At other times, as
the boss said bitterly, he might have been dead or a lap-dog, for
all the spectacle he offered to the curious who visited his cage.
All they saw was a coiled, iron-grey mass, and two burning black
eyes, with a glint of red in them, and a blood-coloured triangle in
their upper corners.

Now and again, in the midst of the night, Finn would rise and go
down to the bars of his cage and stand there, motionless, for an
hour at a stretch, his scarred muzzle protruding between two bars,
his aching nostrils, hot and dry, drinking in the night air, his
eyes robbed of their resentful fire, and pitiably softened by the
great tears that stood in them. At the end of such an hour he would
sometimes begin to walk softly to and fro, inside the bars, the
four paces that his cage allowed him. Thus he would pad back and
forth silently for another hour, with tail curled toward his belly
and nose on a level with his knees, almost brushing the bars as he
passed them. He made no sound at all, even when the moon's silvery
light flooded his cage, or when Killer snarled in his sleep. But
always, before returning to his corner, he would systematically
test every bar at its base with teeth and paws; and then sigh, like
a very weary man, as he slouched despairingly back to his corner.

But, for all the glowering misery that possessed him by day and the
despair to which he would give rein by night, it was always with
dauntless ferocity that the tortured Wolfhound faced his enemy, the
Professor. Short of starving him to death, or killing him outright
with the iron bar, the Professor could see no way of making the
Giant Wolf cringe to him; he could devise no method of breaking
that fierce spirit, though he exhausted every kind of severity and
every sort of cruelty that his wide experience in the handling of
fierce animals could furnish. For any one who could have
comprehended the true inwardness of that situation, its tragedy
would have lain in the reflection that, had he but known it, Finn
could without difficulty have earned not alone ease and good
treatment, but high honours in the Southern Cross Circus. But Finn
had no means of guessing that the Professor merely desired to
master him, and to teach him to stand erect, or leap through a hoop
at the word of command. No sign of any such desire, that Finn could
possibly read, had been furnished. But, on the contrary, the one
thing made evident to the Wolfhound's understanding was