old custom which permitted the people to make sport of a contestant who failed to hit the target, and thus forfeited the right to make trial for the kingship.  Cuno is amazed that a mere peasant should have defeated one of his foresters, and that one the affianced lover of his daughter, Agathe, and who, as his son-in-law, would inherit his office, provided he could prove his fitness for it by a trial shot on the wedding day.  That day had been set for the morrow.  How the custom of thus providing for the successorship originated, Cuno now relates in answer to the questions of one of the party.  His great-grandfather, also bearer of the name Cuno, had been one of the rangers of the prince who ruled the dominion in his day.  Once upon a time, in the course of a hunt, the dogs started a stag who bounded toward the party with a man tied to his back.  It was thus that poachers were sometimes punished.  The Prince’s pity was stirred, and he promised that whoever should shoot the stag without harming the man should receive the office of Chief Forester, to be hereditary in the family, and the tenancy of a hunting lodge near by.  Cuno, moved more by pity than hope of reward, attempted the feat and succeeded.  The Prince kept his promise, but on a suggestion that the old hunter may have used a charmed bullet, he made the hereditary succession contingent upon the success of a trial shot.  Before telling the tale, Cuno had warned Max to have a care, for should he fail in the trial shot on the morrow, his consent to the marriage between him and Agathe would be withdrawn.  Max had suspected that his ill luck for a month past, during which time he had brought home not a single trophy of bird or beast, was due to some malign influence, the cause of which he was unable to fathom.  He sings of the prowess and joys that once were his (Aria:  “Durch die Walder, durch die Auen"), but falls into a moody dread at the thought that Heaven has forsaken him and given him over to the powers of darkness.  It is here that the sinister music, mentioned in the outline of the overture, enters the drama.  It accompanies the appearance of Samiel (the Wild Huntsman, or Black Hunter,—­in short, the Devil), and we have thus in Von Weber’s opera a pre-Wagnerian example of the Leitmotif of the Wagnerian commentators.  Caspar returns to the scene, which all the other personages have left to join in a dance, and finds his associate in the depths of despair.  He plies Max with wine, and, affecting sympathy with him in his misfortunes, gradually insinuates that there is a means of insuring success on the morrow.  Max remains sceptical until Caspar hands him his rifle and bids him shoot at an eagle flying overhead.  The bird is plainly out of rifle range, a mere black dot against the twilight sky; but Max, scarcely aiming, touches the trigger and an eagle of gigantic size comes hurtling through the air and falls at his feet.  Max is convinced that there is a sure way to win his bride on the morrow.