126 WOLF-HUNTING. 



Before, however, we could overtake them, the reports of several 

 guns, rapidly succeeding each other, fell on our ears ; and by the 

 time we reached the pool, where the hound had brought them to 

 bay, two fine boar were lying stretched out, side by side, on the 

 river-bank, still quivering in the throes of death. The hound that 

 had stuck so gallantly to his game was called Troubadour, and a 

 grander specimen of the veritable griffon no man could wish to 

 see ; he was rufous-grey in colour, had a long, sensible face, with 

 a high crown to his head, deep chest, good feet, long powerful 

 thighs, and legs without lumber ; above all, he carried a bold 

 stern well-arched over his back, and feathered deeply to its very 

 tip. I can see the brave beast before my mind's eye at this very 

 moment : two long gashes furrowing his ribs and streaming with 

 blood, but apparently skin-deep only, as he seemed to pay little or 

 no attention to these ugly-looking wounds. 



" Oh," I said to myself as I marvelled at his real hound-like 

 beauty, " would that I had powers of persuasion strong enough to 

 induce some master of hounds in England to break through that 

 fashionable routine of breeding, which is fast destroying the 

 character and scenting qualities of foxhounds, such as they 

 were in the days of the sixth Duke of Beaufort ; when his 

 long-headed and long-feathered badger-pies hunted like weasles, 

 or drove their fox, like a flash of fire, over the cold fallows 

 of the Gloucestershire wolds ! The blood of Troubadour, judi- 

 ciously infused, I venture to believe, is all that is wanted to bring 

 back the modern foxhound to that grand type of former days." 



Captain Anstruther Thomson's recent testimony on the value 

 of Welsh hound-blood, is worthy of the utmost attention on this 

 point. 



