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 or twice a week, on just such a lovely morning, F---- would proclaim his intention of going out to look for pigs, and, sooner than be left behind, I nearly always begged to be allowed to come too.