Then for a hundred yards it is a race for very life.

What a shouting there is! and what a rushing of boys and waving of caps pass before our eyes! On comes Forwood, the gallant hound, at our heels; we can hear him behind us distinctly! "Now you have them!" shouts one.
"One spurt more, hares!" cries another, "and you are safe!" On we bound, and on comes the pursuer, not ten yards behind--not _ten_, but more than _five_.

And that five he never makes up till Birch and I are safe inside the school-gates, winners by a neck--and a neck only--of that famous hunt.
The pack came straggling in for the next hour, amid the cheers and chaffing of the boys.

Three of them, who had kept neck and neck all the way, were only two minutes behind Forwood; but they had shirked the swim, and taken the higher and drier course--as, indeed, most of the other hounds did--by way of the bridge.

Ten minutes after them one other fellow turned up, and a quarter of an hour later three more; and so on until the whole pack had run, or walked, or limped, or ridden home--all except one, little Jim Barlow, the tiniest and youngest and pluckiest little hound that ever crossed country.