His voice was not quite steady. “Herrlich!” cried Sepp, and drank the “Waidmann’s Heil!” toast to him in deep and serious draughts. Then he took out a thong, tied the four slender hoofs together and opened his game sack; Rex helped him to hoist the chamois in and onto his broad shoulders. Now for the upper Shelter. They started in great spirits, a happy trio. Rex was touched by Ruth’s deep delight in his success, and by the pride in him which she showed more than she knew. He looked at her with eyes full of affection. Sepp was assuring himself, by all the saints in the Bavarian Calendar, that here was a “Herrschaft” which a man might be proud of guiding, and so he meant to tell the duke. Ruth’s generous heart beat high. Their way back to the path where they had separated from Colonel Dene was long and toilsome. Sepp did his best to beguile it with hunter’s yarns, more or less true, at any rate just as acceptable as if they had been proved and sworn to. Like a good South German he hated Prussia and all its works, and his tales were mostly of Berliners who had wandered thither and been abused; of the gentleman who had been told, and believed, that the “gams” slept by hooking its horns into crevices of the rock, swinging thus at ease, over precipices; of another whom Federl once deterred from going on the mountains by telling how a chamois, if enraged, charged and butted; of a third who went home glad to have learned that the chamois produced their peculiar call by bringing up a hind leg and whistling through the hoof. It was about half past two in the afternoon and Ruth began to be very, very tired, when a Jodel from Sepp greeted the “Hütte” and the white cross rising behind it. As they toiled up the steep path to the little alm, Ruth said, “I don’t see Papa, but there are people there.” A man in a summer helmet, wound with a green veil, came to the edge of the wooden platform and looked down at them; he was presently joined by two ladies, of whom one disappeared almost immediately, but they could see the other still looking down until a turn in the path brought them to the bottom of some wooden steps, close under the platform. On climbing these they were met at the top by the gentleman, hat in hand, who spoke in French to Gethryn, while the stout, friendly lady held out both hands to Ruth and cried, in pretty broken English: “Ah! dear Mademoiselle! ees eet possible zat we meet a—h—gain!” “Madame Bordier!” exclaimed Ruth, and kissed her cordially on both cheeks. Then she greeted the husband of Madame, and presented Rex. “But we know heem!” smiled Madame; and her quiet, gentlemanly husband added in French that Monsieur the colonel had done them the honor to leave messages with them for Miss Dene and Mr Gethryn. “Papa is not here?” said Ruth, quickly.