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 Dick 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 Dick, gratefully; "we should never have found it." The other two echoed their gratitude, 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 Dick, "but I'm afraid--" "Nonsense! come on.

You're out of the hunt; ten minutes won't make any difference." Of course they yielded, and enjoyed a sumptuous lunch of cold meat and bread and cheese, which made new men of them.