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Caught in a Wolf-trap and Devoured by Wolves.
    The favorite trap employed for wolves in Burgundy is the traquerurd. This is the most dangerous even to man, the strongest that is made requiring two men to set it. It has springs of formidable power and delicney, and when those are touched the jaws of the trap, armed with rows of teeth, shut 0ne within the other. In spite of every precaution, however, very sad occurrences will often happen in these forests.
    Some years ago a trap was placed near a deserted footway, and the usual warning precutions taken. The same day a young man, anxious to present his fiance some turtledoves and pigeons with rosy beaks, with whose whereabouts he was acquainted, left his home a little before sunset to surprise the birds in their nests. He was late. The night closed in rapidly, and with the intention of shortening the road he took his way across the forest. Without in the least, heeding the brambles and bushes which caught his legs, or the ditches and streams he was obliged to cross, he pressed on, and after a continued battle with the thorns, the stumps, and the roots, and the long, clinging tendrils of the wild roses, came exactly on the track where the trap was set.
    The night was now nearly dark, and, thinking only of his doves and the loved one, he failed to observe that several little pieces of string were swinging to and fro in the breeze from the branches of the thicket near him. Dreadful, indeed for him that he did not, for suddenly he felt a terrible shock, accompanied by most intense pain, the bones of his leg being apparently crused to spinters. He was caught in the wolftrap.
    The few moments of pain and suffering over, he began to comprehend the danger of his position, and had, it is presumed, with presence of mind endeavored to open the sorrated iron jaws which held him fast. But, though danger is said to double the strength of a man, the trap refused to give up its prey; and, as at each movement of his body the iron teeth buried themselves deeper and deeper in his flesh, his agony must have been of the most exquisite description. He probably shouted, and would have continued to shout, however hopelessly, for help, had it not been for the fear of attracting the wolves that might be lurking in the neighborhood. He had under his coat a small hatchet, and, with this, in the event of his being attacked by the dreaded animals, he trusted to defend himself. As the night lengthened the moon rose and shed her pale light over the forest. He may be pictured immovable, with eyes and ears on the qui vive, his body in the most excruciating torment, listening and waiting. All at once, far, very far off, he hears a confused murmur of indistinct sounds. Appronching with rapidity, those murmurs become cries and yells. They are those of wolves on the track-hellish demons, which, in a few minutes, would be upon him, carried direct to the spot of the trails set for the destruction of his destroyers. Fear not being part of his hardy nature, he by almost superhuman efforts, and in the awful moment forgetting all pain, contrived to drag himself and the trap toward an oak tree, against which he placed his back.
    Here, with his hatchet ready to strike, the young fellow, full of courage, doubtless offered up a short prayer to his God, and embracing, as it were, in his mind his poor old mother and his bride, awaited the horrible result, determined to show hinself a true child of the forest, and meet his fate like a man. A few minutes more and he was surrounded by a cordum of yellow flames from the eyes of the brutes, the animals themselves, which he could scurcely distinguich, sending forth their terrible yells full in his face.
    On the following morning, when the unfortunate forester who set the trap came to examine it, he found it at the foot of the oak, deluged with blood, the bone of a human leg upright between the iron teeth, and all around scattered about, the turf and the path, a quantity of human remains. Shreds of a coat and other articles of clothing were discovered near the spot. With the assistance of some dogs which were put on the scent, three wolves, their heads and bodies cut open with a hatchet, were found dying in an adjecent thicket. When the venerable curd of the village, after previously endeavoring in every possible way by Christian exhortation to prepare his aged mother to hear the sad tale, informed her that these remains of humanity were all that was left of her boy, she laughed. Alas! it was the laugh of madness; reason had fled.
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