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A BOAR HUNT BY MOONLIGHT 



It was shortly before Christmas, when the days are at 

 their shortest, when the sun sets before four o'clock and 

 by five darkness has spread over the face of the land- 

 One such evening there sat smoking and chatting in their 

 comfortable sitting-room the inspectors and the book- 

 keeper of a great estate in Poland, which belonged to a 

 nobleman, but was under the management of a German 

 steward. 



' Children,' said the Inspector Wultkiewicz, ' in my 

 rounds to-day I went past the pea-stacks of the Jaguicksy 

 farm. You cannot imagine what havoc the wild boars have 

 wrought there ; if it is allowed to go on, by the spring the 

 peas will be completely pulled up.' 



At that moment the maidservant entered, and inter- 

 rupted the conversation by announcing that supper was 

 ready, and all the young men betook themselves to the 

 steward's house across the way, to eat their evening 

 meal in company with the steward's family. At table, 

 the conversation again turning on the wild boars and the 

 damage they had done, the book-keeper declared that in 

 order to drive these pests away for ever it sufficed to 

 shoot one. 



Now this book-keeper, who, like the steward, was a 

 German, was very clever at his own lmsiness, but, like 

 many other people, believed that he could do everything. 

 For instance, he considered himself an ideal of manly 

 beauty, irresistible to ladies and unsurpassed in all 

 knightly arts. In reality he was narrow-shouldered, 

 R Y 



