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They were never even impatient or ill-humored, nor did they ever use hard words, for they had laid in a stock of patience for their wintering on the top of the mountain. Sometimes old Gaspard took his rifle and went after chamois, and occasionally he killed one. Then there was a feast in the inn at Schwarenbach, and they reveled in fresh meat. One morning he went out as usual.
Trefusis took a newspaper from the table and said, "Listen to this: 'In spite of the unfavorable nature of the weather, the sport of the Emperor and his guests in Styria has been successful. In three days 52 chamois and 79 stags and deer fell to 19 single-barrelled rifles, the Emperor allowing no more on this occasion.
These 120 chamois serve in a measure to atone for the twenty foxes which figure as having been shot by the emperor, a fact which is more likely to injure his reputation and prestige in the eyes of hunting men than any other fault or even crime of which he could possibly render himself guilty.
A single quick jerk denuded his upper lip; he stowed the mustache carefully away in his breast pocket. The moistened corner of a towel made quick work of the crow's-feet about his eyes, and, simultaneously, robbed him of a dozen apparent years. A pair of yellow chamois gloves, placed conveniently on a dressing table, covered hands that no art could make resemble Maitland's.
Just now, yielding to an impulse which often seized her, she drew out the match-box and the chamois sack, and emptying the contents on the bed, counted them carefully. It came to one hundred and sixty-five dollars, all told. She counted it and recounted it and made little piles of it, and rubbed the gold pieces between the folds of her apron until they shone.
They were wrapped up in soft paper and chamois leather, and put into an old cigar-box which he placed in his small travelling-bag. That bag, he said, would never go out of his sight until he reached London, where, when he'd exhibited the jewels to Mr. Fullaway's client, he was to lodge them in a bank.
A string of large pearls emerged from wrappings of tissue paper and chamois skin. Jim scarcely glanced at them. "They're worth money," he said, and returned to the diamonds. A silence fell on the two men. Jim played with the gems, running them through his fingers, sorting them into piles, and spreading them out flat and wide.
Then she paused: "No, not the gold piece," she said to herself. "It's too pretty. He can have the silver." She made the change and counted out ten silver dollars into her palm. But what a difference it made in the appearance and weight of the little chamois bag! The bag was shrunken and withered, long wrinkles appeared running downward from the draw-string. It was a lamentable sight.
The two other ladies, and even the men had stopped on the edge of the ice. "Monsieur de Mauleon wished to fulfil his duties as escort, but at the first crevasse he had also halted without manifesting the slightest desire to imitate the chamois.
The eyes of the brave Rudy sparkled as he described the life of a hunter, or spoke of the cunning of the chamois and their wonderful leaps; also of the powerful fohn and the rolling avalanche. He noticed that the more he described, the more interested the miller became, especially when he spoke of the fierce vulture and of the royal eagle.
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