CHAPTER VII

"For a fifteen months' novice, you know, against two champions, and a hound like Cormac--wonderful!" they said. But all were agreed that Finn justified the award. "He's the tallest hound in the breed, now," said the Judge, as he passed that way, and lingered to pass his hand over Finn's shoulder; "and he will be the biggest and finest if he lives; distinctly the finest Irish Wolfhound I have ever handled, and--I've handled most of them." Higher tribute from such a Judge no dog could earn. The Master flushed with pleasure and pride as he heard it, and turned to receive the congratulations of the exhibitors of Champions Dermot Asthore, and Munster.In the Limit and Novice classes Finn was awarded first place as a matter of course. There was nothing there to beat him. And then came the judging of the bitch classes, in which Kathleen did extraordinarily well for so young a hound, and in such "good company," as the saying goes. She won third prize in the Open class, second in the Limit, and first in the Novice. And then four other young hounds filed into the ring with Finn and Kathleen to be judged in the junior class. The other four young hounds were of a very good sort, but they had not the development, the bone, muscle, and stature of Finn and Kathleen, and there was not much hesitation in the decision which placed Finn first, Kathleen second, and a youngster called Connemara third.And then Finn had to be judged beside the winner in the Open class for bitches, to decide who should be given the Challenge Shield for the best Irish Wolfhound in the Show. And this was a task which tried the white-haired Judge's patience for a long time. The female was Champion Lady Iseult of Leinster, and one of the most beautiful hounds of her sex ever seen. She was fully matured, and her reputation was world-wide. Judged on "points," as breeders say, she was very near to perfection. Technically, it was difficult to find fault in her, unless that she was a shade too straight in her hocks, a fault that often goes with great stature in a hound. Finn's hocks were curved like an Arab stallion's, springy as a cat's. The Judge tested the two hounds side by side, again and again, and in every way he could think of, but without coming to a decision between them. At last, after passing his hand down the hocks of the Lady Iseult, he asked that they might both be run, quickly as possible, while led. That seemed to guide him a good deal. But it was clear that the conscientious old Judge and breeder was not yet fully satisfied. Finally, he had the opening to the rings closed, and a hurdle brought in. Then the Lady Iseult was invited to run at and leap the hurdle. She did so, and with a good grace, returning docilely enough to her master. Then the Master loosed Finn, and the Mistress of the Kennels called him from the far side of the ring. Finn bounded forward with the elasticity of a cat, and cleared the hurdle with a perfect spring and fully two feet to spare. The Judge stroked his imperial, laid a hand on the shoulders of both hounds, and said--"The young dog has it--the finest hound I ever saw!"dognapper and wolfhound by nightCHAPTER VIIREVELATIONSIt is the custom at dog shows for the authorities to distribute certificates on coloured cardboard of all the awards made by the judges. At this show of Finn's great triumph, first prize cards were all blue, second prize cards red, and third prize cards yellow. The custom was for exhibitors proudly to affix these cards to the wire net-work stretched above the bench of the winning dog. So it fell out that soon after the judging of Wolfhounds was over, two red cards and two blue cards were fixed over Kathleen's bench, and the Mistress of the Kennels lavished considerable attention upon her, lest she should be moved to jealousy of Finn. The decoration of the wire-work over Finn's bench was most striking.First, there were four blue first prize cards, for his sensational win in Open, Limit, Novice, and Junior classes. Then there was a very handsome card with ribbons attached, signifying that Finn had won the Challenge Shield for the best Irish Wolfhound in the Show. And then there were two other blue cards telling that Finn had won two special prizes; one, a medal offered by a member of the Irish Wolfhound Club for the best hound at the Show bred by its exhibitor; and another, of two guineas, offered by a well-known Irish sportsman for the biggest Irish Wolfhound in the Show. And so Finn sat in state beneath a sort of dome consisting of no fewer than seven trophies. It seemed a little hard on that magnificent hound, his sire, who occupied the next bench, under the shelter of but one solitary red card. But Dermot Asthore was a philosopher, and, as has been said, weary of shows. He lay curled, like a great cat, and slept stolidly, presenting nothing more conscious to the passing throng than a small triangular section of one blood-shot eye.With Finn matters were otherwise. His numerous trophies won him much attention, even from the large majority who were ignorant of his great technical claims to fame. There was always a little group in front of Finn's bench, and those of his admirers who had claims upon the Master--besides many who had none--were continually begging that he should be taken down from the bench, so that they might admire his full stature. Then there were newspaper men with cameras and note-books; and there were dealers with cheque-books, and a ready hand and eye for deprecation. But these were given no sort of encouragement by the Master. Finn received as much attention in the evening papers that day as any leader of human society; and in the papers devoted to doggy interests, a great deal more. He was conscious of more of this than you might suppose, even though he could not read newspapers: but the thing he was most keenly conscious of was the fact that he had managed greatly to please the Master and the Mistress of the Kennels. Finn felt happy and proud about this, but, although he was taken down from the bench several times and led into out-of-the-way corners where his chain could be removed and he was able to stretch his limbs, still, he became pretty thoroughly tired of the publicity and racket of the Dog Show before he was led out of the building at ten o'clock that night, with Kathleen, by the Master. The Mistress had gone home to Tara, early in the evening; but the Master was sleeping in lodgings near the Palace, which he had engaged on the clear understanding that he was allowed to bring the Wolfhounds there with him. Finn had not realized as yet that one of the penalties of the fame that he had won lay in the fact that he was obliged to spend another two whole days in the show building.But though Finn and Kathleen knew it not, their lot was a far more fortunate one than that of the great majority of their kind at the Show. Knowing that they would be unhappy if left in the building at night, that they probably would be too much wrought up to eat there, and that they would feel being chained up for so long more than most dogs, the Master had arranged to take them out at night, in order that they might have half an hour's freedom before supper and retirement to a sleeping place in the room he had taken for himself. There were dogs in the Show whose masters did not come near them after the judging on the first day, until the end of the third day. These unfortunates were left to the rather chancy attentions of the show attendants, who, with thousands of dogs to care for, could hardly be expected to give any of them much individual notice.On the evening of the second day of the Show, while the Master was engaged in conversation at some distance from Finn's bench, the young hounds from the cottage by the Downs received a visit from a man who showed the utmost admiration for them, and particularly, of course, for Finn. This man, whose appearance rather reminded Finn of one whom he had heard referred to as the gamekeeper, down in Sussex, looked up Finn's name and ancestry in the show catalogue, and gave particular heed to the fine display of prize cards over his head. He fondled Finn for several minutes, and Finn knew by the various smells which hung about the man that he was accustomed to mixing a good deal with dog-folk. Before turning away, this friendly and admiring man presented Finn with a small piece of meat which he took from a paper-bag in one of his pockets; and, of all the meat that Finn had ever tasted, this piece had the most fascinating smell and the most provocatively exciting and pleasing flavour. He meditated over this piece of meat for quite a long time, and when, during the last afternoon of the Show, the friendly stranger appeared before him again, Finn welcomed the man effusively, and, with nose and paw, plainly asked for some more of that fascinating meat. The man chuckled, and rubbed the backs of Finn's ears in an affectionate manner for several minutes. What Finn found more to the point was that, before leaving, the man did present him with another small section of this delicious meat with the fascinating smell. Finn wished there was more of it, but he felt exceedingly grateful to the stranger for the one piece and for the rest of his friendly attention.By payment of a small fee the Master was enabled to take Finn and Kathleen away from the Show much earlier on that evening than before, and a few hours later they were all three being welcomed at home by the Mistress of the Kennels and Tara. Tara, by the way, was hardly able to spare time for a remark at first; she was so busy sniffing all round Finn and Kathleen, and reading for herself the sort of record of their recent adventures which their coats and her delicate sense of smell provided. The three hounds dined sumptuously, and in a row, while the Master and the Mistress sat before them fighting their battles over again and discussing their triumph in the show-ring. Then, the night being fine, the three were allowed to wander out into the orchard for a quarter of an hour or so before going to bed. The Master remained in his den talking.Directly Tara reached the orchard she barked out loud, "Who's there?"--an unmistakable sort of bark one would have thought. But the Master was pretty thoroughly tired, and, perhaps, the fact that he was chatting with the Mistress prevented his understanding Tara's bark. At all events, he paid no heed to it. Tara promptly trotted across to the gate between the orchard and the open down, followed closely by Finn and Kathleen. There, much to Finn's delight, they found the friendly stranger of the Show. Tara eyed the man with hauteur, as one whose acquaintance she had not made. Kathleen remained modestly in the background. Finn, with lively recollections of the peculiarly savoury meat which the stranger dealt in, placed his fore-paws, on the top of the gate, and lolled his tongue at the man in friendly greeting. The man gave Finn a provokingly tiny fragment of the savoury meat, and rubbed the young hound's ears in the coaxing way he had. Then he stepped back a pace or two, and produced a large piece of the meat."Here, boy! Here, Finn! Jump, then, Finn!" The gate was less than five feet high, and the seductive odour of this peculiar meat floated just beyond it in the still night air. Finn drew back a pace or two, and then, with a beautiful spring, cleared the gate easily. While giving Finn the piece of meat he had been holding, the man slipped a swivel on to the ring of the handsome green collar, and attached to the swivel there was a strong leather lead. The man moved on slowly, with another piece of meat in his hand, and Finn paced with him, willingly enough. When Finn had finished the next piece of meat he was a hundred yards away from the orchard. He looked back then, and an uncomfortable thrill passed through his young heart; a vague thrill it was, conveying no definite fear or impression to his mind. Still, it was uncomfortable. He had half a mind to go back and rejoin Tara and Kathleen, and so, tentatively, he halted. If the friendly stranger had tried to force Finn then, there would have been trouble. But he did not. Instead, he bent down and played with Finn's ears, and then brought another piece of meat out of his pocket. Holding this out, he moved on again; and the dog followed, forgetful now of his momentary thrill of discomfort. After all, he thought, vaguely, very likely this unaccustomed night walk was all part of the Show and its many novel experiences. There had been night walks at the end of each show day. When Finn had had another morsel of the meat, the friendly stranger put another collar on his neck, and removed the green one. Then he began to trot, and Finn trotted with him, quite contentedly. Finn was always glad to run.So the two trotted for miles, through the mild, still October night, the man breathing heavily. Once something made Finn pause suddenly; and the pause let him into a secret. The collar he was wearing now was different from any other he had known in his short life. If you pulled against it, it slipped round your throat so tightly as to stop your breathing instantly and absolutely. The only thing to do was to go the way the collar and lead pulled; then, immediately, the pressure relaxed. It was a collar that had to be obeyed, that was evident. These "slip-collars" are well known to some members of the Great Dane family, and particularly to those who are owned by dealers; but their use came with rather a shock to lordly young Finn, who, living the free and happy life he always had lived, there beside the Sussex Downs, had rarely been asked to wear a collar of any sort.After a time, Finn and the stranger came to a little town, and walked into the yard of an inn. There another man met them, to whom Finn's friend said, hurriedly--"I'll walk straight on. You drive on with the cart after me. Don't stop till you're clear of the village.""You've got him, then?" said the second man."Never you mind about that. Can't yer see I've got him? You get the pony out."And then Finn followed his leader out of the yard, and through the quiet little village to the open country beyond. But by this time Finn was beginning to feel that the night walk had been prolonged far enough. There was no sign of any more of the aromatic meat coming his way, and he had given up asking for it, and nosing the man's pocket. He thought he would like to turn now, and get back to Kathleen and Tara and the Master. The day, and its immediate predecessors, had been tiring, and Finn thought with strong desire of his fragrant wheaten straw bed in the coach-house at home. Yes, it was certainly time to return.Accordingly, Finn asked his leader to stop, and, finding that the man took no notice, he asked again, through his nose, and urgently. The man paid not the slightest heed to this, and that rather angered Finn, who was not accustomed to being ignored; so he planted his fore-feet firmly, and stopped dead. As the lead tightened, the slip-collar pressed painfully on Finn's throat; but he felt that the time had arrived to bring this excursion to an end, and so steeled himself to ignore this pressure."None o' that, now!" said the man, with a new note in his voice, of extreme harshness. "Come along now; d'ye hear!"Finn's fore-legs remained rigid. He had made up his mind now, and already he was beginning to regret having stayed so long with this stranger.The man now gave a powerful tug at the leather lead, and at that the pressure of the slip-collar forced Finn's tongue out between his teeth. This was really painful, but it was clear in Finn's mind that he must go home, so he remained straining backward."Come on 'ere, ye brute!" growled the man savagely, and, with a vicious jerk at the lead, he took a step to one side, and then kicked Finn on the hind-quarters as hard as he could. That was the first real blow Finn had ever received, and it taught him quite a lot. Up till this point it had not occurred to him for a moment that the man entertained any other than kindly, friendly feelings for him. In fact, he supposed that every one entertained kindly feelings towards him. He had never experienced any other sort of attitude. But this savage kick was a revelation to him. Also, it hurt. Finn turned in his tracks and plunged forward in the direction from which, they had come with such sudden strength that he almost dragged the lead from the man's strong hand, and would undoubtedly have freed himself, but for the slip-collar. As it was, the sudden jerk nearly throttled Finn, and brought him rolling on his back with all four feet in the air. Before he could rise again, the man had planted two ferocious kicks on his ribs; and Finn was thankful then to draw a free breath by moving towards his persecutor, so as to slacken the pressure on the lead. But, the moment he had drawn breath, the desire to escape possessed him once more, and he repeated his leap for freedom. This time the man was prepared, and, in addition to the pressure brought about by Finn's reaching the end of his tether, there was the savage extra pressure of a quick backward jerk at the lead, to bring the hound on his back a second time. This time the man kicked him very severely, and, in addition, smote him violently on the nose with clenched fist, as he staggered to his feet, gasping for breath.Just then the dim, smoky lights of a cart appeared at the bend in the road, twenty yards away, in the direction of the village."That you, Bill?" cried the man who held Finn, and an affirmative answer reached him from the cart. "Come on, then, and let's get this stubborn beast into the cart." He gave a savage jerk at Finn's slip-collar as he spoke, and once more his nailed boot crashed against the bewildered Wolfhound's ribs. The man had an itch of anger and brutality upon him by this time. Finn leaped sideways with a quick gasp