186 GORSE COVERTS 



Fainter sounds the hound music on the left. More 

 trees, but beyond them, stretching upwards to the 

 sky-hne, a purple sea, and far in front of us some- 

 thing like a flock of white birds flitting over its 

 surface. Enough ! 



Pardon ! The pen took charge, and got fairly away 

 with me ; for here have I, who have just referred you 

 to Whyte-Melville, been presumptuously inflicting 

 boyish recollections for the last ten minutes. They 

 were flying minutes, though — that stile was a rasper. 

 And what Rudyard Kipling says of the Himalayas 

 so say I of Dartmoor — that if the smell of it once 

 creeps into the blood of a man, that man will at 

 last, forgetting all else, return to these hills. 



