e yard. This
most useful reinforcement with their vigorous attacks and loud barking
completed the tumult and the tragedy. In twenty minutes the eight wolves
were dead, and with them half the faithful dogs. The poor unfortunate
lad, his throat torn open, was dead; his courageous, though unsuccessful
defenders, were all more or less wounded, and the gallant farmer's left
hand so injured, that as soon as surgical assistance could be procured
for him, amputation was found to be necessary.

The monsters, stretched side by side in the yard, were also stone dead,
every one of them; but not a voice on the farm raised the heart-stirring
shout of victory. Consternation and gloom reigned over it, and it was
long indeed ere the voice of mourning deserted its walls.

The skin of the wolf is strong and durable; the woodmen, _braconniers_,
and mountaineers, make cloaks and caps of it, the tail being left on the
latter to fall over the ear by way of ornament; they likewise cover with
it the outside of their game-bags. They tan it also, and excellent shoes
are made of the leather, soft and light for summer wear,--it is likewise
made into parchment, not to write the history of their ancestors upon,
but to cover small drums, the rattle of which, on fairdays and _fetes_
is sure to set the peasants dancing. This fact is alluded to in a song
of our province, written by a shepherd-poet, in the pleasing dialect of
Le Morvan, of which the following is a free translation:

Hark! 'tis the wolf-skin drum,
We come! We come!
Yes, come with me sweet girl, and fair
As rosebud wild that scents the air.
The heavens are bright, the stars are shining,
Thy lovely form my arms entwining;
Together let us lead the dance
Deep in thy sylvan haunts, dear France!
Hark! I hear those sounds again,
The wolf-skin drum, the pipers' strain.

Wealthy persons use a wolf-skin for a carriage-rug, and in the rainy
season as a mat at the door of a room. "There is nothing good in the
wolf," says Buffon, "he has a base low look--a savage aspect, a terrible
voice, an insupportable smell, a nature brutal and ferocious, and a body
so foul and unclean that no animal or reptile will touch his flesh. It
is only a wolf that can eat a wolf." "No animal," writes Cuvier, "so
richly merits destruction as the wolf." With these two funeral orations
on these incarnate fiends of Natural History, I shall close this
chapter, remarkin