208 A MONTH IN THE FORESTS OF FEANCE. 



vicinity of the supposed boar ; when, on asking what 

 it was of my friends, who seemed to treat the thing 

 with consummate indifference, they replied, 



^' Oh, only a keeper with his hound hunting a 

 hare." 



" Well," I replied, " and enough too ; if he conti- 

 nues amusing himself with that, for a single hound, 

 wondrous din, we shall have all our English hounds 

 — at least when you let them go — racing off to see 

 what game is up." 



" Oh, no," they replied, " they will not go." 



But why they would not go I was left to imagine ! 



Luckily for us, the din ceased, and we were left 

 to ourselves. At last we came to a green bough in a 

 ride, plucked and thrown on the spot where the slot 

 commenced, and we follow^ed other of those marks till 

 we came to a detached wood surrounded by fields, 

 and severed from the forest by a wide road, and in 

 this wood the boar was said to be safely in his lair. 

 Having had time in passing to observe the slot, I 

 said to one or other of my friends that I doubted if 

 the animal who made that slot was so large as the 

 old solitary we had killed ; and, agreeing with me in 

 this opinion, they said they thought the slot was that 

 of an old sow. We all came to a halt in sight of 

 the Land of Promise, and then there arose one of 



