316 SHORES OF THE CASPIAN. 



a brown flash of light that glides through the trees 

 before us, has at last brought us to that thick covert 

 in which we expect to find the great wild boar. 

 All the dreamy spirit of the young year is abroad ; 

 and as we lazily drag our legs over the clinging 

 morass, every briar that winds itself round us almost 

 tempts us to give in and roll over on the soft black 

 mud, rather than resist any longer the sleepy in- 

 fluence of the season and the perpetual assaults of 

 bog and briar. The weight of our rifles has doubled ; 

 never before were our coats so thick, never before did 

 an old mossy trunk look so irresistibly tempting ; 

 and take it all in all, we begin to think a cigarette 

 and castle-building, with the buzz of the woodland 

 life in our ears and the languor of spring in our blood, 

 would be infinitely better than this ceaseless toil for 

 a boar who as little cares probably to be roused 

 from his deep dreams as we care to rouse him. 



Luckily at this moment, when we were all but 

 yielding to the temptations of the sunshine, the 

 deep voice of old Shirka sounded a rc'rc/lfec : in 

 a second dreaminess had gone, the briars ceased to 

 hold, and if the young wood did swing back and 

 nearly switch our eyes out or break the bridge of 

 that too prominent nose, we heeded it not. For 

 before us, with grunt ings and with snortings loud 

 enough to wake the whole drowsy woodland, a 

 great black sow is crashing through the covert, the 

 sable imps, who call her mother, pressing close 



