Our heroes ploughed honestly through the bracken and gorse which tangled their feet and scratched their bare shins at every step. That mile over the Heath was the most trying yet. The hares seemed to have picked out the very cruellest track they could find; and when, presently, the "Firm" caught sight of the ruthless little patches of paper going straight up the side of Welkin Beacon, Coote fairly cried for quarter and announced he must sit down.
His companions, though they would not have liked to make the suggestion themselves, were by no means inexorable to the appeal.
"Why, we"ve hardly started yet," said d.i.c.k, throwing himself down on the ground; "you"re a nice fellow to begin to want a rest!"
"Only just started!" gasped Coote; "I never ran so far in my life."
"We came that last bit pretty well, considering the ground," said Heathcote, anxious to make the halt as justifiable as possible.
"I wonder where the hares are now?" said d.i.c.k, rather pensively.
"Back at Templeton, perhaps," said Heathcote, "having iced ginger-beer, or turning into the "Tub.""
"Shut up, Georgie," said d.i.c.k, with a wince. "What"s the use of talking about iced ginger-beer out here?"
They lay some minutes, each dreading the first suggestion to move.
Coote feigned to have dropped asleep, and Heathcote became intensely interested in the anatomy of a thistle.
d.i.c.k was the only one who could not honestly settle down, and the dreaded summons, when at last it came, came in his voice:--
"You lazy beggars," cried he, starting up, "get up, can"t you? and come on."
Rip Van Winkle never slept more profoundly than did Coote at that moment. But alas! Rip had the longer nap of the two.
An unceremonious application of the leader"s toe, and a threat to go on alone, brought the "Firm" to their feet in double-quick time, and started them up the steep side of the Beacon Hill.
Demoralised by their halt, they fared badly up the slope, and had it not been for d.i.c.k"s almost vicious resolution, which kept him going and overcame his own frequent inclination to yield to the lazier motions of his companions, they might never have done it. d.i.c.k saw that the effort was critical, and he was inexorable. Even Georgie thought him unkind, and Coote positively hated him up that slope.
Oh, those never-ending ridges, one above the other, each seeming to be the top, but each discovering another beyond more odious than itself!
More than once they felt they had just enough left in them to make the peak that faced them; and then, when it was reached, their endurance had to stretch and stretch until it seemed that the point of breaking must come at each step.
If nothing else they had ever done deserved the reward of the virtuous, that honest pull up the side of the Welkin Beacon did; and Freckleton, had he seen them making the last scramble, would have put their names down on his list without further probation.
The cairn stood before them at last, and as they rushed to it, and planted themselves on the topmost point, where still a few sc.r.a.ps of the scent lingered, all the fatigue and labour were forgotten in an exhilarating sense of triumph and achievement.
"Rather a breather, that," said d.i.c.k, his honest face beaming all over; "you chaps took a lot of driving."
"I feel quite fresh after it," said Coote, beaming too.
"You didn"t feel fresh ten minutes ago, under the last shoulder but one, my boy. If you feel so fresh, suppose you trot down and up again while Georgie and I sit here and look at the view."
Coote declined, and after a short rest they dropped down the long slope, with the scent in full view, on to Lowhouse, where the Gurgle, slipping clear and deep between its banks, seemed to them one of the loveliest pictures Nature ever drew.
The scent lay right along the bank, sometimes down on the stones, sometimes on the high paths above the tree tops, until suddenly it stopped.
"By Jove, we shall have to swim for it, you fellows," cried d.i.c.k, delighted. "Chuck your shoes and things across, and tumble in."
With joy they obeyed. They would fain have spent half an hour in the delicious water, so soft and cool and deep. But d.i.c.k 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 sc.r.a.p 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 d.i.c.k, "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 d.i.c.k, 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 d.i.c.k.
"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 ditches; he took note of the direction of the wind, and ordered his groom to take his horse a wide sweep of the field opposite on the chance of a discovery.
The boys, fired by his example, strained every nerve to prove themselves good Harriers, and covered a mile or more in their circuits.
At length the old gentleman brought his whip a crack down on his leggings and exclaimed:--
"I have it! Ha! ha! knowing young dogs! Look here, my boy! look here!"
And, taking d.i.c.k by the arm, he led him to the point where the scent touched the road.
"Do you see what they"ve done?--artful young scamps! They"ve doubled on their own scent. Usen"t to be allowed in my days."
And, delighted with his discovery, he led them back along the scent for a hundred yards or so up the field, where it suddenly forked off behind some gorse-bushes, and made straight for the railway at Norton.
"Ha! ha! the best bit of sniffing I"ve had these many years. And, now I come to think of it, with the wind the way it is blowing, they may have dropped their scent fair, and the breeze has taken it on to the old track. Cunning young dogs!"
"Thanks, awfully," said d.i.c.k, gratefully; "we should never have found it."
The other two echoed their grat.i.tude, and the delighted old gentleman valued their thanks quite as much as his Commission of the Peace.
"Now you"ve got it," said he, "come along and have a bit of lunch at my house; I"m not five minutes away."
"Thanks, very much," said d.i.c.k, "but I"m afraid--"