AND ITS RESULTS 197 



paired, fully equipped in all the splendour of a new 

 pink, immaculate cords, brown-tinted tops, my blue 

 birds'-eye scarf, neatly folded and fastened with a 

 pin bearing a most appropriate device, viz., a real 

 fox's tooth. In my impatience to be up and doing 

 on this our opening day, I arrived at the trysting- 

 place, from whence I was to woo my favourite pas- 

 time, some half hour or more before the master and 

 his pack were due. I had, therefore, ample leisure to 

 receive the greetings of my numerous old friends and 

 acquaintances, as they came up from all parts, and 

 in all directions, on all sorts and all sizes of nags, 

 and at all kinds of paces, to the place of meeting. 

 First to arrive on that useful steed yclept " Shanks's 

 pony," slouching along, clad in rusty velveteen, 

 baggy brown cord breeches and gaiters, billycock, as 

 he termed his wideawake hat, on head, a stout ashen 

 stick, cut from a neighbouring coppice, in hand, and 

 ten to one a quantity of wires in his pockets, was 

 handsome, dark-eyed, good-for-nothing, scampish, dis- 

 honest Gipsy Jim — the sometime gamekeeper, when 

 he could get any to employ him, but oftener the poach- 

 ing, drinking, thieving vagabond of the neighbour- 

 hood. A broad grin of recognition, and a touch of 

 the hat on the part of the Gipsy one, and an 

 exclamation on mine of " Bless me, Jim ! not hanged 

 yet ? " placed us once again on the old familiar 

 I o 



