However, a little while previously I had done a bit of bloodshed which could not have lain on the very tenderest of consciences.  The circumstances were these:  Near my camp was a patch of sugar-cane, which I noticed bore marks of visitation by some creature with a taste for sweets.  The neighborhood, I ascertained, was infested with wild hogs.  In the afternoon I surveyed the fields adjoining the sugar-cane, and made my dispositions against night.  The moon was at the full.  As soon as it rose I took my rifle and repaired to a position selected with reference to a certain tree.  This tree had a low—­but not too low—­horizontal branch, strong enough, as proved by experiment, to bear my weight.  Presently, an unmistakable concert of snorting and grunting announced the approach of swine.  I picked out their fugleman, a well-grown boar, and fired.  He was only wounded, and immediately gave chase after me.  I might discharge my second barrel at him, but suppose I should miss?  Perched out of his reach, I might miss him with impunity, and load again.  All this I had pondered beforehand.  So I started for my tree, which I reached some ten seconds sooner than the boar, swung myself up on its low branch, and there took my seat.  The boar rushed furiously to and fro, raging like the heathen of the Psalmist, and also, like the Psalmist’s people—­not a well-ordered democracy like ours, of course—­imagining a vain thing.  Again and again he quixotically charged the bole of the tree, no doubt thinking it to be myself in a new shape.  A fine classical boar he must have been, with his poetic faith in instantaneous metamorphosis.  His classicality, however, what with his unmannerly savageness and my own suspension between heaven and earth, I did not feel bound to respect.  So, without the slightest emotion of sentimentality, I put a ball through his head.

Let us now hark back to the blue-cow, beautiful and breathless.  Satisfied, for the nonce, with my prowess in laying it low, I plunged into the forest, just to explore.  I must have rambled several miles, when I suddenly came upon an impervious barrier of quickset.  Following its course a little way, I found that it curved, and at one point I espied through it a broad ditch filled with water, and a wall beyond.  By and by I reached a gap in the barrier, and a drawbridge leading up to a large gate.  I crossed the bridge, knocked at the gate, parleyed with an invisible porter, and was admitted.  My visit was evidently viewed with a mixture of dislike and suspicion, but with no sign of alarm when it was seen that I was really unaccompanied, as, while still outside, I had said I was.  Looking around, I perceived that I was in a substantial fortress.  Eight or ten ruffianly fellows came about me and wished to know what I wanted.  I asked who lived there, and they informed me, adding an expression of surprise at my putting such a question.  Was their master at home?  He was.  And could I see him?  They would let me know directly.  On this I was