homestead, we should never have known where to find him, and days
would probably have passed before every nook and corner of a run
extending over many thousand acres could have been thoroughly
searched.

I had heard terrible stories of shepherds slipping down and injuring
themselves so that they could not move, and of their dead bodies
being only found after weeks of careful seeking. F--- himself
delighted to terrify me by descriptions of narrow escapes; and, as
the pigs had to be killed, I resolved to follow in the hunter's
train. The sport is conducted exactly like deer stalking, only it
is much harder work, and a huge boar is not so picturesque an object
as a stag of many tines, when you do catch sight of him. There is
just the same accurate knowledge needed of the animal's habits and
customs, and the same untiring patience. It is quite as necessary
to be a good shot, for a grey pig standing under the lee of a
boulder of exactly his own colour is a much more difficult object to
hit from the opposite side of a ravine than a stag; and a wild boar
is every whit as keen of scent and sharp of eye and ear as any
antlered "Monarch of the Glen."

Imagine then a beautiful winter's morning without wind or rain.
There has been perhaps a sharp frost over-night, but after a couple
of hours of sunshine the air is as warm and bright as midsummer. We
used to be glad enough of a wood fire at breakfast; but after that
meal had been eaten we went into the verandah, open to the
north-east (our warm quarter), which made a delicious winter
parlour, and basked in the blazing sunshine. I used often to bring
out a chair and a table, and work and read there all the morning,
without either hat or jacket. But it sometimes happened that once