TO THE WITHERED IRON-BARK NOW (Frontispiece)

FINN AND HIS FOSTER-MOTHER

TARA SMILED BROADLY, AND STRETCHED OUT HER FORE-LEGS ON THE GROUND

THE GATE LEADING INTO THE YARD OPENED, AND BILL APPEARED

FINN'S TEETH SANK DEEP

THE NEXT INSTANT SAW THE PROFESSOR FLUNG BACK AT LENGTH AGAINST THE
BARS OF THE CAGE

WAS LOST IN THE SHADOW OF THE MAIN TENT

SPURRING HIS HORSE FORWARD

HE WAS BACKING GRADUALLY TOWARDS A BOULDER BESIDE THE TRAIL

FINN WAS STANDING ROYALLY ERECT

FINN'S TOWERING FORM STOOD OUT CLEARLY IN THE MOONLIGHT

HE SLUNG THE WALLABY OVER HIS SHOULDER AND SET OUT FOR THE MOUNTAIN

SCRAMBLING AND SLIDING DOWN THE HIGH BANKS OF A RIVER-BED

THEY SETTLED WITHIN A DOZEN PACES OF HIS RECUMBENT FIGURE

FOUR MEN WERE RIDING TOGETHER THROUGH THE LOW BURNT-UP SCRUB

THE WOLFHOUND RAISED HIS BEARDED MUZZLE, AND SOFTLY LICKED THE
MASTER'S THIN BROWN HAND

[Illustration]

CHAPTER I

THE MOTHER OF HEROES

For a man whose thirtieth year was still not far behind him, the
man's face was over careworn. It suggested that he felt life's
difficulties more keenly than a man should at that age. But it may
have been that this was a necessary part of the keenness with which
the whole of life appealed to him; its good things, as well as its
worries.

He rose from his writing-table and straightened his back with a
long sigh, clenching both hands tightly, and stretching both arms
over his shoulders, as he moved across the little room to its
window. The window gave him an extensive view of dully gleaming
roofs and chimney-pots, seen through driving sleet, towards the end
of a raw forenoon in February. The roofs he saw were those of one
of London's cheap suburbs; first, a block of "mansions" similar to
those in which his own flat was situated; then a rather superior
block, where the rents were much cheaper because they were called
"dwellings"; and beyond that, the huddled small houses of a quarter
with which no builder had interfered since early Victorian days.

[Illustration]

The man turned away from the dripping window, and looked round this
den in which he worked. Its walls were mostly covered by
book-shelves, but in the gaps between the shelves there were pictures; a
rather odd mixture of pictures, of men and women and dogs. The men
and women were mostly people who had written books, and the dogs
were without exception Irish Wolfhounds; those fine animals which
combine in themselves the fleetn