HUNTING THE MARTIN CAT. 123 



do good execution on them all, thej would find their 

 larder better supplied with wild boar and roe-deer 

 venison, and their rugs and backs of chairs more fully 

 ornamented with skins. 



The cry then came near me, hounds running hard ; 

 though French hounds have so much tongue and 

 such an odd way of doubling it, that their tongues 

 are perpetually faster than their feet, and a man un- 

 used to their empty noise would conceive they were 

 closing on a beaten beast. Still I could hear Corbeau 

 and the English hounds at the head, and hard at it ; 

 so, whatever the animal was, he was among them. 

 Several times I stabled old Coco, much to his dislike, 

 in the bushes, tying him with the leathern rein af- 

 fixed to the chin stay for the purpose, and taking care 

 that the bough or tree to which he was attached 

 should be a pliant and a tough grower. I headed the 

 cry this way and that : whatever the animal was, it 

 turned very short, and had come within twenty yards 

 of me in the tliick cover ; still I could not even hear 

 what it was. There was neither bound nor brush of 

 bush, and I settled in my own mind it must be a fox, 

 for I had seen my foxhounds in England beat and 

 tree a martin-cat in twenty minutes, and the animal 

 we were now in pursuit of had run for more than an 

 hour. Presently, bang went a gun, but no sign from 