as the man's boot struck him and the cruel collar tightened; and at this sharp movement of his great body, there in the middle of the road, the pony shied violently, just as it was being drawn in to a standstill; the cart swerved sharply into the hedge, and a cracking sound betrayed the breaking of a shaft.This was the finishing touch required to round off the naturally vicious temper of the man who held Finn into a passion of sullen, brutal anger. He cursed unceasingly while the man in the cart made the necessary repairs with cord and a couple of sticks from the hedge; and with every curse there was a kick, or a vicious blow, or a savage jerk at the torturing slip-collar, and sometimes all three together. Finn could have killed the man with ease; but, so far, the thought of even biting him never occurred to the Wolfhound. Every hour that he had spent in the world had taught him that humans were his friends, his very kindly protectors, his guardians and governors, so to say. Every hour of his mother's life, with but very few exceptions, had borne the same belief in upon her, and her nature was the sweetest and gentlest imaginable. With his father, now, the case was somewhat otherwise. There were those who said that the rather taciturn and shy Dermot owed some of his wonderfully heavy coat to the mesalliance of a forbear of his with a Tibetan Sheep Dog of a half-wild sort, with a temper far from reliable. But, as yet at all events, Finn's temper was that of a clean run, well-bred English boy; frank, open, trusting, and kindly; and, sorely as he ached, sorely bewildered as he felt under the rain of blows and kicks, curses and strangling tugs at his collar, he had as yet no thought of vengeance. His only desire was for escape, and a return to the sweet, free life he knew beside the Downs.The man who held Finn instinctively recognised all this, and the knowledge whetted the savagery of his temper, and withdrew all restraint from its cruel indulgence. He had no conscious wish to injure the hound; quite the contrary, since Finn represented money to him, and money was what he desired more than anything else; but he was tired, things seemed to be going ill with him, his temper was thoroughly roused, and the innocent cause of all this, a sensitive, living creature, was tethered and helpless beside him; and so he kicked and cursed, and jerked at the lead, and found relief in Finn's gasps of pain and want of breath.When the shaft was mended, the tail-board of the little cart was let down, and, with a savage kick at Finn's hind-quarters, the man bade him "Get up, there, ---- ye! Get up, ye brute!" Another kick. Poor Finn tried to squirm forward under the cart to escape the heavy boot of his persecutor. Then he was furiously jerked backward and half throttled."Steady with 'im, matey," said the other man. "Don't knock the dollars off of 'im.""Who asked you to shove your jaw in?" snarled the first man. "You didn't get the brute, did ye--curse him!"Another kick.The other man was used to his friend's temper, and said nothing; but he hated to see a valuable animal knocked about, just as he would have hated to see money thrown in the gutter instead of into a publican's till; so he stooped down and lifted Finn's fore-feet from the ground, and placed them on the floor of the cart."My oath!" he said, "but 'e's a tidy weight, ain't he? Up ye go, my bully boy!" And up Finn went, on the spur of another violent kick, which broke the skin across one of his hocks. The lead was now fastened close down to a staple in the floor of the cart, Finn being forced down on his side by the simple process of being knelt upon by his persecutor. To make doubly sure of him, his fore-legs were then tightly lashed together with his own green collar; and then the two men mounted the front of the cart and drove off.The memory of that night's drive burnt itself deep into Finn's young mind. He never really forgot it; that is to say, its effect upon his attitude toward men and life was never completely lost. His skin was broken in three or four places; every bone in his body ached from the heavy kicks he had received; an intolerable thirst kept him gasping for every breath he drew; the cramp set up in his fore-legs by their being strapped tightly together, one across the other, was an exquisite pain; and his muzzle was held hard down against the grimy floor-boards of the cart, while his mind was full of a black despairing fear of he knew not what. It was a severe ordeal for one who, up till then, had never even known what it meant to receive a severe verbal scolding; for one who had never seen a man's hand lifted in anger.An end came at last to this horrible drive."Thank Gawd, 'ere's 'orley!" said the man who drove; and after another minute or two the little cart came to a standstill in a walled-in yard. The pony was taken out and stabled, and then the man addressed as "Matey," still sullen and sour, let down the tail-board of the cart with a jerk, and dragged Finn out by the collar, allowing him to fall with a thud from the cart to the ground, rendered helpless by the strap round his fore-legs."'Ere, get up outa that!" growled the man, with a careless kick. Then, seeing that Finn could not move, he bent down, unbuckled the green enamelled strap, dragged it roughly away, and kicked the dog again. Cramped and sore beyond belief, Finn staggered on to his feet. A door was opened, and Finn was jerked and dragged into a perfectly dark, evil-smelling hole, about four feet square, with an earthen floor, from which horrible odours rose. The ground in this place was filthy. It had no drainage and no ventilation, except a few round holes in the door; which door was now slammed to and locked on the outside."Ain't ye goin' to give 'im a drink, matey?" asked Bill, outside."Drink be blowed! Let 'im wait till mornin'. Come in an' 'ave one yerself. I'm blessed glad this night's job's done; an' if I can't make fifty quid out 've it, I shall want to know the reason why, I can tell yer. Big, ugly brute, ain't 'e! Strong as a mule, too.I'dwant to be paid pretty 'andsome fer the keepin' o' such a brute; but the American gent's red 'ot ter get 'im, I can tell yer. Biggest ever bred, they tell me. I think I shall 'ave to stick on another tenner, eh, Bill? Come on!"Their very voices were a misery to the shrinking, aching, choking Finn, who stood shuddering in his fetid den, his sensitive nose wrinkling with horror and disgust. His need of water was the thing which hurt him the most cruelly; but the nature of his prison was a good deal of a torture, too. Remember that his life so far had been as cleanly and decent in detail as yours or mine. Certainly this was a sad plight for the hero of the Kennel Club Show, and the finest living descendant of a fifteen hundred year old line of princes among dogs.wolfhound fleeing through downlandCHAPTER VIIIFINN WALKS ALONEFor a long while after the men had left the scene of Finn's miserable captivity, he remained standing, and occupying as small a space as possible in his prison. The fastidiousness bred in him by careful rearing told severely against Finn just now. He had never, until this night, been without water to slake his thirst; and never, never had he smelt anything so horrible as the earth of the little den in which he was now confined. Also, the place was actually filthy, as well as apparently so. Finn could not bring himself to move in it. He stood shrinking by the door, with his nose near a crack beside its hinges. For long he reflected upon the events of that night, without moving. Then, gradually, thoughts of Kathleen and Tara, and the sweet cleanliness and freedom of his home beside the Downs, came swimming into Finn's mind, and these thoughts seemed to add intolerably to the aching of his bruised bones and muscles, to the soreness of those spots in which his skin had been broken, and to the misery of the thirst which kept his tongue protruding at one side of his jaws.Unable to bear these things any longer, Finn turned cautiously toward the middle of his loathsome prison, and, though his feet shrank from the task, scraped a hollow place in its midst of about the bigness of a wash-hand basin. Then, treading as though upon hot bricks, he squirmed his great body round to avoid touching the walls of his prison, and sat on his haunches in the hollow he had made. He was now filled with a desire to inform Tara and the Master, and, it may be, the rest of the world, about his sorry plight. But, particularly, he wanted to let the Master and Tara know about it. And so, seated there in what he had endeavoured to make the one approachably clean spot available, Finn pointed his long muzzle toward the stars he could not see, and, opening his jaws wide, expelled from them the true Irish Wolfhound howl, which seemed to tear its way outward and upward from the very centre of the hound's grief-smitten heart, to wind slowly through his lungs and throat, and to reach the outer air with very much the effect of a big steamship's syren in a dense fog. It is a very long-drawn cry, beginning away down in the bass, dragging up slowly to an anguished treble note in a very minor key, and subsiding, despairingly, about half-way back to the bass. It is a sound that carries a very long way--though not so far as from the place of Finn's captivity to the Sussex Downs--and carries misery with it just as far as ever it can reach. Upon the hearer who has any bowels of compassion it falls with a weight of physical appeal which may not be denied. Above all, it is a strange, mysterious, uncanny cry, and not a sound which can be ignored. It is a sound to fetch you hurriedly from your bed at midnight; and that though you had been sunk in dreamless sleep when first it smote its irresistible way into your consciousness.Finn was beginning the bass rumble of his sixth howl when the door of his prison was flung suddenly open, and he saw Matey, armed with a hurricane lamp and a short, heavy stick. He was still so new to the ways of Matey's kind of human, that he thought his howls had brought him release, and, for an instant, he even had a vision of a deep basin of cold water, a meal, and a sweet, clean bed, which his innocent fancy told him Matey might have been engaged in preparing for him. If he had not been so loath to risk touching the walls of his prison, his powerful tail would have wagged as the door opened and the clean night air came in to him. As it was, he leaned forward to express his gratitude for the opening of the door. And as he moved forward, delicately, Matey's stick descended on his nose, with all the weight of Matey's arm and Matey's savage anger behind it. There was no more sensitive or vulnerable spot in the whole of Finn's anatomy, physically or morally. The blow was hideously painful, hideously unexpected, hideously demoralizing. It robbed Finn of sight, and sense, and self-respect, and forced a bewildered cry from him which was part bark, part howl, part growl, and part scream of pain. It planted fear and horror in a single instant in a creature who had lived in the world for fifteen months with no consciousness of either. The filth of his prison was forgotten in this new anguish of pain, and fear, and humiliation, compared with which the kicks and stranglings of the early part of the night were as nothing at all. In a few seconds of time the proudest of princes in the dog world was reduced to a shuddering, cringing object, cowering in one corner of a filthy cupboard.Matey was not only furiously angry, he was also a good deal afraid; and that added cruelty to his anger. He had heard a number of bedroom windows raised as he crossed the walled-in yard; he wanted no enquiries about the source and reason of the weird, syren-like howls that had brought him out in his shirt and trousers. It was his business to see that there were no more howls; and the only means that occurred to his brutal mind were those he now proceeded to put into operation. He closed the door of the den behind him, and he rained down blows upon Finn's shrinking body till his arm ached, and the dog's cries subsided into a low, continuous whimper, the very paralysis of shame, anguish, fear, and distress. Then, when his arm was thoroughly tired, he flung the stick viciously into Finn's face, went out, and locked the door.Matey certainly could not be called a clever dog stealer, because he had no notion of how to preserve that which he stole. Putting aside their brutality, his methods were incredibly stupid; but when, five minutes later, he lay listening in his bed, the only reflection that his stupid mind brought him was that he had succeeded admirably. No further sound came from the walled-in yard; and it appeared that there was to be no further risk of neighbours being disturbed by howls from Finn. Matey was too far away to hear anything of the low, tremulous, nasal whimpering which trickled out into the night through the holes in the door of Finn's prison; and, in any case, there was no fear of that small sound disturbing any one. So, after his own fashion--which one really hesitates to call brutal, because brutes rarely, and probably never, indulge in pointless, unnecessary ferocity--Matey had been successful.But if Matey had had sense enough to be called a clever dog-stealer, he would have recognised that, despite his huge bulk and strength, Finn was one of the gentlest and most docile of created things, whose silence and tractability a little child could and would have brought about with the greatest ease, and without so much as an angry word. And, so, one has to admit that Matey's cruelty was like nine-tenths of the other cruelty in the world, alike among the educated and the uneducated, in that it was due to ignorance and stupidity.For a long time Finn was conscious of nothing but fear, and pain, and misery. He really had been very badly handled, and, though he knew it not, one of his ribs was broken. After an hour or two, he became perfectly silent, and began, tentatively and in a half-hearted way, to lick some of his bruises and abrasions. Then, before this task was half accomplished, wise Nature asserted her claims, and the exhausted Wolfhound fell into a fitful sleep just before daybreak. When he woke, fully a couple of hours later, much of his pain and misery remained with him; but the fear had given place to other feelings, chief among which came the determination to escape from the dominion of Matey. His own short experience of life gave Finn nothing to draw upon in coping with the situation in which he now found himself. He was drawing now, not upon teaching or experience, but upon what we call instinct: the store of concentrated inherited experience with which Nature furnishes all created things, and some more richly than others. Deep down in Finn's share of this store there were faint stirrings in the direction of hatred and vengeance; but of these, Finn was not actually conscious as yet. What he was acutely conscious of was the determination with which instinct supplied him to seize the very first opportunity of getting clear away from his present environment, and from Matey. So much, instinct taught him: that he must get his freedom if he could, and that he must never, never again, for one moment, trust Matey. This was only the surface of the lesson instinct taught him. There was a lot more in the lesson which would permanently affect Finn's attitude toward humans and toward life itself. But the surface was the immediate thing; to win to freedom, and never to trust Matey again.The first result of Finn's lesson was that he examined the whole of his prison very carefully, by the aid chiefly of his sense of smell and touch. There was hardly any light in the place. His nose was very sore, because Matey's stick had knocked a large piece of skin from it and bruised it badly. Also, the smell of every part of Finn's prison was revolting to him. But, though with sensitively wrinkled nostrils, Finn made his examination very thoroughly. And in the end he decided that he could do nothing for the present. Three sides of his prison were brick-work, and the fourth, the door, presented no edge or corner which his teeth could touch. So Finn sat still, waiting, listening, and watching, with his tongue hanging out a little on one side of his mouth, by reason of the horrid dryness which afflicted his throat. And every hour that he waited brought greater strength to his determination, besides teaching him something in the way of patience and caution.Presently, the waiting Finn heard heavy footsteps in the yard outside, and the muscles of his body gathered themselves together for action. The door opened, and Finn saw Matey standing there with a stick and a chain in his hand. Instinct told Finn on the instant that he must at all hazards avoid both the stick and the chain; but, more than anything else, the chain."Come 'ere!" said Matey. And Finn came. But, whereas Matey had reckoned on a slow movement, in the course of which his hand would have fallen on Finn's slip-collar preparatory to fixing the chain on that, the movement was actually very swift and low to the ground, and resulted in Finn's passing out scathless into the walled-in yard."Oho! So we don't like our new master, don't we? Haven't forgotten our blooming gruellin', eh? Better take care we don't get some more o' the same sort, Mister Wolfhound, if you arst me!"The walled-in yard was quite safe. Matey was in nowise perturbed, and, moreover, having slept soundly and breakfasted copiously, he was, for him, in an amiable mood. Still, he had no wish to waste time, and he wanted to overhaul his plunder, and groom Finn up a little before the prospective purchaser arrived. So Matey turned round, leaned forward with a hand resting on one knee, and tried to twist his features into an ingratiating expression, as he