The whipper-in, conspicuous by the little bugle slung across his shoulders, and the light flag in his hand, was there in all the importance of his office; and, as usual, the doctor and a party of visitors, ladies and gentlemen, had turned out to witness the start.
"Five minutes, hares!" shouts Forwood, as Birch and I came on the spot.
We use the interval in stripping off all unnecessary apparel, and girding ourselves with our bags of "scent," or scraps of torn-up paper, which we are to drop as we run.

Then we sit and wait the moment for starting.

The turf is crisp under our feet; the sun is just warm enough to keep us from shivering as we sit, and the wind just strong enough to be fresh.

Altogether it is to be doubted if a real meet of real hounds to hunt real hares--a cruel and not very manly sport, after all--could be much more exciting than this is.
"Half a minute!" sings out the whipper-in, as we spring to our feet.
In another thirty seconds we are swinging along at a good pace down the slope of the warren, in the direction of Colven meadows, and the hunt has begun.
As long as we were in sight of the pack we kept up a good hard pace, but on reaching cover we settled down at once to a somewhat more sober jog- trot, in anticipation of the long chase before us.
We made good use of our five minutes' start, for by the time a distant bugle note announced that the hounds were let loose on our track we had covered a good piece of ground, and put several wide fields and ditches and ugly hedges between us and our pursuers.
Now it was that Birch's experiences served us in good stead.

I never knew a fellow more thoroughly cunning; he might have been a fox instead of a hare.