The baying and barking of four excited dogs (who knew as well as we did that the first shoot of the season was to come off on this day) rendered unnecessary Hermann's polite knockings at the bedroom doors, and his gentlemanly intimation that the day was all that could be expected of it, and the hour--three. When Shammie, and Carlow, and Kaplya, and Bruce are performing a quartette at 3 A.M., even Jemmie cannot sleep, and we were both wide-awake and discussing matters when Hermann came to hound us to breakfast. Breakfast was somewhat of a failure, I remember. Did I mention that we had taken a few strawberries at 10.30 P.M.? Well, we had; and it was found that the circumstance militated against a hearty British appetite at 3 A.M. However, this being so, the less time was wasted before starting for the moor. There is something, to me, peculiarly fascinating and exhilarating about this starting out on the first day of shooting; but oh! that seven mile drive to the moor. The roads were so absolutely and utterly vile, and the cart so unspeakably uncomfortable, that no reader would believe me were I to attempt to describe the misery of driving under such conditions. But Jemmie, bless him! smiled on and smiled ever; and I--not to be outdone in exuberance of spirits this superb morning--pretended that I enjoyed being bumped about like a hailstone on a hard lawn. All four dogs were with us. They lay, at the start, quiescent enough at the bottom of the vehicle; but alas! not for long. In the first fifty yards Shammie was on my lap, and Bruce with his arms round Jemmie's neck; in the second I found, to my surprise, that a cartridge-box had usurped Shammie's place on my knee, and that Shammie's head and my shin were exchanging civilities at the bottom of the cart. Occasionally the driver was sprawling on the back of the shaft horse, and now and again he was shot violently upon the top of Jemmie or me, or suddenly appeared, wrong way up, between us. Occasionally also we found that the dogs and we had changed places, and that we lay struggling on the floor of the cart while they stood on their heads, or sat with surprised and pained expressions upon the seat. Nothing mattered. Jemmie smiled, and I tried to. What though our shins were black and blue with the misplaced attentions of cartridge cases and gun stocks? What though the dogs whined and grew absurdly angry with one another, showing signs of an imminent general engagement? What though Jemmie bounded into air--bird-like--and nested upon the top of my head, or I on his? Nothing matters on the first day of shooting; disasters are a joke, and battered heads and limbs are contributions to the hilarity of the proceedings. Ah, well! the dogs limped ostentatiously when we arrived, and Jemmie and I were very, very stiff, but oh! so happy, and I, at all events, grateful and amazed to find myself all in one piece, and we paced slowly through the first belt of thick, gameless pine-wood, thinking unutterable