140 WARWICK WOODLANDS. 



dashed, as fresh, Tom said, as though he had not run a 

 yard; but as he struggled through it, his efforts shook the 

 top rails from the yokes, and the huge piece of timber 

 falling across his loins, pinned him completely ! At a 

 mile off I heard his howl myself, and the confused and 

 savage hubbub, as the hounds front and rear, assailed 

 him. 



"Hampered although he was, he battled it out fiercely — 

 ay, heroically — as six of our best hounds maimed for life, 

 and one slain outright testified. 



"Heavens ! how the fat man scrambled across the fence ! 

 he reached the spot, and, far too much excited to reload 

 his piece and quietly blow out the fierce brute's brains, fell 

 to belaboring him about the head with his gun-stock, 

 shouting the while and yelling; so that the din of his 

 tongue, mixed with the snarls and long howls of the 

 mangled savage, and the fierce baying of the dogs, fairly 

 alarmed me, as I said before, at a mile's distance ! 



"As it chanced, Timothy was on the road close by, with 

 Peacock; I caught sight of him, mounted, and spurred 

 on fiercely to the rescue; but when I reached the hill's 

 brow, all was over. Tom, puffing and panting like a 

 grampus in shoal water, covered — garments and face and 

 hands — with lupine gore, had finished his huge enemy, 

 after he had destroyed his gun, with what he called a stick, 

 but what you and I, Frank, should term a fair-sized tree; 

 and with his foot upon the brindled monster's neck was 

 quaffing copious rapture from the neck of a quart bottle — 

 once full, but now well nigh exhausted — of his appropri- 

 ate and cherished beverage.* Thus fell the last wolf on 

 the Hills of Warwick! 



"There, I have finished my yarn, and in good time," 

 cried Harry, "for here we are at the bridge, and in five 

 minutes more we shall be at old Tom's door." 



"A right good yarn!^' said Forester; " and right well 

 spun, upon my word." 



"But is it a yarn?" asked A , "or is it intended to 



be the truth?" 



"Oh ! the truth," laughed Frank, "the truth, as much as 



*The facts and incidents of the lame wolf's death are strictly 

 tnie. although they were not witnessed by the writer. 



