WILD SPORT IN BRITTANY. 233 



and Hengoet, but, as already anticipated, without any satisfactory 

 result. Not a hound spoke, nor did there appear to be a whiff 

 left of even a stale scent. More than one fox, however, was 

 viewed, crossing the narrow green meadow from one side of the 

 valley to the other, and inducing a wild shout of " Ah'r louarn ! 

 Ah'r louarn ! " from some unruly peasants ; but the hounds were 

 steady, and held on heedless of riot. 



During this long and very tedious process, St. Prix's patience, 

 none of the most enduring, became fairly exhausted; and, 

 denouncing the braconniers of Carhaix and Kledan Kam as the 

 sole cause of the blank, he vowed it should be many a long day 

 before he visited the valley of Locrist again with his hounds. 

 " If they will mar our sport thus wilfully," he said, " let them 

 take the consequences. The wolves shall teach them a lesson 

 they will not soon forget." 



We had now reached hounds, horses, and men a point of 

 the table-land where the main road between Callac and Rostrenen 

 intersects a narrow cross-country road leading direct to Carhaix. 

 It is a wild, lonely district, bristling with granite rocks and endless 

 broom, and is, by its sparse population, almost wholly unculti- 

 vated ; so what the poverty-stricken peasants, who are born and 

 bred in this desert, can find to live upon, is a problem I will not 

 pretend to solve. There are trout, it is true, in the brooks, and 

 a certain amount of game in the covers ; but of this the wolf 

 gets the lion's share, and the others are [only to be caught in the 

 summer season. 



Up to this point Johnson and the "Lunatique" had been 

 travelling together apparently in perfect accord one with the 

 other ; the former indulging in quaint and facetious reflections 

 on the tailors of Carhaix and the butcher's ignorance of horse- 

 flesh, while he congratulated himself on the prospect of purchasing 

 so valuable an animal on such easy terms. But he was whistling, 

 as it soon proved, before he was clear of the wood : the Ides of 