said--"Here, then, good dog! Come on, Finn! Here, boy!"But instinct made Finn's intelligence upon the whole superior to Matey's in this matter, and, having already satisfied himself by means of hurried investigation that at present he could not escape from the walled-in yard, the Wolfhound stood half a dozen paces distant from the man, waiting, with every nerve and muscle at concert pitch. The man moved forward, with hand outstretched invitingly. The Wolfhound moved backward, with hackles slightly raised. Thus they followed each other round the little yard perhaps six times, the distance between them being maintained with nicety and precision by Finn. Then Matey's mental inferiority appeared. He was expecting very shortly now the man from whom he hoped to receive his reward--the price of Finn. His intelligence, such as it was, told him that strategy would now be necessary to enable him to lay hands on the Wolfhound; but, even while recognising that, he could not refrain from angrily flinging his chain in Finn's face, after his sixth promenade of the yard, and cursing the dog savagely, before retiring into the house to prepare a stratagem.Finn did not snarl as the chain struck him. Instinct had not carried him so far from education. But he barked angrily, and bounded to one side. While the man was away Finn examined the gate of the yard through which he had been driven on the previous night, and, though it rattled hopefully when he plunged against it with his fore-paws, raised high above its fastening, it remained solidly closed.As Finn turned away from the doors of the yard, Matey appeared from the house, holding in one outstretched hand a piece of the same kind of meat with which he had seduced Finn into accompanying him on the previous evening, and calling the hound to him in a friendly tone. But Finn had learned a good deal since his first taste of that savoury meat; more a good deal than the man who offered the meat had learned in the same time. Taking the middle of the yard, so as to leave himself ample space for retreat, he remained watchfully regarding Matey, and refused to advance a step. Matey's spoken blandishments were now a dead letter to Finn. Having once discovered the possibilities of human treachery, he would never forget them. And here the folk who belong to what we call the brute creation are apt to be a good deal wiser than their betters in the scale of evolution. They do not forget the teaching of experience so readily as do those of us who are farther removed from Nature. To be sure, Matey's notion of strategy was puerile enough; but, apart from that, it is safe to assume that Finn would never again completely trust this man, who had been the first to introduce him to fear and misery, to humiliation, and to knowledge of the existence of treachery and cruelty in men folk.Matey cursed the Wolfhound angrily, but that did not incline Finn to trust him any the more. Then the man advanced a little in his strategy, and tossed a piece of the meat on to the ground, before Finn, to inspire confidence. But Finn's mistrust was too profound to admit of his stooping to pick this up. He was not very specially hungry, in any case; and if Matey had been an observant creature, or even one who used his memory wisely, he would have known thatthe offer of drinking-water would have been infinitely more tempting to Finn than any quantity of savoury meat. But, as a fact, Finn was too much possessed just now by his determination to escape from Matey and all his works to be very clearly conscious of any other need.Then, his petty strategy exhausted, and his paltry measure of self-control with it, Matey started to chase Finn with a stick. Now and again he succeeded in getting a blow home, as Finn wheeled and leapt before him within the narrow limits of the yard; and every time the stick touched him Finn barked angrily. This performance was extremely bad for Finn. It was calculated to break down some of the most valuable among his acquired qualities; the characteristics that he acquired with his blood through many generations of wisely-bred and humanely-reared hounds. In one sense it was more harmful than the merciless and unreasonable punishment of the previous night, because there was no faintest hint of a punishment about it; not even of the sort of punishment that had followed his howling. That had had the bad qualities of cruelty and unreasonableness, unjustifiableness. This was not punishment at all, it was sheer savagery, the savagery of a running fight in which the man, though he might hurt occasionally, could not conquer. And that is a most demoralizing sort of a happening, as between dog and man. Its demoralizing influence could have been detected by an observant spectator in the notes of Finn's barks when the stick reached him. They approached momentarily nearer the threatening nature of a growl; a new, dangerous note to hear in Finn's speech with mankind.Matey was rapidly becoming exhausted, and in another moment or two would probably have flung his stick at Finn and given up his senseless pursuit, when, just as the Wolfhound bounded forward from under his stick at the house end of the yard, the gate leading into that yard opened, and Bill appeared. In an instant Finn had sprung for the opening, Bill's legs were thrust from under him, and as he stumbled, with one hand on the ground and an oath on his lips, Finn reached the open road outside. Behind him, for a moment, Finn heard a hurried scrambling, and a deal of broken, breathless whistling, and calling aloud of his name. And then he heard no more from the place of his captivity and anguish, for the reason that he was already nearing the limits of the little town, and galloping hard for the open country, over the road by which he had travelled some ten hours earlier in Matey's cart.man opening yard gate onto wolfhoundThe gate leading into the yard opened, and Bill appearedFinn galloped for about three miles, his heart swelling within him for joy in his freedom. Then, gradually, his gait slackened to a canter, and then to a trot, and, finally, the sight of a wayside pond brought him to a standstill; and, after a mechanical look behind him, he walked into the water and drank, and drank, and drank till he could drink no more. Finn emerged from the pond with heaving flanks and dripping muzzle, conscious now of some of his hurts and bruises, but licking his wet chops with satisfaction, and supremely glad of his freedom. He lay down on the grass near the pond and proceeded to lick those of his wounds and bruises which were within licking reach, and to pity himself regarding the sharp pain in his side which his broken rib was causing. Presently a cart came jolting along from the direction in which Finn had come, and the Wolfhound shrank back as far as possible into the hedge behind him. But the driver of the cart took no further notice of Finn than to stare idly at him, possibly without even seeing him; at all events with an absolutely incurious stare. With renewed confidence, the young hound stretched himself out again on the cool grass and presently began to doze, this being the wise manner of all his kind in assisting Nature to cure them of their various ills.While Finn dozed, another cart approached him from the little town he had left behind, and in this second cart were two extremely angry men, one of whom strongly desired Finn's recapture on mercenary grounds, while the other desired it upon these grounds and others also. Bill wanted his share of Finn's price; Matey wanted his larger share of that price, and he also wanted badly to have Finn securely tied up in a convenient position for being soundly beaten. Matey would almost rather have foregone the money than the satisfaction of administering the beating, the very thorough beating which he pictured himself administering to Finn. His heavy mouth twitched viciously as Matey thought about it. Suddenly Bill pulled the pony on to its haunches with a jerk."I'm jiggered if that ain't 'im a-waitin' for us!" exclaimed Bill, in a hoarse whisper.Matey was out of the trap in an instant, and, with meat in his hand, was already beginning a whining call, which was meant to be extremely ingratiating. But Finn sprang to his feet at the sound of the cart coming to a standstill, and, after one glance at Matey, was off like a wolf down the empty country road.This was yet another lesson learned. Finn would not be in a hurry to rest by the wayside again. After two miles of galloping at the rate of nearly twenty miles an hour, Finn steadied down to a fast loping gait, which would have kept him abreast of any other road vehicle than a motor-car, and maintained this for quite a long while. Then, by reason of the pain in his side, and of other pains, he decided to stop. But, with his last-learned lesson fresh in his mind, he had no intention of resting by the roadside. With a twist of pain that cut into his side like a knife, he leapt a field gate, and crept along the inner side of the hedge for some distance before finally curling up in a dry hollow beside a hayrick. Here, sheltered by the rick and half buried in dry hay and straw, Finn courted the sleep he needed, so that it came to him swiftly. In his sleep the young Wolfhound whimpered occasionally, and once or twice his whole great body shook to the sound of a growling bark, causing two bloodshot eyes to be half opened, and then mechanically closed again, with a small grunt, as Finn's muzzle drove a little deeper into the dry hay under his hocks, and he allowed sleep to strengthen its healing hold upon him.It was a dream that caused Finn to give that growling bark, and it was a dream of a kind that had been foreign to his breed for generations. He dreamed that he was chasing Matey, in the form of a huge rabbit, armed with a stick. Matey, the rabbit, bounded away from him, just as ordinary rabbits did; but sounds came from Matey's rabbit mouth, and they were the horrid, venomous sounds of the curses with which Matey had followed him that morning in the walled-in yard. In the dream Finn was always on the point of leaping upon the back of rabbit-Matey's neck, with jaws stretched wide for slaughter. But something always intervened to prevent Finn taking the leap. The something was this: at the moment of the leap, Matey always looked more like a man and less like a rabbit, and the instinct which told Finn not to slay a man was a very strong one. But, somehow, rabbit-Matey seemed an exception. Finn was very anxious to feel the crunching of his shoulder and neck bones; and altogether it was unfortunate that such a dream should have been inspired in the brain of so nobly born a hound.When Finn finally woke he gaped right in the eye of the setting sun, and all about him was the solemn silence of a fine October twilight. He yawned cavernously, and, raising his haunches, stretched his huge trunk from fore-paws placed far out. But, in the midst of the stretch, he gave a little smothered yelp of pain, and came to earth again, solicitously licking at the ribs of his right side. Matey's heavy boot had done great execution there. Slowly, then, Finn rose, and walked out into the darkening twilight of the field. Before he had covered a hundred yards, a rabbit started up from behind a bush, and scurried hedgewards for its life. But the distance was too great for bunny by three yards, and Finn's jaws snapped his backbone in sunder within six feet of his own burrow. This was hard on the rabbit; but it was no more than one tiny instance of the outworking of Nature's most inexorable law. Finn had killed many rabbits before this evening; but in the past he had merely obeyed his hunting and killing instinct. Now this instinct in him was sharpened by hunger, by having slept on the open earth, and by being conscious of no human control or protection. Finn proceeded to eat this particular rabbit, and that was distinctly a new experience for him, and one that left him upon the whole pleased with himself. He was not aware of the fact, of course, but this simple act placed him more nearly on terms with his ancestors than anything else he had ever done, unless, perhaps, one counts the dream acts of that afternoon.After his meal Finn strolled along the hedge-side till he came to a gap, and then slipped through to the road. For a mile or two he trotted along the silent road with no particular object in view, and then, coming to a grassy lane, turned into that, and trotted for another mile or two, leaping a gate and a stile which barred his way at intervals, and coming presently to a group of three large ricks. His side was aching dully, and Finn was rather unhappy over finding no sign of the home beside the Downs where his friends were, and his own comfortable bed. Having allowed his mind to dwell upon this for several minutes, he sat down on his haunches near one of the ricks, and howled to the stars about it all for quite a while, and so effectively that a farmer, sitting in his comfortable dining-room nearly half a mile away, made a remark to his daughter about the new-fangled way these pesky motor-car people have of blowing fog-horns like the ships at sea, and carrying on as if the road belonged to them--drat 'un!It was not active unhappiness, let alone misery like that of the previous night, that moved Finn to this vocal display; but only a kind of gentle melancholy such as we call home-sickness, and after five minutes of it, he curled up beside one of the ricks, after scratching and turning round and round sufficiently to make a kind of burrow for himself, and was fast asleep in about two minutes.In the morning, long before the dew was off the grass, Finn set out to do what he had never done a before: he set out deliberately to hunt and kill some creature for his breakfast. He very nearly caught an unwary partridge, though the bird did not tempt him nearly so strongly as a thing that ran upon the earth, and ran fast. In the end his menu was that of the previous evening, and, as he eyed its still warm and furry remains, Finn felt that life was really a very good thing, even when one had a pain in one's side, and a large assortment of bruises and sore places in various other parts of one's body.Towards midday Finn lounged into a rather large village, and did not like it at all. It stirred up in him the recollection of Matey and his horrible environment, and he began to hurry, impelled by a nervous dread of some kind of treachery. Towards the end of the village he passed a pretty, creeper-grown cottage, from the door of which a policeman issued. The policeman stared at Finn, and smacked his own leg. Then he bent his body in an insinuating manner and called to the Wolfhound: "Here, boy! Here, good dog! Come along!" But Finn only lengthened his stride, and presently broke into a gallop. He was no longer the guileless, trustful Finn of a week ago. The rural constable sighed as he resumed an erect position and watched Finn's disappearing form."He must be the dog that's wanted, all right; reg'ler monster, I'm blessed if he isn't. But, takin' one thing with another, I'd just as soon they catched him somewhere else than here. Why, I reckon my missis 'ud have a fit. I don't call it hardly right, myself; not 'avin' 'em that size."Half an hour later, to his great delight, Finn found himself clear of roads and houses, and on the warm, chalky slopes of the Sussex Downs. These great, smooth, immemorial hills, with their blunt crests, and close-cropped, springy turf, brought a rush of home-feeling into Finn's heart, which made his eyes misty, so that he had to sit down and give vent to two or three long-drawn howls by way of expressing his gentle melancholy. But Finn's nose told him plainly that he had never before been on these particular Downs. And so, good and kindly as this ancient British soil was to him, it brought him no sight of actual home.Towards evening he coursed and killed another rabbit, eating half of it, and providing, in the other half which he left, a substantial repast for a prowling weasel who followed in his trail.Something--it may have been merely the fact that the day had not been in any way exhausting like its predecessors--prevented Finn from being inclined to curl down and sleep, when he passed a convenient wheat rick in a valley an hour after his supper. The night was fine and clear, and night life in the open, with its many mysterious rustlings, bird and animal calls, and other enticing sounds and smells, was beginning to present considerable attractions to Finn. The events of the past few days had aroused all sorts of latent tendencies and inclinations in him; feelings which resembled memories of bygone days in their effects upon him, but yet were not memories of any life that he had known, though they may have been blood memories of the experiences of his forbears. Later on, however, the young Wolfhound began to tire of the freedom of the night, and home-sick longings rose in his heart as he thought of the coach-house and of Kathleen. It was at about this time that Finn fell to walking along a narrow, white sheep-walk, on the side of a big, billowy down, which seemed to him pleasanter and more homely than any of the hills he had traversed that evening. Gradually the track in the chalk deepened and widened a little, until it became a path sunk in the hill-side to a depth of fifteen or twenty feet, and ended in a five-barred gate beside a road. Finn leaped the gate with a strange feeling of exultation in his heart, which made him careless of the sharp pain the leap brought to his side. Something rose in his throat as he reached the road. His eyes became misty, his nose drooped eagerly to the surface of the road, and he whimpered softly as he ran, with tail swaying from side to side, and a great tenderness welling up within him.Two minutes later he came to a white gate leading to