n tried his best to
growl and to turn up his nose at the same time, indicating serious
preoccupation with matters more weighty than play. But finding that his
hold upon the mouse was gravely endangered by this process, he gave up
the attempt, and swaggered on toward the front entrance, followed
quizzingly by the wolfhound. Finding nobody in the porch, Jan fell over
the step, dropped his mouse, growled fiercely, and then with a plunge
regained his prize, and so, past the place where the caps and coats
hung, over the mats into the hall.

Here he found Betty and the Mistress, and at their feet deposited his
now rather badly mangled mouse; while Finn, like a big nurse taking
pride in the escapades of her charge, stood at one side and smiled, with
lolling tongue.

"Oh, what a fearsome beast it is!" laughed Betty, and ran to call the
Master. Then Jan was patted and petted, and told what a fine fellow he
was; what a mighty hunter before the Lord; and Finn smiled more broadly
than ever. This over, Jan was taken into the kitchen to be weighed (he
being now seven weeks old), and was told in an impressive manner that he
was within four ounces of twenty pounds.

"Pretty nearly half-a-pound-a-day increase. You'll have to take a cure
soon, my friend, if this goes on," said the Master.

From this time onward many of Jan's games were sensibly affected by his
slaughter of the mouse. He now treated the big shin-bones that were
provided for his delectation as live game of a peculiarly treacherous
sort. He stalked, tracked, hunted, and slew those bones with unerring
skill and remarkable daring. Their tenacity of life was most striking.
There were times when, having slain a bone after a long chase, poor Jan
would give way to his natural exhaustion and fall sound asleep with his
head pillowed on one end of the apparently well-killed and harmless
bone. Yet as often as not, when he would wake, perhaps a quarter of an
hour later, this same bone would once more betray its desperate and
treacherous vitality by means of an attempt at escape. So that even in
the very moment of waking the dauntless Jan would be obliged to growl
fiercely and plunge straightway into hard fighting again.

His first real bark was another dazzling experience. It came in his
eleventh week, when he was as heavy as two terriers, though still
somewhat shapeless, and gristly, rather than bony, as to his limbs.
Colonel Forde walked into the garden one afternoon, followed