266 WOLF-HUNTING. 



mile beyond Kergloff, the carpenter, who acted as commandant 

 of the party, gave the signal to separate and form line abreast, 

 directing us, at the same time, to preserve a distance of at least 

 twenty paces between one gunner and another, and, above all, 

 to be careful how we fired when game was afoot a word of 

 caution especially needful on the present occasion. Within a 

 league or so of the town, on every side, the country is habitually 

 so well combed by these artists that game of every description is 

 provokingly rare ; but as the radius is extended, partridge, red-leg 

 and grey, woodcock and snipe, rabbit, hare, and roe-deer are 

 found in sufficient numbers to warrant a good bag ; while farther 

 afield still, the fox, the wolf, and the boar are, one or the other, 

 to be met with in all the great forests around. 



Consequently, for the first hour, although hundreds of acres of 

 gorse, broom, and heather were steadily drawn at a slow walk, 

 the men treading out the lower growth with minute care, and the 

 dogs searching the higher and less accessible cover equally close, 

 scarcely a dozen shots were fired by the whole party, and those 

 chiefly at rabbits and a woodcock here and there. While we 

 were thus advancing slowly towards better ground, and a covey 

 of red-legs, six in number, had fallen, every bird of them, to the 

 peasants' guns, a low suppressed whistle, like that of a steam 

 engine indicating danger ahead, passed rapidly along our line, 

 and created intense alarm among the braconniers, some of whom 

 instantly thrust their guns, muzzle forward, into the densest furze 

 bushes, while others doubled them up, consigning the barrel into 

 one pocket and the stock into another, within the folds of their 

 capacious vests. Immediately after the last volley at the red-legs, 

 a man's bare head had been seen peering, stealthily as it were, 

 between two hillocks at some distance in front of us, as if it 

 was his object to make out the men who were carrying guns and 

 had just fired at the feathered game. 



That the head could belong to no one but a gendarme, lying 