a shrub-sheltered garden before a small, low, rambling little house. He leaped the little gate, and turned sharply to the right in the garden. But then his way was blocked by high doors, set in masonry, which could not possibly be climbed or jumped. Before these gates, which evidently led to the stables and rear of the house, Finn sat down on his haunches. Then he lifted his long muzzle heavenward and howled lugubriously. He continued his howling steadily for about one minute and a half, and at the end of that time a door opened behind him in the front of the house, and a man clad in pyjamas rushed out into the garden. Finn had studiously avoided men for these two days past now; but, so far from avoiding this man, he rose on his hind-legs to give greeting, and could hardly be induced to lower his front paws, even when the man in pyjamas had removed his caressing arms from about the Wolfhound's shoulders. The man, you see, was the Master, and three minutes afterwards he was joined by the Mistress of the Kennels. But they were all three in the Master's outside den then with Tara.standing wolfhound with reclining wolfhoundCHAPTER IXTHE HEART OF TARAThe Mistress of the Kennels held on to one of Finn's fore-paws as though she feared he might be spirited away from the den, even while he was being welcomed home there. The fatted calf took the form of a dish of new milk and some sardines on toast which had been prepared for the next morning's breakfast. But this came later, and was polished off by Finn more by reason of its rare daintiness and his desire to live up to what the occasion seemed to demand of him, than because he was hungry. At an early stage in proceedings the Master noticed, and removed, the slip-collar."Well, that disposes of the theory that Finn wandered away of his own accord," said the Master. "If the police know their business this ought to help them." Then he turned to Finn again. "You didn't know there was a twenty-five pound reward out for you, my son, did you? It was to have been made fifty in another day or two; though, if you did but know it, our solvency demands rather that you should be sold, than paid for in that fashion."The Mistress nodded thoughtfully."But that's quite impossible after this," she said; "selling Finn, I mean."The Master smiled. "I suppose it is. That seems to be rather our way. It's a dead sure thing there can be no selling of Tara, and--I'm inclined to think you're right about Finn, too. Heavens! If I could lay my hands on the man who took that chip off his muzzle, I think I'd run to the length of a ten pounds fine for assault. I'd get my money's worth, too. The dog has been clubbed; he has been man-handled; I could swear he has had to fight for his freedom. Poor old Finn! What a dog! What a Finn it is!"While the last of these remarks was being made the Master was carefully examining Finn all over, parting the Wolfhound's dense hard hair over places in which the skin beneath had been broken, and pressing his fingers along the lines of different bones and muscles solicitously. There was a half-spoken oath on the Master's lips when Finn winced from him as his hand passed down the ribs of the hound's right side."There is a rib broken here," he said to the Mistress, "unless I am much mistaken. When the post office opens in the morning we must wire for Turle, the vet. Thieving's bad enough, but--there are some stupid brutes in this world!"The Mistress stared."Oh, no, I don't mean Finn; nor any of his honest four-legged kind. I meant two-legged brutes. Finn has been handled more roughly than an understanding man would handle a tiger. And look at his face. Look into his eyes. Notice his keenly watchful air, even while I am handling him. Well, Finn, my son, you have said good-bye to puppyhood with a vengeance now. Unless I am much mistaken he has crowded more into the last three days than all the rest of his life till now had taught him. That dog's years older than Kathleen to-night in some ways. Do you get the effect I mean? The youth has gone; there is a certain new hardness. Watch his eye now as I lift my hand!"The Master lifted his hand with a sudden jerk, and the two who were watching Finn's eyes saw that in them which they had never seen in Kathleen's, nor yet even in Tara's eyes; for neither Tara nor her daughter had ever pitted their agility against man's brutality. They had never been clubbed or kicked; they had never seen as far into the ugly places of human nature as Finn; and you might brandish your arms in any way you chose before old Tara or Kathleen, and, while the one would have blinked at you with courteous tolerance of your foolishness, the other would have suspected you of inventing a new game, and gambolled before you like a huge kitten.It was not, of course, that Finn was foolish enough to distrust the Master, or suspect him of any hostile intention. But certain instincts had been awakened in the young Wolfhound, and, for a long time, at all events, and probably for the rest of his life, those instincts would not again become latent. In some respects he may have been the better off; certainly he was better equipped to face the world; but the Master, naturally enough, could not withhold a sigh for the old utter trustfulness which had held even the instincts of self-preservation in abeyance. But, as has been said, Finn was better equipped to face the world than either his sister, or that gentle great lady, his mother; all his instincts were more alert, and his senses also. His eyes moved more rapidly than their eyes; his attitude toward life and toward men-folk was more elastic and less absolute. Men-folk remained his superiors in Finn's eyes, his superiors in a hundred ways, and it might be his dearly loved friends; but they were not any more the absolute, omnipotent, and all-perfect gods that they had been, and still were to Kathleen, for example, who would not have felt the slightest uneasiness if the Master had placed his heel on her throat, or touched her head with a club, as she lay on the ground before him.To a great extent, however, the Master's sympathetic anger over Finn's wounds, and twinges of regret regarding the subtle changes which he recognised in the hound he affectionately called "son," were out-balanced by the joy he felt at seeing Finn safe in his den again. The loss of Finn had been hard to bear, and not the less hard because it came immediately after the great triumph of the Show. There were the seven prize cards adorning the wall over Tara's great bed in the den; but their presence had been something of a mockery in the absence of their winner. When the Master and the Mistress finally bade Finn good night, after making him thoroughly comfortable in his own clean, big bed, the coach-house door was carefully padlocked.It could not have been said a month later that Finn was physically the worse for his adventure in the hands of Matey. His ribs were sound once more, and all his wounds and bruises were healed, though a light-coloured scar remained, and would remain on his muzzle, where the dog-stealer's stick had bitten into the bone. If it had come nine months earlier, such an experience would have been bad indeed, for sets-back in puppyhood are hard to make up. But at fifteen months Finn had as perfect a physical foundation to go upon as any living creature could have. He was fortified against physical ills as few animals can be; his system lacked nothing that makes for resisting power; he had attained his full growth without having known a day's illness, and his reserve strength was enormous.And now came a long and rather severe winter, in which no evil thing befell Finn, and the process of "furnishing" went on in him with never a hitch of any sort, and in circumstances that could not possibly have been more favourable. All day long he drank in the heartiest air in England; on every day he had ample exercise and ample food, and when young summer of the next year brought him to his second birthday, Finn scaled 149 lbs., and his shoulder bones just skimmed the under side of the measuring standard at thirty-six inches. Hard measurement brought him within an eighth of an inch of the yard, and it was fair to say that, favourably measured, standing well up, he did reach full thirty-six inches at the shoulder.Remember that, when his head was inclined upward, the tip of his nose would be more than a foot higher than his shoulder. With all four feet on the floor, he could rest his nose on a window-ledge that was exactly four feet high. His eyes, and shaggy brows and beard, like the tip of his tail, were dark as night; there were some extra dark hairs at his hocks, fetlocks and shoulder blades; and all the rest of Finn was of a hard, steely grey brindle colour; the typical wolf colour of northern climes, very steely, and with odd suggestions about it of ghostly fleetness, of great speed and enduring strength. His fore-legs were straight as gun-barrels, his knees flat as the palm of your hand; his feet hard, close, round, and rather cat-like, save that his claws were more like chisels, black, and hard, and strongly curved. His hind-legs, on the other hand, were finely curved, with swelling rolls of muscle in the upper thighs. The first or upper thighs were very long and strong, curving sharply out to hocks that were well let down, and without a hint of turn inward or outward. His loins were well arched, his chest deep, like an Arab stallion's, his neck long, arched, and very strong, like the massy muscles of his fore-arms. It was difficult to say that he had grown much since his fifteenth month, and yet he looked a very much bigger dog, and, above all, he looked and was very much stronger. There was no longer anything immature or unformed about Finn. During his next year he might possibly add half a score of pounds to his already great weight; but on his second birthday he was set and furnished, a superb specimen of pure breeding and perfect rearing in Irish Wolfhounds.For almost six months now Finn's only companion of his own kind had been Tara. He had not seen Kathleen's departure from the cottage beside the Downs, and for some days he was greatly puzzled by her absence. He even stood by the orchard gate and growled fiercely, with the hair on his shoulders standing almost erect, because the thought was in his mind that Matey may have had something to do with this disappearance. The Master saw him engaged in this way, and was greatly puzzled by it. He said to the Mistress of the Kennels afterwards--"I really think old Finn must have gone mad for five minutes this morning. I never saw a more fearsome-looking creature than he was when he stood and growled beside the orchard gate. I assure you he was terrible. He looked about six feet high, and as fierce as any tiger. It made me think of his ancient godfather, or namesake, the Finn of fifteen hundred years ago, who kept King Cormac's three hundred Irish Wolfhounds in fighting trim, as the most awe-inspiring and death-dealing portion of his master's army. I must read over those 'Tales of the Cycle of Finn' again; they are fine, stirring things. But in these worrying days I hardly seem to get time for sleep, let alone for reading about old Finn. But I wish you had seen Finn--our Finn--this morning. He was very terrible, but I never saw a dog look more magnificent. Upon my word, I believe there are very few living things that Finn could not implant fear in, if he set his mind to it; yes, and pull down, to boot--a hundred and fifty pounds of muscle and bone, and teeth and fire and spirit!"But Finn need not have worried for Kathleen's sake. She had gone to a good home, and lives there to-day in honoured old age. Her owner paid a hundred guineas for her, and would not sell her for ten times the figure. But there was no way of telling Finn these things, for though he could understand most things that the Master said to him, and was able to tell the Master most things that he wanted to tell; yet the matter of buying and selling and its causes were naturally beyond him. He had no way of telling that the Master was in sore straits financially, though he did know that his friend was not over and above happy. Neither could he tell that the mere keeping of a Wolfhound like Kathleen runs away with the better part of twenty pounds a year. Things were not prospering with the Master, and, feeling that he could not part with Finn or Tara, he had been absolutely obliged to sell Kathleen.But that was by no means the end of the Master's troubles, the root of which lay in the fact that he loved the country, and hated the town, but was unable to earn money enough in the country to meet the various obligations with which he saddled himself, and was saddled by circumstances. And so it fell out that soon after Finn's second birthday the Master began to spend a good deal of time away from the house by the Downs. Tara liked to pass the greater part of her time in the Master's outside den with her muzzle on his slippers, but Finn was not like that. Tara was a matron getting on in years, and her matronhood had cost her dear in illness from which it had been thought she could never recover. Finn, on the other hand, was the very personification of lusty youth and tireless virility. The Mistress of the Kennels would take him out behind her bicycle, while Tara lay dreaming at home, and it may be that the Mistress fancied her gentle ten and twelve mile runs tired Finn. She never saw him when he would set off upon his hunting expeditions, in the course of which he covered every foot of the Downs for a dozen miles around. He was safe enough, too, for he would have had nothing but angry growls for any man of Matey's ilk, charmed he never so wisely with spiced meats and the like. The weasels and the stoats, and a score of other wild things that roamed that country-side, could have told the Mistress of the Kennels just why Finn did not always clear his dinner dish in these days, and thereby saved her an addition to her many worries of that period. She did not like to depress the Master with tales of half-eaten meals, and she had no knowledge of the half-eaten hares and rabbits and other wild creatures which Finn left behind him on his hunting trails.From one point of view, Finn suffered at this stage from the absence of the Master's eye and hand, and so did the rabbits; but, from another point of view, Finn gained. He became harder, more wily, and a far more expert hunter than he would have been under a more disciplined regime. But certainly he also became less domesticated, and vastly less fastidious than, for example, that exquisite great lady, his mother.There came a certain late summer's day, with more than a hint of autumn in the air, when something happened which Finn never quite forgot. The Master had been away for three weeks on end, and Tara had missed him sadly. In the evening the great bitch would often whimper quietly as she lay outstretched, with her long, grey muzzle resting on the slippers which the Mistress never thought of taking from her. Of late she had cared less and less for any kind of activity, and seemed more and more to desire the presence of the Master. Now, in the evening of the day which brought strong hints of coming autumn with it, Finn lay beside Tara in the outside den, thinking lazily of an upland meadow, with a copse at its far end, which he meant to hunt presently. Suddenly there came a sound of a man's footfall on the gravel beyond the gateway and in front of the house. Tara's nostrils quivered as her head rose. With one mighty bound she was outside the den. The gates stood open. The Master, at the garden's far end, called--"Tara! Tara, girl! Here, girl!"Finn was by Tara's flank, and he saw her leap forward, hurtling through the air like an arrow from a bow. Six great bounds she gave, while fleet Finn galloped a good twenty paces behind her, and then Tara stopped suddenly with a strange, moaning cry, staggered for a moment, as the Master ran towards her, and then fell sideways, against his knee, with glazing eyes turned up for a last glimpse of the face she loved. The Master was kneeling on the gravel, and Tara's shoulders were in his arms; but at the end of two long-drawn sighs, Tara was dead.Finn was sniffing at his mother's back. He did not know just what had happened, but he was profoundly conscious that the happening was tragic, and that his beautiful mother was the victim. The shock to the Master was very great; for he was already unhappy, and he had loved this mother of heroes of his very dearly. But the shock to Finn, though far less complex, was scarcely less great. He had killed many scores of times, but it seemed that he had never seen death till now.  He recognized it clearly enough. He knew that Tara was never going to move again; the instant his sensitive nostrils touched her still, warm body he knew that. But there had been no killing. That was what baffled Finn, and struck a kind of terror into his heart, to lend poignancy to his sorrow. One more look he gave at his mother's sightless face, this time where it rested on the crook of the Master's arm, and then he sat down on his haunches, and with muzzle raised high poured out his grief in the long-drawn Irish Wolfhound howl; the most melancholy cry in nature.The Master had looked careworn and weary before he called Tara to him. It was a very grey, sad face he showed when he rose gently and bade Finn go into the coach-house and be silent. He had known that Tara's heart was weak, but this thing that had happened he had never anticipated, and the nature and circumstances of Tara's death were such as to move a man deeply. In a sense, her love of the Master had killed this beautiful hound. Her great love had burst her heart in sunder, and so she died, the very noble daughter of an ancient, noble line.fox sniffing dead rabbit

