154 WOLF-HUNTING. 



autumn comes round with its crops of com, potatoes, and 

 chestnuts, so sure will the ravagers again appear, and heart-rending 

 messages will reach us for further help, and 



" More bacon," interposed Shafto ; " and quite right, too, for, 

 to my certain knowledge, not one man in ten of those Kilvern 

 peasants gets a mouthful of butcher's meat, saving and excepting 

 the produce of your ckasse, from one year's end to another." 



" And the produce of their own guns and gins," added M. de 

 Kerjeguz, the chief cover-owner in the Kilvern country. " I had 

 a fair stock of roe deer, as well as boar, in Laz and Kcenig a few 

 years ago ; but of late the supply from those covers has been 

 barely sufficient for my own table. The scarcity is attributed to 

 the wolves by the tenants of the adjacent farms ; but my garde- 

 foret tells me the wolves that get the best share are habited in 

 goat-skin attire. However, so long as the Louvetier can find a 

 wolf and a boar, when he is good enough to bring his hounds and 

 his friends into my covers, I care little what becomes of the roe, 

 which, dress it as you will, is but sorry venison at last." 



This imputation on the part of the garde-fortt was no doubt a 

 just one. The peasants are free-traders in game, and look upon 

 ihefertz naturce fed upon their farms, for which they pay a rent, 

 as more their property than the landlord's ; and, although checked 

 by the necessity of paying for a permis-de-chasse if they openly 

 carry a gun, their ingenuity in devising snares and gins of count- 

 less variety for entrapping game, is only equalled by their skill in 

 setting them. Go where you will through the broomy land, if 

 you are accompanied by dogs, you may consider yourself fortunate 

 if, for any length of time, they escape the toils of the peasant 

 poacher, either in the shape of a wire noose or a rusty spring-gin. 

 This last, except it is intended for a wolf, is rarely a formidable 

 engine ; for, although I have had many a dog caught in one, the 

 entrapment was never followed by worse results than a piteous 

 cry and a broken skin. 



