And Even To Have Seen A Single Piqueur, Or Spoken To A Single
Sportsman, Is To Be A Man Of Consequence For The Night.
Besides men who shoot and men who ride with the hounds, there are
few people in the forest, in the early spring, save woodcutters
plying their axes steadily, and old women and children gathering
wood for the fire.
You may meet such a party coming home in the
twilight: the old woman laden with a fagot of chips, and the
little ones hauling a long branch behind them in her wake. That is
the worst of what there is to encounter; and if I tell you of what
once happened to a friend of mine, it is by no means to tantalise
you with false hopes; for the adventure was unique. It was on a
very cold, still, sunless morning, with a flat grey sky and a
frosty tingle in the air, that this friend (who shall here be
nameless) heard the notes of a key-bugle played with much
hesitation, and saw the smoke of a fire spread out along the green
pine-tops, in a remote uncanny glen, hard by a hill of naked
boulders. He drew near warily, and beheld a picnic party seated
under a tree in an open. The old father knitted a sock, the mother
sat staring at the fire. The eldest son, in the uniform of a
private of dragoons, was choosing out notes on a key-bugle. Two or
three daughters lay in the neighbourhood picking violets.
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