WILD SPORT IN BRITTANY. 115 



CHAPTER XL 



ERE a single horn had proclaimed the " mort" and while yet the 

 monster boar was lying with his head and feet on the gravelly 

 bank, and his hind legs still quivering in the stream, St. Prix on 

 hands and knees was crawling into the cave the first, as he 

 always was, to give aid to the suffering hounds. Fourteen 

 couple only had crossed the river ; while three shivering, limping 

 hounds, out of the remaining four couple, were standing on the 

 water's edge, as if utterly unable to stem the torrent in their 

 maimed and helpless condition. Five hounds were therefore 

 wanting to complete the number of the hunting pack. 



An interval of more than ten minutes had elapsed, during 

 which time many a peasant volunteered to enter the cave, exhi- 

 biting intense anxiety for the fate of the hounds ; when St. Prix 

 again appeared on the surface, dragging after him a hound by 

 the hind legs, literally disembowelled and dead. The four others, 

 he said, had been so cruelly mauled that, not being known by the 

 hounds, he dared not handle one of them. M. de Kergoorlas's 

 chief piqueur, the very man who had been nearly roasted with his 

 hounds in the shed at Gourin, then stood forward, and, divesting 

 himself of his goat-skin jacket, entered the gloomy aperture. 

 One, two, three, four were at length brought out singly and 

 tenderly by the patient piqueur ; and a more piteous scene was 

 never witnessed. 



