6 WOLF-HUNTING. 



" Attack it ! " said he ; "a hungry wolf, like a wicked man, 

 has no conscience when the night favours him. It was only last 

 January that they carried off or killed every live animal he 

 possessed. A heavy snow-storm had fallen on the mountains, 

 and for several nights in succession a pack of five or six wolves 

 kept sentry at Antoine's hut, pacing round it, and uttering the 

 most dismal howls. Antoine and his wife, however, were deter- 

 mined to save their little stock ; they lighted a good fire, and sat 

 up by turns to keep it burning; but at length, on a dark and 

 tempestuous night, when the wind was whistling and the hail, 

 beating against their door, exhausted by watching, they both 

 dropped asleep, and the wood fire soon became extinguished. At 

 that instant a desperate rush was heard in the roof ; and before 

 Antoine could arm himself with a pike, five gaunt wolves dashed 

 in upon the floor one after the other, and, seizing his three sheep, 

 tore and devoured them in his presence. A little dog, too, which 

 they valued above all, was snapped up and swallowed at a gulp. 

 Antoine is a brave man, but his heart beat audibly as, from his 

 bed, he stretched out his hands to strike a light ; the flint and 

 steel were true, the resin-candle was quickly ignited, and, almost 

 as rapidly as they had entered, the villains sprung over an old 

 armoire, and disappeared through the roof. They come and go 

 like a hurricane," added he, " and, like it, leave desolation behind 

 them/' 



Wolves in England are a mere tradition of the Heptarchy; 

 but in this mountain tract of Brittany they still abound ; nor, until 

 the country is reclaimed from its present condition of heath and 

 woods, will it be possible to dislodge them from the fastnesses in 

 which they now skulk and which they claim as their own. En* 

 the beast of the present day is a cowardly one, compared with 

 that of former times. During the War of the League, a period of 

 desolation and brigandage throughout that region, we are told by 

 the old chronicler, in fearfully vivid language, that the wolves got 



