"
"I should like to try too," said Tom.
"Well, then, leave your waistcoat behind, 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.
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