"For a fifteen months' novice, you know, against two champions, and a hound like Cormac--wonderful!" they said. But all were agreed that Finn justified the award. "He's the tallest hound in the breed, now," said the Judge, as he passed that way, and lingered to pass his hand over Finn's shoulder; "and he will be the biggest and finest if he lives; distinctly the finest Irish Wolfhound I have ever handled, and--I've handled most of them." Higher tribute from such a Judge no dog could earn. The Master flushed with pleasure and pride as he heard it, and turned to receive the congratulations of the exhibitors of Champions Dermot Asthore, and Munster.

In the Limit and Novice classes Finn was awarded first place as a matter of course. There was nothing there to beat him. And then came the judging of the bitch classes, in which Kathleen did extraordinarily well for so young a hound, and in such "good company," as the saying goes. She won third prize in the Open class, second in the Limit, and first in the Novice. And then four other young hounds filed into the ring with Finn and Kathleen to be judged in the junior class. The other four young hounds were of a very good sort, but they had not the development, the bone, muscle, and stature of Finn and Kathleen, and there was not much hesitation in the decision which placed Finn first, Kathleen second, and a youngster called Connemara third.

And then Finn had to be judged beside the winner in the Open class for bitches, to decide who should be given the Challenge Shield for the best Irish Wolfhound in the Show. And this was a task which tried the white-haired Judge's patience for a long time. The female was Champion Lady Iseult of Leinster, and one of the most beautiful hounds of her sex ever seen. She was fully matured, and her reputation was world-wide. Judged on "points," as breeders say, she was very near to perfection. Technically, it was difficult to find fault in her, unless that she was a shade too straight in her hocks, a fault that often goes with great stature in a hound. Finn's hocks were curved like an Arab stallion's, springy as a cat's. The Judge tested the two hounds side by side, again and again, and in every way he could think of, but without coming to a decision between them. At last, after passing his hand down the hocks of the Lady Iseult, he asked that they might both be run, quickly as possible, while led. That seemed to guide him a good deal. But it was clear that the conscientious old Judge and breeder was not yet fully satisfied. Finally, he had the opening to the rings closed, and a hurdle brought in. Then the Lady Iseult was invited to run at and leap the hurdle. She did so, and with a good grace, returning docilely enough to her master. Then the Master loosed Finn, and the Mistress of the Kennels called him from the far side of the ring. Finn bounded forward with the elasticity of a cat, and cleared the hurdle with a perfect spring and fully two feet to spare. The Judge stroked his imperial, laid a hand on the shoulders of both hounds, and said--

"The young dog has it--the finest hound I ever saw!"

dognapper and wolfhound by night

REVELATIONS

It is the custom at dog shows for the authorities to distribute certificates on coloured cardboard of all the awards made by the judges. At this show of Finn's great triumph, first prize cards were all blue, second prize cards red, and third prize cards yellow. The custom was for exhibitors proudly to affix these cards to the wire net-work stretched above the bench of the winning dog. So it fell out that soon after the judging of Wolfhounds was over, two red cards and two blue cards were fixed over Kathleen's bench, and the Mistress of the Kennels lavished considerable attention upon her, lest she should be moved to jealousy of Finn. The decoration of the wire-work over Finn's bench was most striking.

First, there were four blue first prize cards, for his sensational win in Open, Limit, Novice, and Junior classes. Then there was a very handsome card with ribbons attached, signifying that Finn had won the Challenge Shield for the best Irish Wolfhound in the Show. And then there were two other blue cards telling that Finn had won two special prizes; one, a medal offered by a member of the Irish Wolfhound Club for the best hound at the Show bred by its exhibitor; and another, of two guineas, offered by a well-known Irish sportsman for the biggest Irish Wolfhound in the Show. And so Finn sat in state beneath a sort of dome consisting of no fewer than seven trophies. It seemed a little hard on that magnificent hound, his sire, who occupied the next bench, under the shelter of but one solitary red card. But Dermot Asthore was a philosopher, and, as has been said, weary of shows. He lay curled, like a great cat, and slept stolidly, presenting nothing more conscious to the passing throng than a small triangular section of one blood-shot eye.

With Finn matters were otherwise. His numerous trophies won him much attention, even from the large majority who were ignorant of his great technical claims to fame. There was always a little group in front of Finn's bench, and those of his admirers who had claims upon the Master--besides many who had none--were continually begging that he should be taken down from the bench, so that they might admire his full stature. Then there were newspaper men with cameras and note-books; and there were dealers with cheque-books, and a ready hand and eye for deprecation. But these were given no sort of encouragement by the Master. Finn received as much attention in the evening papers that day as any leader of human society; and in the papers devoted to doggy interests, a great deal more. He was conscious of more of this than you might suppose, even though he could not read newspapers: but the thing he was most keenly conscious of was the fact that he had managed greatly to please the Master and the Mistress of the Kennels. Finn felt happy and proud about this, but, although he was taken down from the bench several times and led into out-of-the-way corners where his chain could be removed and he was able to stretch his limbs, still, he became pretty thoroughly tired of the publicity and racket of the Dog Show before he was led out of the building at ten o'clock that night, with Kathleen, by the Master. The Mistress had gone home to Tara, early in the evening; but the Master was sleeping in lodgings near the Palace, which he had engaged on the clear understanding that he was allowed to bring the Wolfhounds there with him. Finn had not realized as yet that one of the penalties of the fame that he had won lay in the fact that he was obliged to spend another two whole days in the show building.

But though Finn and Kathleen knew it not, their lot was a far more fortunate one than that of the great majority of their kind at the Show. Knowing that they would be unhappy if left in the building at night, that they probably would be too much wrought up to eat there, and that they would feel being chained up for so long more than most dogs, the Master had arranged to take them out at night, in order that they might have half an hour's freedom before supper and retirement to a sleeping place in the room he had taken for himself. There were dogs in the Show whose masters did not come near them after the judging on the first day, until the end of the third day. These unfortunates were left to the rather chancy attentions of the show attendants, who, with thousands of dogs to care for, could hardly be expected to give any of them much individual notice.

On the evening of the second day of the Show, while the Master was engaged in conversation at some distance from Finn's bench, the young hounds from the cottage by the Downs received a visit from a man who showed the utmost admiration for them, and particularly, of course, for Finn. This man, whose appearance rather reminded Finn of one whom he had heard referred to as the gamekeeper, down in Sussex, looked up Finn's name and ancestry in the show catalogue, and gave particular heed to the fine display of prize cards over his head. He fondled Finn for several minutes, and Finn knew by the various smells which hung about the man that he was accustomed to mixing a good deal with dog-folk. Before turning away, this friendly and admiring man presented Finn with a small piece of meat which he took from a paper-bag in one of his pockets; and, of all the meat that Finn had ever tasted, this piece had the most fascinating smell and the most provocatively exciting and pleasing flavour. He meditated over this piece of meat for quite a long time, and when, during the last afternoon of the Show, the friendly stranger appeared before him again, Finn welcomed the man effusively, and, with nose and paw, plainly asked for some more of that fascinating meat. The man chuckled, and rubbed the backs of Finn's ears in an affectionate manner for several minutes. What Finn found more to the point was that, before leaving, the man did present him with another small section of this delicious meat with the fascinating smell. Finn wished there was more of it, but he felt exceedingly grateful to the stranger for the one piece and for the rest of his friendly attention.

By payment of a small fee the Master was enabled to take Finn and Kathleen away from the Show much earlier on that evening than before, and a few hours later they were all three being welcomed at home by the Mistress of the Kennels and Tara. Tara, by the way, was hardly able to spare time for a remark at first; she was so busy sniffing all round Finn and Kathleen, and reading for herself the sort of record of their recent adventures which their coats and her delicate sense of smell provided. The three hounds dined sumptuously, and in a row, while the Master and the Mistress sat before them fighting their battles over again and discussing their triumph in the show-ring. Then, the night being fine, the three were allowed to wander out into the orchard for a quarter of an hour or so before going to bed. The Master remained in his den talking.

Directly Tara reached the orchard she barked out loud, "Who's there?"--an unmistakable sort of bark one would have thought. But the Master was pretty thoroughly tired, and, perhaps, the fact that he was chatting with the Mistress prevented his understanding Tara's bark. At all events, he paid no heed to it. Tara promptly trotted across to the gate between the orchard and the open down, followed closely by Finn and Kathleen. There, much to Finn's delight, they found the friendly stranger of the Show. Tara eyed the man with hauteur, as one whose acquaintance she had not made. Kathleen remained modestly in the background. Finn, with lively recollections of the peculiarly savoury meat which the stranger dealt in, placed his fore-paws, on the top of the gate, and lolled his tongue at the man in friendly greeting. The man gave Finn a provokingly tiny fragment of the savoury meat, and rubbed the young hound's ears in the coaxing way he had. Then he stepped back a pace or two, and produced a large piece of the meat.

"Here, boy! Here, Finn! Jump, then, Finn!" The gate was less than five feet high, and the seductive odour of this peculiar meat floated just beyond it in the still night air. Finn drew back a pace or two, and then, with a beautiful spring, cleared the gate easily. While giving Finn the piece of meat he had been holding, the man slipped a swivel on to the ring of the handsome green collar, and attached to the swivel there was a strong leather lead. The man moved on slowly, with another piece of meat in his hand, and Finn paced with him, willingly enough. When Finn had finished the next piece of meat he was a hundred yards away from the orchard. He looked back then, and an uncomfortable thrill passed through his young heart; a vague thrill it was, conveying no definite fear or impression to his mind. Still, it was uncomfortable. He had half a mind to go back and rejoin Tara and Kathleen, and so, tentatively, he halted. If the friendly stranger had tried to force Finn then, there would have been trouble. But he did not. Instead, he bent down and played with Finn's ears, and then brought another piece of meat out of his pocket. Holding this out, he moved on again; and the dog followed, forgetful now of his momentary thrill of discomfort. After all, he thought, vaguely, very likely this unaccustomed night walk was all part of the Show and its many novel experiences. There had been night walks at the end of each show day. When Finn had had another morsel of the meat, the friendly stranger put another collar on his neck, and removed the green one. Then he began to trot, and Finn trotted with him, quite contentedly. Finn was always glad to run.

So the two trotted for miles, through the mild, still October night, the man breathing heavily. Once something made Finn pause suddenly; and the pause let him into a secret. The collar he was wearing now was different from any other he had known in his short life. If you pulled against it, it slipped round your throat so tightly as to stop your breathing instantly and absolutely. The only thing to do was to go the way the collar and lead pulled; then, immediately, the pressure relaxed. It was a collar that had to be obeyed, that was evident. These "slip-collars" are well known to some members of the Great Dane family, and particularly to those who are owned by dealers; but their use came with rather a shock to lordly young Finn, who, living the free and happy life he always had lived, there beside the Sussex Downs, had rarely been asked to wear a collar of any sort.

After a time, Finn and the stranger came to a little town, and walked into the yard of an inn. There another man met them, to whom Finn's friend said, hurriedly--

"I'll walk straight on. You drive on with the cart after me. Don't stop till you're clear of the village."

"You've got him, then?" said the second man.

"Never you mind about that. Can't yer see I've got him? You get the pony out."

And then Finn followed his leader out of the yard, and through the quiet little village to the open country beyond. But by this time Finn was beginning to feel that the night walk had been prolonged far enough. There was no sign of any more of the aromatic meat coming his way, and he had given up asking for it, and nosing the man's pocket. He thought he would like to turn now, and get back to Kathleen and Tara and the Master. The day, and its immediate predecessors, had been tiring, and Finn thought with strong desire of his fragrant wheaten straw bed in the coach-house at home. Yes, it was certainly time to return.

Accordingly, Finn asked his leader to stop, and, finding that the man took no notice, he asked again, through his nose, and urgently. The man paid not the slightest heed to this, and that rather angered Finn, who was not accustomed to being ignored; so he planted his fore-feet firmly, and stopped dead. As the lead tightened, the slip-collar pressed painfully on Finn's throat; but he felt that the time had arrived to bring this excursion to an end, and so steeled himself to ignore this pressure.

"None o' that, now!" said the man, with a new note in his voice, of extreme harshness. "Come along now; d'ye hear!"

Finn's fore-legs remained rigid. He had made up his mind now, and already he was beginning to regret having stayed so long with this stranger.

The man now gave a powerful tug at the leather lead, and at that the pressure of the slip-collar forced Finn's tongue out between his teeth. This was really painful, but it was clear in Finn's mind that he must go home, so he remained straining backward.

"Come on 'ere, ye brute!" growled the man savagely, and, with a vicious jerk at the lead, he took a step to one side, and then kicked Finn on the hind-quarters as hard as he could. That was the first real blow Finn had ever received, and it taught him quite a lot. Up till this point it had not occurred to him for a moment that the man entertained any other than kindly, friendly feelings for him. In fact, he supposed that every one entertained kindly feelings towards him. He had never experienced any other sort of attitude. But this savage kick was a revelation to him. Also, it hurt. Finn turned in his tracks and plunged forward in the direction from which, they had come with such sudden strength that he almost dragged the lead from the man's strong hand, and would undoubtedly have freed himself, but for the slip-collar. As it was, the sudden jerk nearly throttled Finn, and brought him rolling on his back with all four feet in the air. Before he could rise again, the man had planted two ferocious kicks on his ribs; and Finn was thankful then to draw a free breath by moving towards his persecutor, so as to slacken the pressure on the lead. But, the moment he had drawn breath, the desire to escape possessed him once more, and he repeated his leap for freedom. This time the man was prepared, and, in addition to the pressure brought about by Finn's reaching the end of his tether, there was the savage extra pressure of a quick backward jerk at the lead, to bring the hound on his back a second time. This time the man kicked him very severely, and, in addition, smote him violently on the nose with clenched fist, as he staggered to his feet, gasping for breath.

Just then the dim, smoky lights of a cart appeared at the bend in the road, twenty yards away, in the direction of the village.

"That you, Bill?" cried the man who held Finn, and an affirmative answer reached him from the cart. "Come on, then, and let's get this stubborn beast into the cart." He gave a savage jerk at Finn's slip-collar as he spoke, and once more his nailed boot crashed against the bewildered Wolfhound's ribs. The man had an itch of anger and brutality upon him by this time. Finn leaped sideways with a quick gasp as the man's boot struck him and the cruel collar tightened; and at this sharp movement of his great body, there in the middle of the road, the pony shied violently, just as it was being drawn in to a standstill; the cart swerved sharply into the hedge, and a cracking sound betrayed the breaking of a shaft.

