WILD SPORT IN BRITTANY. 231 



neighbourhood. So when the trusty piqueur Trefarreg communi- 

 cated the aforesaid information to St. Prix, that bright, hopeful 

 look that usually illumined the Louvetier's countenance when 

 about to draw a favourite cover, assumed a gloomy, portentous 

 hue, and fell suddenly like the mercury in a barometer before a 

 thunder-storm. Then the cloud burst. " It's no use whatever," 

 he said angrily, " to waste our time in this valley \ as well may 

 we expect to find a wolf in Marseillier's cabbage-garden as in 

 these disturbed covers. What with gunners and wolf-traps, my 

 hounds shall never come near the place again." 



It will be remembered that, on a former visit to Locrist, a 

 favourite pointer of M. de Kergoorlas's had been caught in the 

 jaws of a huge wolf-gin, and that it had been found necessary to 

 destroy the animal on the spot a catastrophe M. de St. Prix was 

 not likely to forget for the remainder of his life. Holding the 

 appointment of Louvetier a post expressly designed for the 

 destruction, not the preservation, of wolves he yet held that to 

 hunt the animal with hound and horn was the only legitimate 

 mode of killing the brute ; and he was just as tenacious of his 

 official rights and interests as any M.F.H. in Great Britain could 

 be. A steel-gin was his horror, not solely because he begrudged 

 the summary destruction of a wolf, and the occasional curtailment 

 of sport thereby, but because many a good hound of his had been 

 entrapped in its fatal jaws. 



Kledan Kam did well to keep out of the way on the present 

 occasion ; for, suspected as he had been in the matter of the gin, 

 and having aided on the previous day in disturbing the whole 

 valley of Locrist, although the intended meet of the wolf-hounds 

 had been made known to him, he certainly would have found 

 himself in the position of a lightning-conductor, on which the 

 fulminations of the Louvetier would have descended with fearful 

 force had he not thus adopted the discreet course of avoiding the 

 shock. 



