Then the hounds clustered round Thorne, who explained shortly, “They’re to have six minutes’ law.  We run into the Cock, and every one who comes in within a quarter of an hour of the hares’ll be counted, if he has been round Barby church.”  Then came a minute’s pause or so, and then the watches are pocketed, and the pack is led through the gateway into the field which the hares had first crossed.  Here they break into a trot, scattering over the field to find the first traces of the scent which the hares throw out as they go along.  The old hounds make straight for the likely points, and in a minute a cry of “Forward” comes from one of them, and the whole pack, quickening their pace, make for the spot, while the boy who hit the scent first, and the two or three nearest to him, are over the first fence, and making play along the hedgerow in the long grass-field beyond.  The rest of the pack rush at the gap already made, and scramble through, jostling one another.  “Forward” again, before they are half through.  The pace quickens into a sharp run, the tail hounds all straining to get up to the lucky leaders.  They are gallant hares, and the scent lies thick right across another meadow and into a ploughed field, where the pace begins to tell; then over a good wattle with a ditch on the other side, and down a large pasture studded with old thorns, which slopes down to the first brook.  The great Leicestershire sheep charge away across the field as the pack comes racing down the slope.  The brook is a small one, and the scent lies right ahead up the opposite slope, and as thick as ever—­not a turn or a check to favour the tail hounds, who strain on, now trailing in a long line, many a youngster beginning to drag his legs heavily, and feel his heart beat like a hammer, and the bad-plucked ones thinking that after all it isn’t worth while to keep it up.

Tom, East, and the Tadpole had a good start, and are well up for such young hands, and after rising the slope and crossing the next field, find themselves up with the leading hounds, who have overrun the scent, and are trying back.  They have come a mile and a half in about eleven minutes, a pace which shows that it is the last day.  About twenty-five of the original starters only show here, the rest having already given in; the leaders are busy making casts into the fields on the left and right, and the others get their second winds.

Then comes the cry of “Forward” again from young Brooke, from the extreme left, and the pack settles down to work again steadily and doggedly, the whole keeping pretty well together.  The scent, though still good, is not so thick; there is no need of that, for in this part of the run every one knows the line which must be taken, and so there are no casts to be made, but good downright running and fencing to be done.  All who are now up mean coming in, and they come to the foot of Barby Hill without losing more than two or three more of the pack.  This