is eye, and the alertness of his movements, I concluded
he could take care of himself better than any of us supposed. It was
about three o'clock when we got to the circle in which the beaters had
surrounded the old boar. He had been hunted twice that season and had
escaped both times. Huntsmen are very superstitious, and they had got
the notion that if this boar were not killed in the third chase, there
was something unearthly about him. This was fostered by some laughing
remark of Count Saxe about the hunt of Thibaut of Champagne, and the
"solitary" being the ghost of a boar. His ghostship, however, was soon
disproved, by finding his huge tracks in the soft brown earth.

Soon the dogs gave tongue, and the chase was on. We could get
occasional glimpses of the boar's vast bulk, as he made prodigious
speed for so heavy an animal through the thickets. There was a small
ravine through which a brook flowed, and for this the boar made. We
could hear him crashing through the underwood, and he got across the
brook. The dogs and huntsmen followed quickly after him. The dogs
found the scent again immediately after crossing the water, but on
reaching a large, open plateau above the ravine, they suddenly and
inexplicably lost it. There were no tracks to be seen, and the boar
must have turned off either to the right or the left, in a fringe of
thick underwood that bordered the ravine. The dogs ran aimlessly
about, keeping up a dismal yelping of despair. The huntsmen encouraged
them by horn and voice, but were evidently chagrined by this singular
disappearance. My master twitted them with stories of the ghostly hunt
of Thibaut, but it was plain the huntsmen thought it no joking matter.
They succeeded in putting the hounds into the thicket on the right,
but, although there was an infinity of barking and yelping and
whining, it was plain that the scent had not yet been found.

Meanwhile, as we were standing about this open space, in the clear
December afternoon, listening to the dogs and men, Gaston Cheverny
dismounted, and ran a short distance toward the thicket on the left.
Count Saxe called out to him to keep a firm hold on his spear, which
he held in his left hand. He turned to answer, when we saw, breaking
from the cover directly behind Gaston, the boar, his horrible mouth
wide open, his tusks grinding and churning blood and foam, his
eyeballs like coals of fire, and his bristles rising like a mane.

We all involuntarily shouted