Next day he left. His host would not shake hands with him when he departed. On reaching town he felt dull, and sauntered to the club, but no one would speak to him there. Next day he received this letter from the secretary—
"The secretary of the —— Club regrets to be obliged to inform the Baron Hounymhum that he can no longer be considered the guest of the Club."
After that London society was sealed to him. It was nothing that he had been thought guilty of an attempt to assassinate his sovereign, nothing that he was thought to have eloped with a married woman, wrecked her home and shot her husband, but that he should have shot foxes was The Unpardonable Sin.
We have a peculiar institution in the county of Devon—a week of hare-hunting on Dartmoor after hare-hunting has ceased everywhere else. Dartmoor is a high elevated region totally treeless, with peaks covered with granite, having brawling streams that foam down the valleys between. One main road crosses this vast desolate region, as far as Two Bridges, where is an inn, The Saracen's Head, and there it divides, and runs for many miles more over moor to Moreton Hampstead on one side, and to Ashburton on the other. In the fork of this Y stands an eminently picturesque rugged tor, crested by and strewn with granite, called Bellever. About Easter—anyhow, after hare-hunting has ceased elsewhere—the country-side gathers at Bellever for a week, and nothing can be conceived more changed than the scene at this time from the usual solitude and stillness. The tor is covered with horses, traps, carriages, footers; and if the spring sun be shining, nothing can well be more picturesque.
Whatever may be said or sung to the contrary, hunting on Dartmoor is dangerous work. There are no hedges there, only walls, and these walls are set up round what are locally termed "takes," or enclosures, and are made of the granite stones found lying about in the take; they are not put together with mortar, but are loosely built up one stone on another, and the wind blows through the interstices. More nasty accidents would happen over these walls, were it not that the moor turf is spongy and boggy, so that when a man is thrown he is lightly received.
Concerning this Bellever week there exists a song—
"Bellever week is the bravest week
Of fifty-two in the year.
'Tis one to tweak a teetotaller's beak,