'I intended to leave to-morrow; I have been here too long. But since you are so good, I will stay twenty-four hours longer.'
He was ashamed in his own heart of the willingness with which he caught at the excuse to remain within sight of his cousin and within watch of Sabran.
'I am charmed,' said his host, in himself regretful that he had suggested a reason for delay; he had not known that the other had intended to leave so soon. They remained together on the terrace giving directions to the _jägermeister_ for the next day.
Vàsàrhely looked at his successful rival and said to himself: 'It is impossible. I must be mad to dream it. I am misled by a mere chance resemblance, and even my own memory may have deceived me; I was but a child.
In the forenoon they both went out into the high hills again, where the wild creatures had their lairs and were but seldom troubled by a rifle-shot. They brought down some black grouse and hazel grouse and mountain partridges on their upward way. The jägers were scattered in the woods; the day was still and cloudy, a true sportsman's day, with no gleam of sun to shine in their eyes and on the barrels of their rifles. Sabran shooting to the right, Vàsàrhely to the left, they went through the grassy drives that climbed upward and upward, and many a mountain hare was rolled over in their path, and many a ptarmigan and capercailzie. But when they reached the high pine forests where the big game harboured, they ceased to shoot, and advanced silently, waiting and reserving their fire for any large beast the jägers might start and drive towards them from above. In the greyness of the day the upper woods were almost dusky, so thickly, stood the cembras and the Siberian pines. There was everywhere the sound of rushing waters, some above some underground.
'The first beast to you, the second to me,' said Sabran, in a whisper to his companion, who demurred and declared that the first fire should be his host's.
'No,' said Sabran. 'I am at home. Permit me so small a courtesy to my guest.'
Vàsàrhely flushed darkly. In his very politeness this man seemed to him to contrive to sting and wound him.
Sabran, however, who had meant nothing more than he had said, did not observe the displeasure he had caused, and paused at the spot agreed upon with Otto, a grassy spot where four drives met. There they both in absolute silence waited and watched for what the hunter's patron, good S. Hubert, might vouchsafe to send them. They had so waited about a quarter of an hour, when down one of the drives made dusky by the low hanging arolla boughs, there came towards them a great dark beast, and would have gone by them had not Vàsàrhely fired twice as it approached. The bear rolled over, shot through the head and heart.
