290 WOLF-HUNTING. 



CHAPTER XXV. 



IT was a terrible dusting the old wolf gave us that day at 

 Pontargoned ! So beaten were some of the leading hounds that 

 getting them home to their kennel at all that night was a business 

 of no little patience and labour. Indeed, but for the help of our 

 hunting-thongs, attached to their couples, by which we were able 

 to lift them along through the miry lanes, many a time would 

 they have curled themselves up by the wayside, and abandoned 

 the painful journey in despair. When the Hermitage was at 

 length reached, it must have been forty-eight hours afterwards 

 ere a single hound ventured to stretch his limbs or show a nose 

 outside his barrique; Annette, however, taking care to supply 

 each one with food as he lay, too weary to rise, recruiting his 

 lost power and indulging in the warmth and comfort of his ferny 

 couch. The horses, too, were even more beaten than the hounds, 

 Shafto's stout old hunter, Mirabeau, refusing his corn for a week 

 afterwards, and my cob being miserably tucked up in the flank, 

 and looking more like a "garran" than the compact, light- 

 stepping steed he was when I first brought him wolf-hunting into 

 these parts. Bad grooming, cold stables, and long distances 

 home after the sport of the day was over, were of course the 

 chief causes of this change ; for I took especial pains myself to 

 see that his daily rations of corn and hay were regularly supplied, 

 the oats being very dry and of the best quality, although, from 



