eling about, fell to
rooting between me and the entrance. So I sat maybe for another five
minutes, still keeping my main attention on the gateway, but with an
occasional glance to right and left, to detect and warn back any
fresh attempt to work round my flanks.

Now, in the act of waving my musket, I had happened to catch sight of
one remarkably fine hog among the nettles, who, taking alarm with the
rest, had winced away and disappeared in the rear of the church,
where a narrow alley ran between it and the churchyard wall. If he
followed this alley to its end, he would come into sight again around
the apse and almost directly on my right flank. I kept my eye
lifting towards this corner of the building, Waiting for him to
reappear, which by-and-by he did, and with a truly porcine air of
minding his own business and that only.

His unconcern was so admirably affected that, to test it, instead of
waving him back I lifted my musket very quietly, almost without
shifting my position, and brought the butt against my shoulder.

He saw the movement; for at once, even with his head down in the
grasses, he hesitated and came to a full stop. Suddenly, as my
fingers felt for the trigger-guard, my heart began to beat like a
hammer.

_There_ lay my danger; and in a flash I knew it, but not the extent
of it. This was no hog, but a man; by the start and the quick
arrested pose in which the brute faced me, still with his head low
and his eyes regarding me from the grasses, I felt sure of him.
But what of the others? Were they also men? If so, I was certainly
lost, but I dared not turn my eyes for a glance at them. With a
sudden and most natural grunt the brute backed a little, shook his
head in disgust, and sidled towards the angle of the building.
"Now or never," thought I, and pulled the trigger.

As the musket kicked against me I felt--I could not see--the rest of
the hogs swerve in a common panic and break for the gateway.
Their squealing took up the roar of the report and protracted it.
They were real hogs, then.

I caught up a second musket, and, to make sure, let fly into the mass
of them as they choked the gateway. Then, without waiting to see the
effect of this shot, I snatched musket number three, and ran through
the drifting smoke to where my first victim lay face-downwards in
the grasses, his swine's mask bowed upon the forelegs crossed--as a
man crosses his arms--inwards from the elbow. As I ran he lifted