One of the memorable days of my life was the day before New-Year's. Ford had secured me a capital hunter, a well-clipped gelding, over sixteen hands high, glossy, lean, and wiry as a racer. "You've got a rare mount to-day, sir," said the groom as he held him for me to get up; and a rare dismount I came near having in the little measure of capacity with which Master Dick and I commenced our acquaintance, before we left the Regent. He was one of those horses whose spirits are just a little too much for their skins, and all the way out he kept up a restless questioning of his prospect of having his own way. Still he was in all this, as in his manner of doing his work when he got into the open country, such a perfect counterpart of old Max, who had carried me for two years in the Southwest, that I was at home at once. If I had had a hunter made to order, I could not have been more perfectly suited. The meet (North Warwickshire) was at Cubbington Gate, only two miles from Leamington, and a very gay meet it was. The road was filled with carriages, and there was a goodly rabble on foot. About three hundred, in every variety of dress, were mounted for the hunt, a dozen or so of ladies among them. Three of these kept well up all day, and one of them rode very straight. The hounds were taken to a wood about a mile to the eastward of Cubbington, where they soon found a fox, which led us a very straight course to Princethorpe, about three miles to the northeast. I had done little fencing for seven or eight years, and the sort of propulsion one gets in being carried over a hedge is sufficiently different from the ordinary impulses of civil life to suggest at first the element of surprise. Consequently, though our initial leap was a modest one, I landed with only one foot in the stirrup and with one hand in the mane; but I now saw that Dick was but another name for Max, and this one moderate failure was enough to recall the old tricks of the craft. As the opportunity would perhaps never come again, this one was not to be neglected, and I resolved to have one fair inside view of real fox-hunting. Dick was clearly as good a horse as was out that day; the leaping was less than that to which we were used among the worm-fences, fallen timber, and gullies of Arkansas and Tennessee; and there was but a plain Anglo-Saxon name for the only motive that could deter me from making the most of the occasion. Mr. Lant, the Master of the Hounds, was not better mounted for his lighter weight than was I for my fourteen stone; and his position as well as his look indicated that he would probably go by the nearest practicable route to where the fox might lead, so we kept at a safe distance behind him and well in his wake. The hesitation and uncertainty which had at first confused my bridle-hand being removed, my horse, recognizing the changed position of affairs, settled down to his work like a well-trained and sensible but eager beast as he was.