hind, and listen at the door, after
calling-over, and you'll hear where the meet is."

After calling-over, sure enough there were two boys at the door, calling
out, "Big-side hare-and-hounds meet at White Hall;" and Tom, having
girded himself with leather strap, and left all superfluous clothing
behind, set off for White Hall, an old gable-ended house some quarter
of a mile from the town, with East, whom he had persuaded to join,
notwithstanding his prophecy that they could never get in, as it was the
hardest run of the year.

At the meet they found some forty or fifty boys, and Tom felt sure, from
having seen many of them run at football, that he and East were more
likely to get in than they.

After a few minutes' waiting, two well-known runners, chosen for the
hares, buckled on the four bags filled with scent, compared their
watches with those of young Brooke and Thorne, and started off at a
long, slinging trot across the fields in the direction of Barby.

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