280 WOLF-HUNTING. 



Parisian dressing-case and grand portmanteau, ornamented with 

 fancy buckles and brass studs, were strapped aloft on the back 

 of one of them, it was impossible to forbear a laugh, so strange 

 was the contrast between the sorry beast and the gay burden. 

 But with this weight only on his back, the charcoal-burner 

 seemed to think the animal insufficiently freighted, for he con- 

 stantly solicited Keryfan to mount behind his baggage, avowing 

 that, by the additional weight on his rump, the fore-legs of the 

 beast would be less likely to give way. One glance, however, 

 at the knees, which had been recently sorely barked, convinced 

 Keryfan he had far better trudge any distance on his own legs 

 than trust his neck to so frail a jade. 



The Hermitage has already been described in a previous 

 chapter as the residence fitted up by Shafto for the purpose of 

 pursuing the wild, fierce game inhabiting the forests that sur- 

 rounded it on every side ; and so far as its out-of-the-world, 

 solitary site could warrant it, no human habitation was ever 

 better entitled to that name. The robbers' nest occupied by the 

 Boons in that Exmoor gorge could scarcely have been more 

 inaccessible having a rocky waste on one side, ravines and 

 forests on the other, with a footpath, only fit for a goat, leading 

 up to its rude and massive walls. Yet that rugged approach, 

 from long usage, had become as familiar to Shafto as the steps 

 of his club to a lounger in Pall Mall ; on foot or on horseback, 

 by night or by day, he traversed it with equal confidence. His 

 friends, too, remote and roadless as the country w r as, found their 

 way to the Hermitage with little difficulty ; and once there (for, 

 as Keryfan said, was it not a temple dedicated conjointly to 

 St. Hubert and Hospitality?) the difficulty was to get away. 



While on the subject of inaccessible localities, an anecdote 

 of the great Bishop of Exeter, Henry Phillpotts, occurs to my 

 mind, and may not be inaptly quoted on the present occasion. 

 In that vast and unwieldy cliocese, over which he presided for 



