WILD SPORT IN BRITTANY. 255 



had sounded the mort for the last time at the death-scene. Nor 

 was the change from Callac back to our old quarters an unwel- 

 come prospect to any of us, great as had been the sacrifice and 

 assiduous the attention of M. and Madame Thomas during our 

 short sojourn at their hotel. Keryfan, indeed, indulged in the 

 strongest expressions of thanksgiving on returning to Carhaix ; 

 the separation from his dressing-case and clean linen having been 

 the subject of sore misery to him even for one night. 



Short, however, as the distance was between Glomel and 

 Carhaix, the cross-country road over, or rather through, which we 

 struggled proved by far the most wearisome work of the day, and 

 did more injury to our horses than double the distance would 

 have done on a better road. It was like travelling over Marsh 

 Gibbon, or the Clayton Woods in Oxfordshire, after a wet 

 November and a hard day with the Bicester Hounds a heavy 

 clay, that stuck like bird-lime to the horses' legs, and a slush, 

 fetlock deep and more, so impeded their action that, had we not 

 dismounted and driven them before us, Shafto's horse and mine 

 would certainly never have reached Carhaix that night at all. 

 The piqueurs and the hounds did better ; they travelled on the 

 top of the hedge-banks, which, being broad and readily drained, 

 afforded the driest footpath, or troed-ffordd, obtainable in those 

 heavy lands. 



By the time we entered the town of Carhaix it was dark 

 night, and the glimmering old lanterns, slung on a single wire 

 .across the streets, and that, too, at long intervals one from the 

 other, presented but a dismal light, and served rather to increase 

 the gloom and render it only the more visible, as we groped our 

 way through the narrow, silent avenue leading to the Hotel la Tour 

 d'Auvergne. Here and there, indeed, in a few of the best shop 

 windows stood a wretched resin candle, imparting so faint a ray 

 that, were it not for its locality, might well be mistaken for the 

 glimmer of a glow-worm's tail : the object of the pale beacon being 



