168 WOLF-HUNTING. 



I hope, after you have seen the few novelties we can show you, 

 that you will give me the pleasure of your company at supper 

 this evening at seven o'clock ? " 



" Thank you a thousand times/' said M. de Kergoorlas. " But 

 I fear we cannot accept your kind offer of hospitality, as my 

 hounds are appointed to meet to-morrow morning at Kilvern, for 

 a day's boar-hunting in that forest." 



" Ah ! you hunt the boar as well as the wolf ? Well, that's 

 a more profitable chasse than the other, for you destroy the 

 destroyer, and eat him afterwards. But if you can defer your 

 hunting to Saturday, and will do me the honour I ask, you would 

 then have ample time to-morrow to see our Druidical monuments, 

 of which there is a vast assemblage at Carnac and Plouharnel, in 

 this neighbourhood ; and they are acknowledged to be unequalled 

 in Europe." 



"That would be a great treat," responded Kergoorlas and 

 myself at the same moment; Keryfan, too, chimed in, and 

 hoped the change might be made in the hunting-day. 



" With all my heart," said St. Prix, always ready to promote 

 good-fellowship and the wishes of those around him ; " so let us 

 bow to the majority, Shafto, and accept M. Coste's hospitable 

 offer and the treat in store for us to-morrow." 



Now, so insatiable was Shafto's appetite for sport, that a day 

 lost to hunting was almost equivalent to a day lost to his 

 existence : and when thus appealed to by St. Prix, it required no 

 little effort on his part to conceal his disappointment and assent 

 to the proposal : but he did so manfully, nevertheless, although 

 he would far rather have viewed the white tag of a living fox 

 flashing across a path than have discovered the whitened bones 

 of an arch-Druid at the base of a tottering cromlech. 



" By all means, if you wish it, St. Prix. And " he added, 

 gracefully " as we are so near, I think it is a duty we owe our 

 forefathers to make a pilgrimage to their tombs." 



