346 THE RAINS, 



single broad footprint to be seen. All the family 

 of Bruin was either hybernating, or had moved off 

 to winter quarters in some more favoured spot. 

 Boars, however, were as plentiful as before, and the 

 first day's sport gave me as fine a run with the 

 dogs after a wounded sow as I ever wish to have. 

 Crouching in a narrow track, which her kindred had 

 worn by frequent use through the dense covert of 

 blackberry bushes, I first saw her come pounding 

 down upon me in an opposite direction to that in 

 which I was going, and for a moment expected to 

 be run over by her if no worse. She saw me 

 luckily in time to pull up, and before she could 

 turn I gave her a bullet from my smooth-bore, 

 which lodged somewhere near her spine. After 

 this the dogs got round her, and snapping and 

 snapped at she carried the whole pack headlong 

 down the precipitous wooded banks at a pace that 

 rendered human pursuit all but hopeless. For all 

 that, ten minutes break-neck work, with many a 

 crashing fall and all too rapid slide, brought me 

 to a point from which I caught a glimpse of the 

 old black beast brushing through a thicket, with 

 the dogs all over her ; and hardly thinking of the 

 risk the pack ran, I took a snap-shot, and, as good 

 fortune would have it, turned her there and then 

 into pork. 



Leaving her suspended in slings of wild-vine 

 tendrils beyond the reach of prowling wolves or 



