s are?" said
another.

Our heroes began to think the delay in starting was getting to be
criminal. Everyone had turned up long ago. Whatever was keeping the
hunt from beginning?

Ah! there was Cresswell calling up the hares at last. Thank goodness!

Swinstead and Birket, _par nobile fratrum_, were old stagers in the
Templeton hunts, and fellows knew, when they buckled on their scent bags
and tied their handkerchiefs round their waists, that the Harriers would
have their work cut out for them before the day was over.

"All ready?" asked the whipper-in, taking out his watch.

"All serene!"

"Off you go then!"

And off went the hares at a long easy swing, out of the fields and up on
to the breezy downs.

"Now then, Harriers, peel!" said the whipper-in, when the hares had
disappeared from view, and his watch showed seven minutes to have
elapsed.

Our heroes nervously obeyed the order, and confided their outer vesture
to Aspinall's custody.

Then steeling their ears and hearts to the final sparks of chaff which
greeted the action, they moved forward with the other hounds and waited
Cresswell's signal to go.

It seemed ages before those three minutes crawled out. But at last the
whipper-in put his watch back, and blew a blast on his bugle.

"Forward!" shouted everybody.

And the hunt was begun.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.

HOW OUR HEROES MAKE THEIR RECORD.

If I were a poet, I should, at this point, pause to invoke Diana,
Apollo, Adonis, and the other deities who preside over the chase, to aid
me in describing the famous and never-to-be-forgotten run of the
Templeton Harriers that early autumn afternoon. How they broke in full
cry out of the fields up on to the free downs. How, with the fresh sea
scent in their faces, they scoured the ridge that links Templeton with
Blackarch, and Blackarch with Topping. How at the third mile they cried
off inland, and plunged into the valley by Waly's bottom and Bardie's
farm, through the pleasant village of Steg, over the railway, and along
the fringe of Swilford Wood, to the open heath beyond. How half the
hunt was out of it before they went up the other side of the valley, and
scattered the gravel on the top of Welkin Beacon. How those who were
left dropped thence suddenly on Lowhouse, and swam the Gurgle a mile
above the ford. How from Lowhouse they swerved eastward, and caught the
railway again at Norton Cutting. How they lost the scent in Durdon
Copse, b