WILD SPORT IN BRITTANY. 37 



plished marksman who posts himself in an open space or outside 

 a cover, waiting until the cocks come to him to be shot. Old 

 Cleave, a famous cock-shot and keeper in Cornwall, used to say, 

 " I like to see a man and his dogs go out of sight, and head-over- 

 ears in cover, and then I know they mean business." 



This practice enabled Keryfan and myself for he had acquired 

 it during his frequent visits to England invariably to kill a far 

 greater number of cocks than any Breton chasseurs with whom we 

 shot during two seasons in Brittany : indeed the advantage on our 

 side was usually as much as six to one cocks bagged, although, in 

 the open, we were in no respect better shots at snipe, red-legs, or 

 running game. 



Our heads were now pointing in the direction of Carhaix ; and 

 as, by falling back to rejoin our friends Kergoorlas and St. Prix, 

 whose distant and random firing we could barely hear, we feared 

 the drunken garde-du-bois might burden us again with his com- 

 pany, Keryfan dispatched his Breton servant to Ty-meur to let the 

 grooms know we did not intend to return thither, but to shoot our 

 way home to Carhaix. At the same time the opportunity was 

 taken of conveying to the drag the- contents of our carnassiere, 

 now filled to its very edge with fifteen couple of woodcock, three 

 couple of snipe, a brace of teal, a mallard, and a wood-pigeon 

 exactly forty head. 



The covers through which we now ranged in the direction of 

 Pencoet being so matted with heather, we scarcely flushed a single 

 woodcock before we reached the fir-plantations of M. Gourdin a 

 French proprietor, who has reclaimed a large extent of barren 

 land, planted it with Scotch and larch fir-trees, and built a solitary 

 chateau in the midst of his wild and umbrageous domain. Every 

 moonlight night of his life he can hear the wolves howling in the 

 covers around him, responding to each other's cries, or chiding the 

 planet that would throw its pale light on their dark orgies ; a 

 music dismal enough, but in full harmony with the solitude of the 



