At sunset I was no closer to him, and as he was taking me further and further away from the chalet, a decision whether to sleep out or whether to return for the night to the hut became imperative. Sleeping out, quite unprepared as I happened to be, was, at the altitude I was on and in the chilly October nights, a contingency which if not really necessary was better avoided, particularly as the weather was rapidly assuming a threatening look, and the sky became covered with leaden-hued clouds indicative of coming snow. Taking the shortest route, it was, however, pitch dark when I finally reached the hut. A couple of hours later, when I turned in, a strong wind was blowing, which soon afterwards rose to a fierce gale that made the timbers of the ramshackle old hut groan and creak. It was still quite dark when I woke up, an ominous stillness contrasting strangely with the preceding uproar of the elements. The cause was soon explained, for on going to the door and trying to open it I found a couple of feet of snow had drifted against it, and I had to take it off its primitive raw-hide hinges to get it open at all. The air was thick with big flakes, and the ground was covered to a depth of four or five inches. It was noon before it stopped snowing, though the leaden, sunless sky did not look even then very promising. To search for the wounded buck under such circumstances seemed almost hopeless, and entirely so if he had died during the night, but eventually I decided to make an attempt. Making my way as best I could by the easiest approach to the ledge where I last saw the buck, I was of course wet to the skin long ere I reached the spot, for forcing one’s way through the twisted and tangled masses of the dwarf pine, snow clinging to every twig and branch, is the reverse of agreeable. However, I was to be rewarded, for I had not gone far when I heard the whistle emitted by the chamois when suddenly alarmed. Looking up, I saw him standing on the ledge above me, his shaggy coat outlined against the sky. It was his last tottering effort to fly from his pursuer, and I believe I almost could have caught him, so enfeebled had he become by loss of blood. A bullet placed in a better place than the last one soon put him out of his misery. It was a good five or six year old buck, and my first bullet had struck him rather high between the spine and the lungs, but ranging downwards had cut a furrow in the one lung on the side of its exit. Overshooting game when firing downwards should be specially guarded against. For shots under similar circumstances and at ordinary distances, it is a safe rule to see daylight between the top of the bead and the body; where otherwise, if the shot were fired on level ground, one would hold the bead right on the body.