ioo WOLP-HUNTING. 



words to the peasants, like oil on the troubled waters, those 

 words seemed at once to calm their passion and still the storm : 

 the crowd separated again ; the peasants returning to the chase, 

 and the gendarmes marching off in triumph with their one 

 captured gun. 



In the, meantime the hounds were still running hard, triough 

 several shots had been fired in the same direction, but apparently 

 without bringing them to a check. At length, after a continuous 

 burst of wild music for more than two hours, the hounds sticking 

 like glue to their game, three rapidly successive shots brought 

 the din of war to a sudden lull ; then almost instantly followed 

 a ringing blast from Keryfan's horn, and every chasseur, noble, 

 and peasant, from the cover-head on the Black Mountain down 

 to the rocky stream roaring at its base, knew the import of that 

 joyous note; they knew the strife was over, and the chase 

 brought to a successful end. The three pigs had, one by one, 

 fallen to the peasants' guns ; and thus far, at least, was St. Prix 

 made supremely happy by again being able to say, " Not a 

 hound scratched in the fray." 



The peasants, too, rejoiced over the slain; but, as before, 

 conducted themselves with the utmost propriety, not a murmur 

 being heard as to the distribution of the meat. The pigs on 

 an average weighed at least two hundredweight apiece ; and 

 each being divided, into four quarters, half a hundredweight of 

 the best bacon-pork fell to the lot of no less than twenty 

 peasants, making, for the time being, ample compensation to 

 them for the loss of their chestnuts and the damage done to 

 their crops in the last harvest. Nor were the boars' heads 

 promised to Marseillier forgotten ; two of the deputation that 

 had visited Carhaix remarking that the hospitable reception they 

 had met with at la Tour d'Auvergne, and the success that 

 followed it, rendered them his debtors for the rest of their 

 lives. 



