WILD SPORT IN BRITTANY. 211 



of the hounds, as, with heads erect, they sniffed " the tainted 

 gale," gave unmistakable proof of the presence of game in our 

 immediate vicinity. The piqueurs had reported that no less than 

 five full-grown boar had crossed the stream in this direction ; and 

 although they had not been fairly harboured, owing to the stony 

 character of the ground, Louis Trefarreg was ready to stake his 

 reputation that at least five, if not a larger number, were laid up 

 in this craggy retreat. Already had the peasants disappeared ; 

 and every point on the river and north sides of the rocks, at 

 which it was possible for the pigs to break, was guarded by parties 

 of sharpshooters, thirsting for their blood. Some of them, how- 

 ever, as it turned out afterwards, were posted directly in front of 

 one of the chief runs used by the pigs, in utter forgetfulness of St. 

 Prix's orders ; and the consequence, although not fatal, as great 

 luck would have it, to more than one hound, proved well-nigh so 

 to Barbe-bleu, who, but for his rare activity and sense of danger, 

 must inevitably have come to grief in the narrow path on which 

 he stood. 



The hounds dashed into the cover like a set of dragons, and, 

 in less than two minutes, the roaring peal of their deep-mouthed 

 tongues, the blast of horns, and the wild response of a thousand 

 echoes, created so startling an uproar that every wild animal, from 

 a marten-cat to the bristly boar, must have quaked for leagues 

 away at the sound of that terrible din. Two lots of swine were 

 on their legs in a twinkling one consisting of four, and the other 

 of three animals, all full-grown, and long and lanky as a set of 

 greyhounds. The pricked ears, and the rapid helter-skelter fashion 

 in which they bundled over the rocks, clearing wide chasms at a 

 bound, and pitching from the head of giant boulders down on the 

 slabs below, like chamois descending a mountain ridge, indicated 

 a degree of terror they rarely show when so many pigs are found 

 together. On such occasions the master boar, or the old sow, is 

 usually the hindmost of the lot, either from being less active or 



