s cheeks turned deep
crimson, and the whites of his eyes became bloodshot; one might have
taken fright at the sight of the old man.

"You are right, father, there is nothing more unreasonable than the
so-called hunting privileges," said the Hunter, in order to pacify him.
"For that reason I will take upon myself the sin of violating the game
laws of the local nobility in the interest of your estate, although by
so doing I shall really be--"

He was going to add something more, but suddenly broke off and passed
over to other indifferent matters.

But any one who thinks that the conversation between this Westphalian
justice and the Suabian hunter ran as smoothly as my pen has written it
down, is mistaken. On the contrary, it was frequently necessary for them
to repeat several times before a barely sufficient understanding came
about between them. Now and then they were even compelled to resort to
making signs with their fingers. For in all his life the Justice had
never heard _ch_ pronounced after _s_; furthermore he brought all his
sounds up out of his gullet, or, if you will, out of his throat. In the
Hunter, on the other hand, the divine gift which distinguishes us from
beasts was located between his front teeth and his lips, whence the
sounds broke forth in a wonderful sonorous gravity and fulness and a
buzzing sibilancy. But through these strange husks the young man and the
old one soon learned to like each other. Inasmuch as both were men of
full-weight, sterling stuff they could not fail to understand each
other's inmost nature.

CHAPTER VI

THE HUNTER WRITES TO HIS FRIEND

Now I may write about things that are pleasant. I cannot possibly tell
you how happy I am here in the solitude of this hill-girt Westphalian
plain, where I have been quartered for a week among people and cattle.
Among people and cattle is indeed literally the case, for the cows do
actually stand right in the house on both sides of the large
entrance-hall. There is, however, absolutely nothing unpleasant or
unclean about this; on the contrary it rather helps to increase the
impression of patriarchal house-management. In front of my window stand
rustling oak-trees, and beyond them I look out on long, long meadows and
waving cornfields, between which I see here and there a grove of oaks
and a lone farmstead. For here it is as it was in the time of Tacitus:
"_Colunt discreti ac diversi, ut_ _fons, ut campus, ut nemus placuit_."
Consequen