WILD SPORT IN BRITTANY. 247 



ior all was now dense forest for miles and, except in small 

 patches cleared by the charcoal-burners, or in the wider space 

 occupied by clumps of beech-trees that crowned the heights and 

 suffered no vegetation to flourish under their wide-spreading 

 shade, we could only, ever and anon, catch a glimpse of the 

 hounds forging ahead, but still on drag-scent. 



At length the tone of the hounds changed, and a sharper, less 

 prolonged note, quickly doubled, and more hurrisome, set my 

 heart a-throbbing, like a sledge-hammer battering against my ribs. 

 At the same moment St. Prix, leaning forward over his saddle, 

 and with his ear turned in the direction of the hounds, had 

 thrown Barbe-bleu back on his haunches. " By St. Hubert ! " 

 he exclaimed, " that's a find ; and we need hold hard for a second 

 to hear which way they turn." 



The old horse, too, seemed to understand, as well as his 

 master, the change in the hounds' tongue, for, like a war-horse 

 when he hears the trumpet sounding the charge, his ears were 

 pricked forward, his eyes dilated, and his very attitude appeared 

 to say, " That's the signal for strife ; and now the battle begins 

 in earnest." 



So it did ; the game was roused, and coming directly, as the 

 cry indicated, for the clump of beech-trees under which we then 

 stood. St. Prix, on Barbe-bleu, holding his hand aloft to enjoin 

 silence, was motionless as Marcus Aurelius in the piazza of the 

 Capitol ! He scarcely seemed to breathe ! Nearer and nearer 

 came the cry ; and as every eye peered keenly into the various 

 short vistas formed by the beech-trees, suddenly, and transient 

 as an electric flash, a brace of wolves lopped across an open 

 space, and instantly disappeared in the dense cover, to which 

 they at once turned. The view was enough, however, to enable 

 us all to distinguish that one was a cripple and the other a 

 gaunt brute of unusual size. They, too, had seen us, for they 

 separated at once, like two scoundrels at the sight of the police, 