This was the finishing touch required to round off the naturally vicious temper of the man who held Finn into a passion of sullen, brutal anger. He cursed unceasingly while the man in the cart made the necessary repairs with cord and a couple of sticks from the hedge; and with every curse there was a kick, or a vicious blow, or a savage jerk at the torturing slip-collar, and sometimes all three together. Finn could have killed the man with ease; but, so far, the thought of even biting him never occurred to the Wolfhound. Every hour that he had spent in the world had taught him that humans were his friends, his very kindly protectors, his guardians and governors, so to say. Every hour of his mother's life, with but very few exceptions, had borne the same belief in upon her, and her nature was the sweetest and gentlest imaginable. With his father, now, the case was somewhat otherwise. There were those who said that the rather taciturn and shy Dermot owed some of his wonderfully heavy coat to the mesalliance of a forbear of his with a Tibetan Sheep Dog of a half-wild sort, with a temper far from reliable. But, as yet at all events, Finn's temper was that of a clean run, well-bred English boy; frank, open, trusting, and kindly; and, sorely as he ached, sorely bewildered as he felt under the rain of blows and kicks, curses and strangling tugs at his collar, he had as yet no thought of vengeance. His only desire was for escape, and a return to the sweet, free life he knew beside the Downs.

The man who held Finn instinctively recognised all this, and the knowledge whetted the savagery of his temper, and withdrew all restraint from its cruel indulgence. He had no conscious wish to injure the hound; quite the contrary, since Finn represented money to him, and money was what he desired more than anything else; but he was tired, things seemed to be going ill with him, his temper was thoroughly roused, and the innocent cause of all this, a sensitive, living creature, was tethered and helpless beside him; and so he kicked and cursed, and jerked at the lead, and found relief in Finn's gasps of pain and want of breath.

When the shaft was mended, the tail-board of the little cart was let down, and, with a savage kick at Finn's hind-quarters, the man bade him "Get up, there, ---- ye! Get up, ye brute!" Another kick. Poor Finn tried to squirm forward under the cart to escape the heavy boot of his persecutor. Then he was furiously jerked backward and half throttled.

"Steady with 'im, matey," said the other man. "Don't knock the dollars off of 'im."

"Who asked you to shove your jaw in?" snarled the first man. "You didn't get the brute, did ye--curse him!"

Another kick.

The other man was used to his friend's temper, and said nothing; but he hated to see a valuable animal knocked about, just as he would have hated to see money thrown in the gutter instead of into a publican's till; so he stooped down and lifted Finn's fore-feet from the ground, and placed them on the floor of the cart.

"My oath!" he said, "but 'e's a tidy weight, ain't he? Up ye go, my bully boy!" And up Finn went, on the spur of another violent kick, which broke the skin across one of his hocks. The lead was now fastened close down to a staple in the floor of the cart, Finn being forced down on his side by the simple process of being knelt upon by his persecutor. To make doubly sure of him, his fore-legs were then tightly lashed together with his own green collar; and then the two men mounted the front of the cart and drove off.

The memory of that night's drive burnt itself deep into Finn's young mind. He never really forgot it; that is to say, its effect upon his attitude toward men and life was never completely lost. His skin was broken in three or four places; every bone in his body ached from the heavy kicks he had received; an intolerable thirst kept him gasping for every breath he drew; the cramp set up in his fore-legs by their being strapped tightly together, one across the other, was an exquisite pain; and his muzzle was held hard down against the grimy floor-boards of the cart, while his mind was full of a black despairing fear of he knew not what. It was a severe ordeal for one who, up till then, had never even known what it meant to receive a severe verbal scolding; for one who had never seen a man's hand lifted in anger.

An end came at last to this horrible drive.

"Thank Gawd, 'ere's 'orley!" said the man who drove; and after another minute or two the little cart came to a standstill in a walled-in yard. The pony was taken out and stabled, and then the man addressed as "Matey," still sullen and sour, let down the tail-board of the cart with a jerk, and dragged Finn out by the collar, allowing him to fall with a thud from the cart to the ground, rendered helpless by the strap round his fore-legs.

"'Ere, get up outa that!" growled the man, with a careless kick. Then, seeing that Finn could not move, he bent down, unbuckled the green enamelled strap, dragged it roughly away, and kicked the dog again. Cramped and sore beyond belief, Finn staggered on to his feet. A door was opened, and Finn was jerked and dragged into a perfectly dark, evil-smelling hole, about four feet square, with an earthen floor, from which horrible odours rose. The ground in this place was filthy. It had no drainage and no ventilation, except a few round holes in the door; which door was now slammed to and locked on the outside.

"Ain't ye goin' to give 'im a drink, matey?" asked Bill, outside.

"Drink be blowed! Let 'im wait till mornin'. Come in an' 'ave one yerself. I'm blessed glad this night's job's done; an' if I can't make fifty quid out 've it, I shall want to know the reason why, I can tell yer. Big, ugly brute, ain't 'e! Strong as a mule, too.I'dwant to be paid pretty 'andsome fer the keepin' o' such a brute; but the American gent's red 'ot ter get 'im, I can tell yer. Biggest ever bred, they tell me. I think I shall 'ave to stick on another tenner, eh, Bill? Come on!"

Their very voices were a misery to the shrinking, aching, choking Finn, who stood shuddering in his fetid den, his sensitive nose wrinkling with horror and disgust. His need of water was the thing which hurt him the most cruelly; but the nature of his prison was a good deal of a torture, too. Remember that his life so far had been as cleanly and decent in detail as yours or mine. Certainly this was a sad plight for the hero of the Kennel Club Show, and the finest living descendant of a fifteen hundred year old line of princes among dogs.

wolfhound fleeing through downland

FINN WALKS ALONE

For a long while after the men had left the scene of Finn's miserable captivity, he remained standing, and occupying as small a space as possible in his prison. The fastidiousness bred in him by careful rearing told severely against Finn just now. He had never, until this night, been without water to slake his thirst; and never, never had he smelt anything so horrible as the earth of the little den in which he was now confined. Also, the place was actually filthy, as well as apparently so. Finn could not bring himself to move in it. He stood shrinking by the door, with his nose near a crack beside its hinges. For long he reflected upon the events of that night, without moving. Then, gradually, thoughts of Kathleen and Tara, and the sweet cleanliness and freedom of his home beside the Downs, came swimming into Finn's mind, and these thoughts seemed to add intolerably to the aching of his bruised bones and muscles, to the soreness of those spots in which his skin had been broken, and to the misery of the thirst which kept his tongue protruding at one side of his jaws.

Unable to bear these things any longer, Finn turned cautiously toward the middle of his loathsome prison, and, though his feet shrank from the task, scraped a hollow place in its midst of about the bigness of a wash-hand basin. Then, treading as though upon hot bricks, he squirmed his great body round to avoid touching the walls of his prison, and sat on his haunches in the hollow he had made. He was now filled with a desire to inform Tara and the Master, and, it may be, the rest of the world, about his sorry plight. But, particularly, he wanted to let the Master and Tara know about it. And so, seated there in what he had endeavoured to make the one approachably clean spot available, Finn pointed his long muzzle toward the stars he could not see, and, opening his jaws wide, expelled from them the true Irish Wolfhound howl, which seemed to tear its way outward and upward from the very centre of the hound's grief-smitten heart, to wind slowly through his lungs and throat, and to reach the outer air with very much the effect of a big steamship's syren in a dense fog. It is a very long-drawn cry, beginning away down in the bass, dragging up slowly to an anguished treble note in a very minor key, and subsiding, despairingly, about half-way back to the bass. It is a sound that carries a very long way--though not so far as from the place of Finn's captivity to the Sussex Downs--and carries misery with it just as far as ever it can reach. Upon the hearer who has any bowels of compassion it falls with a weight of physical appeal which may not be denied. Above all, it is a strange, mysterious, uncanny cry, and not a sound which can be ignored. It is a sound to fetch you hurriedly from your bed at midnight; and that though you had been sunk in dreamless sleep when first it smote its irresistible way into your consciousness.

Finn was beginning the bass rumble of his sixth howl when the door of his prison was flung suddenly open, and he saw Matey, armed with a hurricane lamp and a short, heavy stick. He was still so new to the ways of Matey's kind of human, that he thought his howls had brought him release, and, for an instant, he even had a vision of a deep basin of cold water, a meal, and a sweet, clean bed, which his innocent fancy told him Matey might have been engaged in preparing for him. If he had not been so loath to risk touching the walls of his prison, his powerful tail would have wagged as the door opened and the clean night air came in to him. As it was, he leaned forward to express his gratitude for the opening of the door. And as he moved forward, delicately, Matey's stick descended on his nose, with all the weight of Matey's arm and Matey's savage anger behind it. There was no more sensitive or vulnerable spot in the whole of Finn's anatomy, physically or morally. The blow was hideously painful, hideously unexpected, hideously demoralizing. It robbed Finn of sight, and sense, and self-respect, and forced a bewildered cry from him which was part bark, part howl, part growl, and part scream of pain. It planted fear and horror in a single instant in a creature who had lived in the world for fifteen months with no consciousness of either. The filth of his prison was forgotten in this new anguish of pain, and fear, and humiliation, compared with which the kicks and stranglings of the early part of the night were as nothing at all. In a few seconds of time the proudest of princes in the dog world was reduced to a shuddering, cringing object, cowering in one corner of a filthy cupboard.

Matey was not only furiously angry, he was also a good deal afraid; and that added cruelty to his anger. He had heard a number of bedroom windows raised as he crossed the walled-in yard; he wanted no enquiries about the source and reason of the weird, syren-like howls that had brought him out in his shirt and trousers. It was his business to see that there were no more howls; and the only means that occurred to his brutal mind were those he now proceeded to put into operation. He closed the door of the den behind him, and he rained down blows upon Finn's shrinking body till his arm ached, and the dog's cries subsided into a low, continuous whimper, the very paralysis of shame, anguish, fear, and distress. Then, when his arm was thoroughly tired, he flung the stick viciously into Finn's face, went out, and locked the door.

Matey certainly could not be called a clever dog stealer, because he had no notion of how to preserve that which he stole. Putting aside their brutality, his methods were incredibly stupid; but when, five minutes later, he lay listening in his bed, the only reflection that his stupid mind brought him was that he had succeeded admirably. No further sound came from the walled-in yard; and it appeared that there was to be no further risk of neighbours being disturbed by howls from Finn. Matey was too far away to hear anything of the low, tremulous, nasal whimpering which trickled out into the night through the holes in the door of Finn's prison; and, in any case, there was no fear of that small sound disturbing any one. So, after his own fashion--which one really hesitates to call brutal, because brutes rarely, and probably never, indulge in pointless, unnecessary ferocity--Matey had been successful.

But if Matey had had sense enough to be called a clever dog-stealer, he would have recognised that, despite his huge bulk and strength, Finn was one of the gentlest and most docile of created things, whose silence and tractability a little child could and would have brought about with the greatest ease, and without so much as an angry word. And, so, one has to admit that Matey's cruelty was like nine-tenths of the other cruelty in the world, alike among the educated and the uneducated, in that it was due to ignorance and stupidity.

For a long time Finn was conscious of nothing but fear, and pain, and misery. He really had been very badly handled, and, though he knew it not, one of his ribs was broken. After an hour or two, he became perfectly silent, and began, tentatively and in a half-hearted way, to lick some of his bruises and abrasions. Then, before this task was half accomplished, wise Nature asserted her claims, and the exhausted Wolfhound fell into a fitful sleep just before daybreak. When he woke, fully a couple of hours later, much of his pain and misery remained with him; but the fear had given place to other feelings, chief among which came the determination to escape from the dominion of Matey. His own short experience of life gave Finn nothing to draw upon in coping with the situation in which he now found himself. He was drawing now, not upon teaching or experience, but upon what we call instinct: the store of concentrated inherited experience with which Nature furnishes all created things, and some more richly than others. Deep down in Finn's share of this store there were faint stirrings in the direction of hatred and vengeance; but of these, Finn was not actually conscious as yet. What he was acutely conscious of was the determination with which instinct supplied him to seize the very first opportunity of getting clear away from his present environment, and from Matey. So much, instinct taught him: that he must get his freedom if he could, and that he must never, never again, for one moment, trust Matey. This was only the surface of the lesson instinct taught him. There was a lot more in the lesson which would permanently affect Finn's attitude toward humans and toward life itself. But the surface was the immediate thing; to win to freedom, and never to trust Matey again.

The first result of Finn's lesson was that he examined the whole of his prison very carefully, by the aid chiefly of his sense of smell and touch. There was hardly any light in the place. His nose was very sore, because Matey's stick had knocked a large piece of skin from it and bruised it badly. Also, the smell of every part of Finn's prison was revolting to him. But, though with sensitively wrinkled nostrils, Finn made his examination very thoroughly. And in the end he decided that he could do nothing for the present. Three sides of his prison were brick-work, and the fourth, the door, presented no edge or corner which his teeth could touch. So Finn sat still, waiting, listening, and watching, with his tongue hanging out a little on one side of his mouth, by reason of the horrid dryness which afflicted his throat. And every hour that he waited brought greater strength to his determination, besides teaching him something in the way of patience and caution.

Presently, the waiting Finn heard heavy footsteps in the yard outside, and the muscles of his body gathered themselves together for action. The door opened, and Finn saw Matey standing there with a stick and a chain in his hand. Instinct told Finn on the instant that he must at all hazards avoid both the stick and the chain; but, more than anything else, the chain.

"Come 'ere!" said Matey. And Finn came. But, whereas Matey had reckoned on a slow movement, in the course of which his hand would have fallen on Finn's slip-collar preparatory to fixing the chain on that, the movement was actually very swift and low to the ground, and resulted in Finn's passing out scathless into the walled-in yard.

"Oho! So we don't like our new master, don't we? Haven't forgotten our blooming gruellin', eh? Better take care we don't get some more o' the same sort, Mister Wolfhound, if you arst me!"

The walled-in yard was quite safe. Matey was in nowise perturbed, and, moreover, having slept soundly and breakfasted copiously, he was, for him, in an amiable mood. Still, he had no wish to waste time, and he wanted to overhaul his plunder, and groom Finn up a little before the prospective purchaser arrived. So Matey turned round, leaned forward with a hand resting on one knee, and tried to twist his features into an ingratiating expression, as he said--

"Here, then, good dog! Come on, Finn! Here, boy!"

