"I'll have plenty to do minding her, without asking her questions that she couldn't answer," returned Flurry. He resumed his survey of Andrew. "I wonder will he be able to hold that horse in a snaffle? He catches hold an odd time." "Stand by!" said Doctor Hickey, his watch in his hand. "Fifteen seconds more before the hares start!" "Well, if Larpent goes as big as he talks, he'll do," said Flurry, gathering up his reins. The ten minutes of grace ebbed slowly away, and preposterous though I still held the affair to be, I do not deny that I was aware of an inward simmering of impatience. "I'll have the face worn off my watch looking at it if you don't let us start soon!" said Miss Larkie McRory to Hickey. She was mounted on a long-legged animal that had been summarised by Flurry as "the latter end of a car-horse," and was certainly in need of all the time it could get. "Don't excite yourself now, or I'll be having to order you a cooling draught!" returned the Doctor, but I perceived that he, in common with everyone else, was edging his horse towards the point of departure. "Go!" In the riot of the break-away, I was able to think of nothing but of keeping Daniel from bucking me over his head, but during the hustle at the avenue gates I observed Andrew riding off Bernard, and getting to the front with pale and ferocious determination. The "scent" took us along the road; we followed it over a stony bank and across two fields, at steeplechase pace, and then it ceased. By this time any lingering sense of absurdity had ceased also. We cast ourselves feverishly, like hounds; we galloped great circles; someone found the paper again, and yelled like a maniac. We all yelled in response, a variety of yells, from "Tally Ho" to "Cooee," as, like Bedlam let loose, we rushed to the discoverer. We were up on high land now, and the wind was whirling in our ears, snatching our voices away to infinity, and blowing up the temperatures of horses and riders like a bellows. It had caught away the torn paper and flung it to leeward, into furze brakes, against the sides of the banks, and checks were many, and the horses, convinced that the hounds were somewhere ahead, pulled double. In the bare fields, with their scanty April grass, everything showed up; we were deceived by white stones, by daisies, by dandelion puff-balls, by goose-feathers; most of all we were deceived by country-people, whom, I have no doubt, Flurry had instructed to mislead us. We had had a long check, consequent on a false trail, when, three fields away, Andrew held up his hat. "Look at him now, running mute!" giggled Sally Knox in my ear, as we battered down a road. "He's too cross to shout. He's frantic because he's not the hare, and Meg Longmuir was sent with Flurry! And poor Flurry, who's going such a nice safe line!"