The equipments for hunting are simple. The only real luxury is in the hunting horns, the great olifants whose piercing notes can ring a mile through the still forests. These horns are made of ivory, chased with gold, and swung from each important rider's neck by a cord of silk or fine leather. The hunters wear leather gauntlets and use a bow and arrows, a "Danish ax" (a kind of tomahawk), a boar spear (the favorite hunting weapon), and also a large knife for emergencies. As the party mounts in the castle court, around them are leaping and yelping the great pack of dogs--white in teeth, red tongues, straining the leashes and barely controlled by their keepers. Dogs are loved almost as much as falcons, and Conon has a large collection of greyhounds, staghounds, boarhounds, and even of terrible bloodhounds. The kennels are replenished constantly, for stags and old boars can kill many dogs ere they are finally run down and speared. The gift of a litter of fine puppies is, therefore, often as welcome as a cast of hawks. [Sidenote: Chasing Down a Great Boar] It is a happy day if a beater comes in with tidings of "a wild boar, the strongest of which anyone has ever heard tell, in the forest of Pevele and Vicogne near the free holdings of St. Bertin." The baron will call out all the castle folk, and, if time admits, will send to some favorite vassals a few miles away to join the sport. With ten pairs of hounds and at least fifteen huntsmen and beaters he will thus organize the pursuit. The hunt will start at dawn, and it will take much of the forenoon to reach the forest where the boar has been discovered. Then (recites a jongleur) will begin "the baying and the yelping of dogs. They are unleashed. They bound through the thicket and find the tracks where the boar has dug and rooted for worms." One of the keepers then unleashes Blanchart, the baron's best bloodhound. Conon pats his head and they put him on the track. The hound soon discovers the boar's lair. "It is a narrow place between the trunks of two uprooted oaks, near a spring. When the boar hears the baying of the hound he stands erect, spreads his enormous feet, and, disdaining flight, wheels around, until, judging himself within reaching distance of the good hound, he seizes it and fells it dead by his side. The baron would not have given Blanchart for one hundred deniers. Not hearing his barking he runs up, sword in hand; but he is too late; the boar is gone."