But instinct made Finn's intelligence upon the whole superior to Matey's in this matter, and, having already satisfied himself by means of hurried investigation that at present he could not escape from the walled-in yard, the Wolfhound stood half a dozen paces distant from the man, waiting, with every nerve and muscle at concert pitch. The man moved forward, with hand outstretched invitingly. The Wolfhound moved backward, with hackles slightly raised. Thus they followed each other round the little yard perhaps six times, the distance between them being maintained with nicety and precision by Finn. Then Matey's mental inferiority appeared. He was expecting very shortly now the man from whom he hoped to receive his reward--the price of Finn. His intelligence, such as it was, told him that strategy would now be necessary to enable him to lay hands on the Wolfhound; but, even while recognising that, he could not refrain from angrily flinging his chain in Finn's face, after his sixth promenade of the yard, and cursing the dog savagely, before retiring into the house to prepare a stratagem.

Finn did not snarl as the chain struck him. Instinct had not carried him so far from education. But he barked angrily, and bounded to one side. While the man was away Finn examined the gate of the yard through which he had been driven on the previous night, and, though it rattled hopefully when he plunged against it with his fore-paws, raised high above its fastening, it remained solidly closed.

As Finn turned away from the doors of the yard, Matey appeared from the house, holding in one outstretched hand a piece of the same kind of meat with which he had seduced Finn into accompanying him on the previous evening, and calling the hound to him in a friendly tone. But Finn had learned a good deal since his first taste of that savoury meat; more a good deal than the man who offered the meat had learned in the same time. Taking the middle of the yard, so as to leave himself ample space for retreat, he remained watchfully regarding Matey, and refused to advance a step. Matey's spoken blandishments were now a dead letter to Finn. Having once discovered the possibilities of human treachery, he would never forget them. And here the folk who belong to what we call the brute creation are apt to be a good deal wiser than their betters in the scale of evolution. They do not forget the teaching of experience so readily as do those of us who are farther removed from Nature. To be sure, Matey's notion of strategy was puerile enough; but, apart from that, it is safe to assume that Finn would never again completely trust this man, who had been the first to introduce him to fear and misery, to humiliation, and to knowledge of the existence of treachery and cruelty in men folk.

Matey cursed the Wolfhound angrily, but that did not incline Finn to trust him any the more. Then the man advanced a little in his strategy, and tossed a piece of the meat on to the ground, before Finn, to inspire confidence. But Finn's mistrust was too profound to admit of his stooping to pick this up. He was not very specially hungry, in any case; and if Matey had been an observant creature, or even one who used his memory wisely, he would have known that

the offer of drinking-water would have been infinitely more tempting to Finn than any quantity of savoury meat. But, as a fact, Finn was too much possessed just now by his determination to escape from Matey and all his works to be very clearly conscious of any other need.

Then, his petty strategy exhausted, and his paltry measure of self-control with it, Matey started to chase Finn with a stick. Now and again he succeeded in getting a blow home, as Finn wheeled and leapt before him within the narrow limits of the yard; and every time the stick touched him Finn barked angrily. This performance was extremely bad for Finn. It was calculated to break down some of the most valuable among his acquired qualities; the characteristics that he acquired with his blood through many generations of wisely-bred and humanely-reared hounds. In one sense it was more harmful than the merciless and unreasonable punishment of the previous night, because there was no faintest hint of a punishment about it; not even of the sort of punishment that had followed his howling. That had had the bad qualities of cruelty and unreasonableness, unjustifiableness. This was not punishment at all, it was sheer savagery, the savagery of a running fight in which the man, though he might hurt occasionally, could not conquer. And that is a most demoralizing sort of a happening, as between dog and man. Its demoralizing influence could have been detected by an observant spectator in the notes of Finn's barks when the stick reached him. They approached momentarily nearer the threatening nature of a growl; a new, dangerous note to hear in Finn's speech with mankind.

Matey was rapidly becoming exhausted, and in another moment or two would probably have flung his stick at Finn and given up his senseless pursuit, when, just as the Wolfhound bounded forward from under his stick at the house end of the yard, the gate leading into that yard opened, and Bill appeared. In an instant Finn had sprung for the opening, Bill's legs were thrust from under him, and as he stumbled, with one hand on the ground and an oath on his lips, Finn reached the open road outside. Behind him, for a moment, Finn heard a hurried scrambling, and a deal of broken, breathless whistling, and calling aloud of his name. And then he heard no more from the place of his captivity and anguish, for the reason that he was already nearing the limits of the little town, and galloping hard for the open country, over the road by which he had travelled some ten hours earlier in Matey's cart.

man opening yard gate onto wolfhound

The gate leading into the yard opened, and Bill appeared

Finn galloped for about three miles, his heart swelling within him for joy in his freedom. Then, gradually, his gait slackened to a canter, and then to a trot, and, finally, the sight of a wayside pond brought him to a standstill; and, after a mechanical look behind him, he walked into the water and drank, and drank, and drank till he could drink no more. Finn emerged from the pond with heaving flanks and dripping muzzle, conscious now of some of his hurts and bruises, but licking his wet chops with satisfaction, and supremely glad of his freedom. He lay down on the grass near the pond and proceeded to lick those of his wounds and bruises which were within licking reach, and to pity himself regarding the sharp pain in his side which his broken rib was causing. Presently a cart came jolting along from the direction in which Finn had come, and the Wolfhound shrank back as far as possible into the hedge behind him. But the driver of the cart took no further notice of Finn than to stare idly at him, possibly without even seeing him; at all events with an absolutely incurious stare. With renewed confidence, the young hound stretched himself out again on the cool grass and presently began to doze, this being the wise manner of all his kind in assisting Nature to cure them of their various ills.

While Finn dozed, another cart approached him from the little town he had left behind, and in this second cart were two extremely angry men, one of whom strongly desired Finn's recapture on mercenary grounds, while the other desired it upon these grounds and others also. Bill wanted his share of Finn's price; Matey wanted his larger share of that price, and he also wanted badly to have Finn securely tied up in a convenient position for being soundly beaten. Matey would almost rather have foregone the money than the satisfaction of administering the beating, the very thorough beating which he pictured himself administering to Finn. His heavy mouth twitched viciously as Matey thought about it. Suddenly Bill pulled the pony on to its haunches with a jerk.

"I'm jiggered if that ain't 'im a-waitin' for us!" exclaimed Bill, in a hoarse whisper.

Matey was out of the trap in an instant, and, with meat in his hand, was already beginning a whining call, which was meant to be extremely ingratiating. But Finn sprang to his feet at the sound of the cart coming to a standstill, and, after one glance at Matey, was off like a wolf down the empty country road.

This was yet another lesson learned. Finn would not be in a hurry to rest by the wayside again. After two miles of galloping at the rate of nearly twenty miles an hour, Finn steadied down to a fast loping gait, which would have kept him abreast of any other road vehicle than a motor-car, and maintained this for quite a long while. Then, by reason of the pain in his side, and of other pains, he decided to stop. But, with his last-learned lesson fresh in his mind, he had no intention of resting by the roadside. With a twist of pain that cut into his side like a knife, he leapt a field gate, and crept along the inner side of the hedge for some distance before finally curling up in a dry hollow beside a hayrick. Here, sheltered by the rick and half buried in dry hay and straw, Finn courted the sleep he needed, so that it came to him swiftly. In his sleep the young Wolfhound whimpered occasionally, and once or twice his whole great body shook to the sound of a growling bark, causing two bloodshot eyes to be half opened, and then mechanically closed again, with a small grunt, as Finn's muzzle drove a little deeper into the dry hay under his hocks, and he allowed sleep to strengthen its healing hold upon him.

It was a dream that caused Finn to give that growling bark, and it was a dream of a kind that had been foreign to his breed for generations. He dreamed that he was chasing Matey, in the form of a huge rabbit, armed with a stick. Matey, the rabbit, bounded away from him, just as ordinary rabbits did; but sounds came from Matey's rabbit mouth, and they were the horrid, venomous sounds of the curses with which Matey had followed him that morning in the walled-in yard. In the dream Finn was always on the point of leaping upon the back of rabbit-Matey's neck, with jaws stretched wide for slaughter. But something always intervened to prevent Finn taking the leap. The something was this: at the moment of the leap, Matey always looked more like a man and less like a rabbit, and the instinct which told Finn not to slay a man was a very strong one. But, somehow, rabbit-Matey seemed an exception. Finn was very anxious to feel the crunching of his shoulder and neck bones; and altogether it was unfortunate that such a dream should have been inspired in the brain of so nobly born a hound.

When Finn finally woke he gaped right in the eye of the setting sun, and all about him was the solemn silence of a fine October twilight. He yawned cavernously, and, raising his haunches, stretched his huge trunk from fore-paws placed far out. But, in the midst of the stretch, he gave a little smothered yelp of pain, and came to earth again, solicitously licking at the ribs of his right side. Matey's heavy boot had done great execution there. Slowly, then, Finn rose, and walked out into the darkening twilight of the field. Before he had covered a hundred yards, a rabbit started up from behind a bush, and scurried hedgewards for its life. But the distance was too great for bunny by three yards, and Finn's jaws snapped his backbone in sunder within six feet of his own burrow. This was hard on the rabbit; but it was no more than one tiny instance of the outworking of Nature's most inexorable law. Finn had killed many rabbits before this evening; but in the past he had merely obeyed his hunting and killing instinct. Now this instinct in him was sharpened by hunger, by having slept on the open earth, and by being conscious of no human control or protection. Finn proceeded to eat this particular rabbit, and that was distinctly a new experience for him, and one that left him upon the whole pleased with himself. He was not aware of the fact, of course, but this simple act placed him more nearly on terms with his ancestors than anything else he had ever done, unless, perhaps, one counts the dream acts of that afternoon.

After his meal Finn strolled along the hedge-side till he came to a gap, and then slipped through to the road. For a mile or two he trotted along the silent road with no particular object in view, and then, coming to a grassy lane, turned into that, and trotted for another mile or two, leaping a gate and a stile which barred his way at intervals, and coming presently to a group of three large ricks. His side was aching dully, and Finn was rather unhappy over finding no sign of the home beside the Downs where his friends were, and his own comfortable bed. Having allowed his mind to dwell upon this for several minutes, he sat down on his haunches near one of the ricks, and howled to the stars about it all for quite a while, and so effectively that a farmer, sitting in his comfortable dining-room nearly half a mile away, made a remark to his daughter about the new-fangled way these pesky motor-car people have of blowing fog-horns like the ships at sea, and carrying on as if the road belonged to them--drat 'un!

It was not active unhappiness, let alone misery like that of the previous night, that moved Finn to this vocal display; but only a kind of gentle melancholy such as we call home-sickness, and after five minutes of it, he curled up beside one of the ricks, after scratching and turning round and round sufficiently to make a kind of burrow for himself, and was fast asleep in about two minutes.

In the morning, long before the dew was off the grass, Finn set out to do what he had never done a before: he set out deliberately to hunt and kill some creature for his breakfast. He very nearly caught an unwary partridge, though the bird did not tempt him nearly so strongly as a thing that ran upon the earth, and ran fast. In the end his menu was that of the previous evening, and, as he eyed its still warm and furry remains, Finn felt that life was really a very good thing, even when one had a pain in one's side, and a large assortment of bruises and sore places in various other parts of one's body.

Towards midday Finn lounged into a rather large village, and did not like it at all. It stirred up in him the recollection of Matey and his horrible environment, and he began to hurry, impelled by a nervous dread of some kind of treachery. Towards the end of the village he passed a pretty, creeper-grown cottage, from the door of which a policeman issued. The policeman stared at Finn, and smacked his own leg. Then he bent his body in an insinuating manner and called to the Wolfhound: "Here, boy! Here, good dog! Come along!" But Finn only lengthened his stride, and presently broke into a gallop. He was no longer the guileless, trustful Finn of a week ago. The rural constable sighed as he resumed an erect position and watched Finn's disappearing form.

"He must be the dog that's wanted, all right; reg'ler monster, I'm blessed if he isn't. But, takin' one thing with another, I'd just as soon they catched him somewhere else than here. Why, I reckon my missis 'ud have a fit. I don't call it hardly right, myself; not 'avin' 'em that size."

Half an hour later, to his great delight, Finn found himself clear of roads and houses, and on the warm, chalky slopes of the Sussex Downs. These great, smooth, immemorial hills, with their blunt crests, and close-cropped, springy turf, brought a rush of home-feeling into Finn's heart, which made his eyes misty, so that he had to sit down and give vent to two or three long-drawn howls by way of expressing his gentle melancholy. But Finn's nose told him plainly that he had never before been on these particular Downs. And so, good and kindly as this ancient British soil was to him, it brought him no sight of actual home.

Towards evening he coursed and killed another rabbit, eating half of it, and providing, in the other half which he left, a substantial repast for a prowling weasel who followed in his trail.

Something--it may have been merely the fact that the day had not been in any way exhausting like its predecessors--prevented Finn from being inclined to curl down and sleep, when he passed a convenient wheat rick in a valley an hour after his supper. The night was fine and clear, and night life in the open, with its many mysterious rustlings, bird and animal calls, and other enticing sounds and smells, was beginning to present considerable attractions to Finn. The events of the past few days had aroused all sorts of latent tendencies and inclinations in him; feelings which resembled memories of bygone days in their effects upon him, but yet were not memories of any life that he had known, though they may have been blood memories of the experiences of his forbears. Later on, however, the young Wolfhound began to tire of the freedom of the night, and home-sick longings rose in his heart as he thought of the coach-house and of Kathleen. It was at about this time that Finn fell to walking along a narrow, white sheep-walk, on the side of a big, billowy down, which seemed to him pleasanter and more homely than any of the hills he had traversed that evening. Gradually the track in the chalk deepened and widened a little, until it became a path sunk in the hill-side to a depth of fifteen or twenty feet, and ended in a five-barred gate beside a road. Finn leaped the gate with a strange feeling of exultation in his heart, which made him careless of the sharp pain the leap brought to his side. Something rose in his throat as he reached the road. His eyes became misty, his nose drooped eagerly to the surface of the road, and he whimpered softly as he ran, with tail swaying from side to side, and a great tenderness welling up within him.

