There was a good deal of unparliamentary language, expressed in tones both loud and deep.  It was an act of unwisdom, however, to stop there in a heap on the grassy slope of a precipice, swearing in chorus at the poor devil of a Wallack.  I turned my horse up the incline, resolved to try back, hoping to regain the lost track.  It was next to impossible to halt, for we had not even got our plaids with us—­everything was with the baggage-horses.  Of course “some one had blundered.”  We all knew that!  The guide stuck to it to the last that “he had not exactly lost his way.”  The fellow was incapable of a suggestion, and would have stood there arguing till doomsday if we had not sent him off with a sharp injunction to find some shepherds, and that quickly, who could take us to the rendezvous.  Being summer time, there would be many shepherds about in different places on the Alpen, and the Wallack could hardly fail to encounter some herdkeeper before long.

We waited, as agreed, on the same spot nearly an hour, and then we heard a great shouting to the right of us.  This was the guide, who I believe must have been born utterly without the organ of locality.  He had found some shepherds, he told us subsequently, not long after he had left us, but then the fool of a fellow could not find his way back to us, to the spot where we agreed to wait for him.  There was a great deal of shouting before we could bring him to our bearings:  the fog muffled the sound, adding to the perplexity.

The shepherds now took us in tow.  We had to go back some distance, and then make a sharp descent to the right, which brought us to the rendezvous, and we effected at last a junction with our lost luggage.  Arriving at the hut, which had been previously built for us, we were delighted to find a meal already prepared; it was in fact a very elaborate supper, but I think we were all too exhausted to appreciate the details.  I know I was very glad to wrap my plaid round me and stretch myself on the floor.

The next morning we were up with the first streak of dawn.  It was with some curiosity that I looked round at our impromptu dwelling and its surroundings, upon which we had descended in total obscurity the night before.  The position of our camping-place was not badly chosen; we were just within the girdle of forest above which rises the grassy Alpen.  About forty yards to the left or north-east of us was a small stream, the boundary, it seems, between the Banat and Transylvania.  We were provided with two necessaries of life, wood and water, close at hand.

The hut, however, was more picturesque than practical, as subsequent events proved.  The Wallacks had constructed it by driving two strong posts into the ground about ten yards apart.  A tree was placed across, with a couple of smaller supports, and on this was made on a rough framework a sloping roof to the windward side.  The roofing consisted entirely of leaves:  it is called in German laubhuette, but is in fact more of a parasol than an umbrella.  I should have preferred a hut made of bark, such as I have seen used by shepherds and sportsmen in Styria.