reached my post. The sport, as usual, was pretty good; my friends and
myself killed four couple of woodcocks, and the _affut_ over, we turned
our steps towards the banker's cabin. No report of a gun had yet been
heard in his direction, but suddenly, and when we were scarcely five
hundred paces from the hut, and I was on the point of announcing our
arrival by a shrill whistle--two barrels were discharged one after the
other--then followed a long and heavy groan, and after that a cry of
distress. In a few seconds we bounded to the spot, and found our friend
stretched on the grass outside his hut, without his hat, his eyes
staring wildly about him, and his hair in disorder. He was trembling
with emotion, and pointed to a black animal, half hid in the water and
the rushes, which seemed very large, and was rolling from side to side
in the agonies of approaching death. Fright, downright fright, had tied
the banker's tongue; and while he is collecting his senses, allow me to
tell you, good reader, what had occurred in our absence.

Dumb and motionless, as directed, he had, during half an hour, waited
anxiously for the woodcocks; but the woodcocks had for a very long time
forgotten the road to this _Mare_; not one came--there was no sport for
him. He had already fancied he heard us returning in the distance, and
that his cramped legs would be set at liberty, and his twisted body
again assume the perpendicular, when all at once a cold perspiration
stood upon his brow, terror seized him; for behind, nay, almost close to
him, he heard advancing the heavy tramp and loud breathing of a wild
beast, and before he had time to observe what kind of an animal it was,
the brute passed so close to the hut that he pressed it down, and rushed
on to the _Mare_. More dead than alive, the banker lay half-squeezed in
a corner of his cabin, and panting for breath, dared scarcely move.
After a few minutes, however, he hazarded a careful glance outside, and
not twenty paces from him saw the immense quadruped bathing, and rolling
himself quietly in the water.

"It is a gigantic boar," said he to himself, "as large as a horse, and
as old as Methuselah--no doubt the patriarch of the forest--what tusks
he must have! Let us observe." And with a courage which did him credit,
he, after some time, suppressed his fear, and felt in the pocket of his
game-bag for two balls, which, with trembling hands, he slipped into
his gun. After this he again looked out,