fussy, and his family included
two very recent additions. Also, Finn brought a baffling mixture of
scents with him, including those of men and of wild creatures such
as the stallion had never seen and did not wish to see. So he
continued his threateningly mincing progress toward Finn, and
whinnied out a declaration to the effect that this could be no
resting-place for dingoes, however huge and diversified in their
smells. Finn was not in the least like a dingo; but, on the other
hand, he was not like a kangaroo-hound. He was twice the size of a
dingo, very nearly, and a good seven inches taller than the biggest
kangaroo-hound the stallion had seen. Also, his coat was shaggy and
long, instead of close and short like that of a greyhound, or
kangaroo-hound. As against that, he carried with him more
suggestion of the fellowship of the wild kindred than of the tribe
of renegades who are men-folk's adherents; and therefore, for the
moment, dingo was a good enough name for him, so far as the old
stallion was concerned, the dingo being the only creature of the
wolf kind which he knew.

Finn was in no mood for disputes of any sort, and so, though
exceedingly weary now, he made a wide detour to satisfy the
nervousness of the flea-bitten grey stallion, and began a diagonal
descent upon the south side of Tinnaburra. Just as the sun cleared
the horizon over his right shoulder, Finn dropped wearily down from
a clump of wattle upon a broad, flat ledge of many-coloured rock
which caught the sun's first glinting rays upon its queer enamel of
red and brown and yellow lichen. From this point Finn looked down a
densely-wooded mountain side, and out across a tolerably
well-timbered plain to hills which stood nearly forty miles away. It
would have made an eyrie for a king eagle. Finn had already slaked
his thirst hurriedly a mile back, in a chattering, rock-bedded
mountain streamlet. And now he was weary beyond all further
endurance. He had been sick, and sore, and stiff, and sadly out of
condition when he started; and he had been travelling now for six
hours. A feeling of security had stolen over him since he reached
the topmost ridge of Tinnaburra. The very fragrance of the air told
him, as he drew it in through his nostrils, that he was far from
the works of men. Food he could not think of while every bone and
muscle in his great body ached from weariness. By the edge of the
rock was a sandy hollow, over which a feathery shrub drooped