APPEARANCE OF THE COUNTRY. 271 



beneath him, till, perched at a giddy height aloft, he 

 clings to a tapering point which his hand may grasp. The 

 higher he goes the greater the feat, and the greater the 

 risk to his vagabond neck in descending the noble and 

 mutilated trunk. In perambulating these woods, the idea 

 would sometimes cross us that the wolves, the print of 

 whose footsteps, intercepted by the dotted track of the 

 hare and slenderly defined claws of numerous birds, are 

 seen in different directions, and even beneath the windows 

 of our house, might prowl by day as well as by night. 

 One day, when, fortunately perhaps, unescorted by the 

 huge dogs, we were mounting a hill to a neighbouring mill, 

 my companion suddenly halted, and lying her hand on 

 mine silently pointed to a moving object within fifty yards 

 of us. It was a great brute of a wolf stalking leisurely 

 along its high bristly back set up its head prowling 

 down who took no notice of us. but slowly pursued the 

 same path into the wood which he had quitted a few 

 minutes before. We must both plead guilty to blanched 

 cheeks, but beyond this to no signs of cowardice ; and, in 

 truth, the instances are so rare of their attacking human 

 beings, even the most defenceless children, that we had no 

 cause for fear. They war not on man, unless under ex- 

 cessive pressure of hunger, or when, as in the case of a 

 butcher, his clothes are impregnated with the smell of fresh 

 blood. This is so certain an attraction that peasants 

 carrying butchers' meat are followed by wolves, and often 

 obliged to compound for their own safety by flinging the 

 dangerous commodity amongst them ; or if in a sledge, three 

 or four of these ravenous animals will spring upon the bas- 

 ket of meat and tear it open before their eyes. Wherever 

 an animal falls, there, though to all appearance no cover 

 nor sign of a wolf be visible for miles round, severa] will be 

 found congregated in half an hour's time. Such is their 

 horrid thirst for blood, that a wounded wolf knows that 

 only by the stictest concealment can he escape being torn 

 in pieces by his companions. As for the dogs, it is heart- 

 rending to think of the numbers which pay for their 



