run off four eights by two o'clock, no fewer than seven of the original courses were run over again, with a small sum depending on the issue each time.
The next business was choosing a judge, and one of our party generally filled the post, the farmers preferring a 'stranger' to one of themselves. We began operations in the field adjoining the house, and, as all the hares were walked up, it was a day of capital exercise for everyone. Slipper and judge walked in line with the crowd, and puss, unaccustomed to being coursed, used to lie very close, and was as often as not 'see ho'd' by one of the beat. When slipped at, these High Law hares used almost invariably to make for the high ground; almost as invariably they chose the sheep paths to run on, and if they happened to find one of these—firm enough to them, but slippery to their pursuers-in the early part of a course, they often got clear away without being properly used.
The crowd was always most enthusiastic, and certainly forty or fifty men seemed to make quite as much row as twenty times the number would do at a public meeting. You see, this was their one long-looked-forward-to coursing day of the year, and as their lives were spent in a far-away, thinly-populated, and lonely part of the country, they made the