Two minutes later he came to a white gate leading to a shrub-sheltered garden before a small, low, rambling little house. He leaped the little gate, and turned sharply to the right in the garden. But then his way was blocked by high doors, set in masonry, which could not possibly be climbed or jumped. Before these gates, which evidently led to the stables and rear of the house, Finn sat down on his haunches. Then he lifted his long muzzle heavenward and howled lugubriously. He continued his howling steadily for about one minute and a half, and at the end of that time a door opened behind him in the front of the house, and a man clad in pyjamas rushed out into the garden. Finn had studiously avoided men for these two days past now; but, so far from avoiding this man, he rose on his hind-legs to give greeting, and could hardly be induced to lower his front paws, even when the man in pyjamas had removed his caressing arms from about the Wolfhound's shoulders. The man, you see, was the Master, and three minutes afterwards he was joined by the Mistress of the Kennels. But they were all three in the Master's outside den then with Tara.

standing wolfhound with reclining wolfhound

THE HEART OF TARA

The Mistress of the Kennels held on to one of Finn's fore-paws as though she feared he might be spirited away from the den, even while he was being welcomed home there. The fatted calf took the form of a dish of new milk and some sardines on toast which had been prepared for the next morning's breakfast. But this came later, and was polished off by Finn more by reason of its rare daintiness and his desire to live up to what the occasion seemed to demand of him, than because he was hungry. At an early stage in proceedings the Master noticed, and removed, the slip-collar.

"Well, that disposes of the theory that Finn wandered away of his own accord," said the Master. "If the police know their business this ought to help them." Then he turned to Finn again. "You didn't know there was a twenty-five pound reward out for you, my son, did you? It was to have been made fifty in another day or two; though, if you did but know it, our solvency demands rather that you should be sold, than paid for in that fashion."

The Mistress nodded thoughtfully.

"But that's quite impossible after this," she said; "selling Finn, I mean."

The Master smiled. "I suppose it is. That seems to be rather our way. It's a dead sure thing there can be no selling of Tara, and--I'm inclined to think you're right about Finn, too. Heavens! If I could lay my hands on the man who took that chip off his muzzle, I think I'd run to the length of a ten pounds fine for assault. I'd get my money's worth, too. The dog has been clubbed; he has been man-handled; I could swear he has had to fight for his freedom. Poor old Finn! What a dog! What a Finn it is!"

While the last of these remarks was being made the Master was carefully examining Finn all over, parting the Wolfhound's dense hard hair over places in which the skin beneath had been broken, and pressing his fingers along the lines of different bones and muscles solicitously. There was a half-spoken oath on the Master's lips when Finn winced from him as his hand passed down the ribs of the hound's right side.

"There is a rib broken here," he said to the Mistress, "unless I am much mistaken. When the post office opens in the morning we must wire for Turle, the vet. Thieving's bad enough, but--there are some stupid brutes in this world!"

The Mistress stared.

"Oh, no, I don't mean Finn; nor any of his honest four-legged kind. I meant two-legged brutes. Finn has been handled more roughly than an understanding man would handle a tiger. And look at his face. Look into his eyes. Notice his keenly watchful air, even while I am handling him. Well, Finn, my son, you have said good-bye to puppyhood with a vengeance now. Unless I am much mistaken he has crowded more into the last three days than all the rest of his life till now had taught him. That dog's years older than Kathleen to-night in some ways. Do you get the effect I mean? The youth has gone; there is a certain new hardness. Watch his eye now as I lift my hand!"

The Master lifted his hand with a sudden jerk, and the two who were watching Finn's eyes saw that in them which they had never seen in Kathleen's, nor yet even in Tara's eyes; for neither Tara nor her daughter had ever pitted their agility against man's brutality. They had never been clubbed or kicked; they had never seen as far into the ugly places of human nature as Finn; and you might brandish your arms in any way you chose before old Tara or Kathleen, and, while the one would have blinked at you with courteous tolerance of your foolishness, the other would have suspected you of inventing a new game, and gambolled before you like a huge kitten.

It was not, of course, that Finn was foolish enough to distrust the Master, or suspect him of any hostile intention. But certain instincts had been awakened in the young Wolfhound, and, for a long time, at all events, and probably for the rest of his life, those instincts would not again become latent. In some respects he may have been the better off; certainly he was better equipped to face the world; but the Master, naturally enough, could not withhold a sigh for the old utter trustfulness which had held even the instincts of self-preservation in abeyance. But, as has been said, Finn was better equipped to face the world than either his sister, or that gentle great lady, his mother; all his instincts were more alert, and his senses also. His eyes moved more rapidly than their eyes; his attitude toward life and toward men-folk was more elastic and less absolute. Men-folk remained his superiors in Finn's eyes, his superiors in a hundred ways, and it might be his dearly loved friends; but they were not any more the absolute, omnipotent, and all-perfect gods that they had been, and still were to Kathleen, for example, who would not have felt the slightest uneasiness if the Master had placed his heel on her throat, or touched her head with a club, as she lay on the ground before him.

To a great extent, however, the Master's sympathetic anger over Finn's wounds, and twinges of regret regarding the subtle changes which he recognised in the hound he affectionately called "son," were out-balanced by the joy he felt at seeing Finn safe in his den again. The loss of Finn had been hard to bear, and not the less hard because it came immediately after the great triumph of the Show. There were the seven prize cards adorning the wall over Tara's great bed in the den; but their presence had been something of a mockery in the absence of their winner. When the Master and the Mistress finally bade Finn good night, after making him thoroughly comfortable in his own clean, big bed, the coach-house door was carefully padlocked.

It could not have been said a month later that Finn was physically the worse for his adventure in the hands of Matey. His ribs were sound once more, and all his wounds and bruises were healed, though a light-coloured scar remained, and would remain on his muzzle, where the dog-stealer's stick had bitten into the bone. If it had come nine months earlier, such an experience would have been bad indeed, for sets-back in puppyhood are hard to make up. But at fifteen months Finn had as perfect a physical foundation to go upon as any living creature could have. He was fortified against physical ills as few animals can be; his system lacked nothing that makes for resisting power; he had attained his full growth without having known a day's illness, and his reserve strength was enormous.

And now came a long and rather severe winter, in which no evil thing befell Finn, and the process of "furnishing" went on in him with never a hitch of any sort, and in circumstances that could not possibly have been more favourable. All day long he drank in the heartiest air in England; on every day he had ample exercise and ample food, and when young summer of the next year brought him to his second birthday, Finn scaled 149 lbs., and his shoulder bones just skimmed the under side of the measuring standard at thirty-six inches. Hard measurement brought him within an eighth of an inch of the yard, and it was fair to say that, favourably measured, standing well up, he did reach full thirty-six inches at the shoulder.

Remember that, when his head was inclined upward, the tip of his nose would be more than a foot higher than his shoulder. With all four feet on the floor, he could rest his nose on a window-ledge that was exactly four feet high. His eyes, and shaggy brows and beard, like the tip of his tail, were dark as night; there were some extra dark hairs at his hocks, fetlocks and shoulder blades; and all the rest of Finn was of a hard, steely grey brindle colour; the typical wolf colour of northern climes, very steely, and with odd suggestions about it of ghostly fleetness, of great speed and enduring strength. His fore-legs were straight as gun-barrels, his knees flat as the palm of your hand; his feet hard, close, round, and rather cat-like, save that his claws were more like chisels, black, and hard, and strongly curved. His hind-legs, on the other hand, were finely curved, with swelling rolls of muscle in the upper thighs. The first or upper thighs were very long and strong, curving sharply out to hocks that were well let down, and without a hint of turn inward or outward. His loins were well arched, his chest deep, like an Arab stallion's, his neck long, arched, and very strong, like the massy muscles of his fore-arms. It was difficult to say that he had grown much since his fifteenth month, and yet he looked a very much bigger dog, and, above all, he looked and was very much stronger. There was no longer anything immature or unformed about Finn. During his next year he might possibly add half a score of pounds to his already great weight; but on his second birthday he was set and furnished, a superb specimen of pure breeding and perfect rearing in Irish Wolfhounds.

For almost six months now Finn's only companion of his own kind had been Tara. He had not seen Kathleen's departure from the cottage beside the Downs, and for some days he was greatly puzzled by her absence. He even stood by the orchard gate and growled fiercely, with the hair on his shoulders standing almost erect, because the thought was in his mind that Matey may have had something to do with this disappearance. The Master saw him engaged in this way, and was greatly puzzled by it. He said to the Mistress of the Kennels afterwards--

"I really think old Finn must have gone mad for five minutes this morning. I never saw a more fearsome-looking creature than he was when he stood and growled beside the orchard gate. I assure you he was terrible. He looked about six feet high, and as fierce as any tiger. It made me think of his ancient godfather, or namesake, the Finn of fifteen hundred years ago, who kept King Cormac's three hundred Irish Wolfhounds in fighting trim, as the most awe-inspiring and death-dealing portion of his master's army. I must read over those 'Tales of the Cycle of Finn' again; they are fine, stirring things. But in these worrying days I hardly seem to get time for sleep, let alone for reading about old Finn. But I wish you had seen Finn--our Finn--this morning. He was very terrible, but I never saw a dog look more magnificent. Upon my word, I believe there are very few living things that Finn could not implant fear in, if he set his mind to it; yes, and pull down, to boot--a hundred and fifty pounds of muscle and bone, and teeth and fire and spirit!"

But Finn need not have worried for Kathleen's sake. She had gone to a good home, and lives there to-day in honoured old age. Her owner paid a hundred guineas for her, and would not sell her for ten times the figure. But there was no way of telling Finn these things, for though he could understand most things that the Master said to him, and was able to tell the Master most things that he wanted to tell; yet the matter of buying and selling and its causes were naturally beyond him. He had no way of telling that the Master was in sore straits financially, though he did know that his friend was not over and above happy. Neither could he tell that the mere keeping of a Wolfhound like Kathleen runs away with the better part of twenty pounds a year. Things were not prospering with the Master, and, feeling that he could not part with Finn or Tara, he had been absolutely obliged to sell Kathleen.

But that was by no means the end of the Master's troubles, the root of which lay in the fact that he loved the country, and hated the town, but was unable to earn money enough in the country to meet the various obligations with which he saddled himself, and was saddled by circumstances. And so it fell out that soon after Finn's second birthday the Master began to spend a good deal of time away from the house by the Downs. Tara liked to pass the greater part of her time in the Master's outside den with her muzzle on his slippers, but Finn was not like that. Tara was a matron getting on in years, and her matronhood had cost her dear in illness from which it had been thought she could never recover. Finn, on the other hand, was the very personification of lusty youth and tireless virility. The Mistress of the Kennels would take him out behind her bicycle, while Tara lay dreaming at home, and it may be that the Mistress fancied her gentle ten and twelve mile runs tired Finn. She never saw him when he would set off upon his hunting expeditions, in the course of which he covered every foot of the Downs for a dozen miles around. He was safe enough, too, for he would have had nothing but angry growls for any man of Matey's ilk, charmed he never so wisely with spiced meats and the like. The weasels and the stoats, and a score of other wild things that roamed that country-side, could have told the Mistress of the Kennels just why Finn did not always clear his dinner dish in these days, and thereby saved her an addition to her many worries of that period. She did not like to depress the Master with tales of half-eaten meals, and she had no knowledge of the half-eaten hares and rabbits and other wild creatures which Finn left behind him on his hunting trails.

From one point of view, Finn suffered at this stage from the absence of the Master's eye and hand, and so did the rabbits; but, from another point of view, Finn gained. He became harder, more wily, and a far more expert hunter than he would have been under a more disciplined regime. But certainly he also became less domesticated, and vastly less fastidious than, for example, that exquisite great lady, his mother.

There came a certain late summer's day, with more than a hint of autumn in the air, when something happened which Finn never quite forgot. The Master had been away for three weeks on end, and Tara had missed him sadly. In the evening the great bitch would often whimper quietly as she lay outstretched, with her long, grey muzzle resting on the slippers which the Mistress never thought of taking from her. Of late she had cared less and less for any kind of activity, and seemed more and more to desire the presence of the Master. Now, in the evening of the day which brought strong hints of coming autumn with it, Finn lay beside Tara in the outside den, thinking lazily of an upland meadow, with a copse at its far end, which he meant to hunt presently. Suddenly there came a sound of a man's footfall on the gravel beyond the gateway and in front of the house. Tara's nostrils quivered as her head rose. With one mighty bound she was outside the den. The gates stood open. The Master, at the garden's far end, called--

"Tara! Tara, girl! Here, girl!"

Finn was by Tara's flank, and he saw her leap forward, hurtling through the air like an arrow from a bow. Six great bounds she gave, while fleet Finn galloped a good twenty paces behind her, and then Tara stopped suddenly with a strange, moaning cry, staggered for a moment, as the Master ran towards her, and then fell sideways, against his knee, with glazing eyes turned up for a last glimpse of the face she loved. The Master was kneeling on the gravel, and Tara's shoulders were in his arms; but at the end of two long-drawn sighs, Tara was dead.

Finn was sniffing at his mother's back. He did not know just what had happened, but he was profoundly conscious that the happening was tragic, and that his beautiful mother was the victim. The shock to the Master was very great; for he was already unhappy, and he had loved this mother of heroes of his very dearly. But the shock to Finn, though far less complex, was scarcely less great. He had killed many scores of times, but it seemed that he had never seen death till now.  He recognized it clearly enough. He knew that Tara was never going to move again; the instant his sensitive nostrils touched her still, warm body he knew that. But there had been no killing. That was what baffled Finn, and struck a kind of terror into his heart, to lend poignancy to his sorrow. One more look he gave at his mother's sightless face, this time where it rested on the crook of the Master's arm, and then he sat down on his haunches, and with muzzle raised high poured out his grief in the long-drawn Irish Wolfhound howl; the most melancholy cry in nature.

The Master had looked careworn and weary before he called Tara to him. It was a very grey, sad face he showed when he rose gently and bade Finn go into the coach-house and be silent. He had known that Tara's heart was weak, but this thing that had happened he had never anticipated, and the nature and circumstances of Tara's death were such as to move a man deeply. In a sense, her love of the Master had killed this beautiful hound. Her great love had burst her heart in sunder, and so she died, the very noble daughter of an ancient, noble line.

fox sniffing dead rabbit

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