104 



CHAPTEH XII. 



"our opening day." 



I AM not a musical man, but believe I am right in 

 thinking that there is a once popular melody of which 

 the refrain runs — 



" For 'tis our opening day." 



On the occasion I propose to tell of it was, if not 

 my, yet their, opening day — in other words, that of 

 one of the half-dozen pack of hounds that share 

 between them the great Forest of Dartmoor and its 

 environs — a nice morning in November, but rather 

 windy. On Exmoor we glide rather into our hunting, 

 and it would be almost difficult to say which is the 

 last day's cub-hunting and the first day's regular 

 hunting with the " Stars of the West," as I still pre- 

 fer to call them. The reader is aware ^ that Dartmoor 

 was not new ground to me, but it was a part of it far 

 to the west of the district I am now going to write of, 

 on which I had hunted thirteen years previously. 



To return to my more recent experience. The day 

 on which we find ourselves once more in pink, even if 

 it be only in a very " provincial " hunting country, 

 must always be a red-letter one in each year's calendar. 



1 See chapter viii. 



