bright
moonlight night. The field was full of silvery moonlight you would
have said; but never a glint of all that liquid silver touched
Finn's outline for a moment. Just so, beside the northern mountains
of another continent, one has watched a leopard--mountain lions we
call them there--braving the strange terrible smells and dangers of
a man's camp, to stalk a sleeping fox-terrier; in absolute
ignorance of the rifle barrel that covered it, yet miraculously
successful in never giving the man behind the rifle the chance of a
moonlight shot. Finn was sore and aching from many wounds, and
stiff from long confinement. He knew that every one connected with
the circus was sleeping; but on this occasion he gave no hostages
to fortune, he took no risks. The stakes at issue, as he saw it,
were, upon the one side, life and freedom, freedom which was almost
unbearably sweet to think of, after the long-drawn agony of the
past couple of months; and upon the other side, slow death under
the torture of confinement, the iron, the lash, and the mad
man-beast in the leathern coat.

It is the greatest mistake in the world to suppose that an animal
like Finn has no imagination. Indeed, the animals which have no
imagination are comparatively few; while such an Irish Wolfhound as
Finn has, at the least, as much of it as some men the writer has
known.

A fiery picture of the issues at stake was floating in Finn's mind
as he crept in and out among the tents and wagons of the enclosure:
and he was conscious neither of wounds, or weakness, or stiffness;
but only of his great resolve, based upon the wonderful chance that
had come to him. Once he came to a place where ten feet of
brilliant moonlight lay between the black shadow he occupied and
the next. He paused for a moment or two, looking about him upon
every side with all the cunning of the truly wild kindred; and
then, with a very good imitation of the lightness and elasticity of
other, happier days, he sprang clear from the one shadow to the
other, landing as delicately and silently as a cat, though the
impact jarred all his stiffened joints, and touched, as with living
fire, every one of his almost innumerable wounds.

Then he came to the outer canvas wall of the big enclosure. It was
too high to jump, a good twelve feet. An attempt to jump and
scramble over it might have led to noise. Finn approached it in the
deep shadow cast by a caravan wagon, and, thrusting his muzzle
underneath