With joy they obeyed. They would fain have spent half an hour in the
delicious water, so soft and cool and deep. But Dick was in a self-
denying mood, and would not allow his men more than ten minutes. That,
however, was as good as an hour's nap; and when, after dressing and
picking up the scent, they took up the running again, it was like a new
start.

Half-a-mile down, they came on to the country road, and here suddenly
the scent vanished. High or low they could not find it. It neither
crossed the road, nor went up the road, nor went down the road. They
sniffed round in circles, but all to no good--not a scrap of paper was
anywhere within twenty yards, except at the spot where they had struck
the road.

They had gone, perhaps, half a mile with no sign yet of the scent, and
were beginning to make up their minds that, after all, they should have
turned up the road instead of down, when a horseman, followed by a
groom, turned a corner of the road in front of them and came to meet
them.

"Hurrah!" cried Dick, "here's a chap we can ask."

The "chap" in question was evidently somewhat perplexed by the
apparition of these three bareheaded, bare-legged, dust-stained
youngsters, and reined up his horse as they trotted up.

"I say," cried Dick, ten yards off, "have you seen the Harriers go by,
please?--Whew!"

This last exclamation was caused by the sudden and alarming discovery
that the "chap" thus unceremoniously addressed was no other than one of
the two magistrates before whom, not three days ago, Tom White had stood
on his trial in the presence of the "Firm."

"What Harriers, my man?" asked the gentleman.

"Oh, if you please, the Templeton Harriers, sir. It's a paper-chase,
you know."

"Oh, you're Templeton boys, are you? Why, I was a Templetonian myself
at your age," said the delighted old boy. "No; no Harriers have gone
this way. You must have lost the scent."

"We lost it half a mile ago. If you're going that way, we can show you
where," said Dick.

"Come on, then," said the good-humoured squire; "we'll smell 'em out
somewhere."

So the "Firm" turned and trotted in its very best form alongside the
worthy magistrate until they reached the point where the scent had
struck the road.

The old Templetonian summoned his groom, and, dismounting, joined the
boys, with all the ardour of an old sportsman, in their search for the
scent. He poked the hedges knowingly with his whip, and tracked up the