T 6S ZOOLOGICAL SKETCHES. 



"oui, c'est lui, le bidet, the very pony: I know him by 

 that stump ear. Stop ! get down !" 



We crouched behind the cliffs, but the pony had 

 already seen us or somebody behind us : he started, 

 stood still for a moment with his head high erect, then, 

 leaping back with a snort, he wheeled around and flew 

 over the plateau like a deer, down into a wooded dell 

 and up the opposite mountains, where we saw him gal- 

 loping along the ridge toward the head-waters of the 

 Rouge- Air. 



That same pony outwitted the hunters and herders of 

 the Belgian Ardennes for more than eight years before 

 he was finally shot near the Col de Grappe in Northern 

 Lorraine. He seemed to know every pass and trail in 

 the wide highlands, and even the favorite haunts of in- 

 dividual hunters ; the game-keepers of Chateaumil had 

 seen him more than twenty times, though never within 

 shot-gun range and rarely without attracting his atten- 

 tion. During the hunting-season he was all suspicion 

 and fled at the first echo of a shot, but in midsummer, 

 when every wood was a hiding-place, he became more 

 confident, and sometimes ventured into the lower val- 

 leys, where a cow-boy once saw him browsing peace- 

 fully among the parish cattle. The lad slipped away to 

 summon his father, but when they came back with a 

 musket the bidet was gone, — warned perhaps by one 

 of those strange forebodings by which human outlaws 

 have sometimes been saved from impending danger. 



