o the opportunity of testing the Wolfhound. As for
Jess, she knew perfectly well when a Sunday had arrived. For her,
Sunday was quite the festival day of the week; and, indeed, by
reason of her anticipatory bustle, Finn himself was early given to
understand that this was a special day of some kind.

On the previous day, Bill had paid particular attention to some
tracks he had seen on the far side of a gully some three or four
miles from the gunyah; and Jess had shown herself amazingly anxious
to make further investigations at the time, until brought sternly
to heel by Bill, with the suggestion that--

"You've got mixed up in your almanack, old lady. This is Saturday."

Now, with a tomahawk stuck in the saddle-cleat he had made to hold
it, and a stock-whip dangling from one hand, the bushman ambled off
on his roan-coloured mare in the direction of this same gully.
Jess, full of suppressed excitement, circled about the horse's head
for some few minutes, till bidden to "Sober up, there, Jess!" when
she fell back and trotted beside Finn, a dozen yards from the
horse. Arrived at the gully, Bill reined in to a very slow walk,
and peered about him carefully upon the ground. He never walked a
yard on his own feet if a horse was available. This was so much a
matter of principle with Bill that he had been known to walk and
run three miles in pursuit of a horse with which to ride across a
paddock no more than a quarter of a mile from his original
starting-place. It was Jess who found what her man was questing:
the quite fresh tracks of a kangaroo; and Finn was keenly
interested in the discovery. He noted carefully every scratch in
the tracks as Jess nosed them, and noted also, as the result of
long strong breaths drawn through his nostrils, the exact scent
which hung about them. This scent alone proved the tracks quite
fresh. Finn was puzzled by the long, scraping marks, which looked
far more like the work of some garden tool than of the feet of any
animal he knew of. For the time he had forgotten the fifteen-foot
leap of the rock wallaby that he had witnessed on the day after his
escape from the circus. The hind-foot pressure required to start a
heavy animal upon such a leap as that is very considerable, and
well calculated to leave evidence of itself in soft ground.

In starting away from the gully, Bill rode at a walk, and with
extreme care, Jess going in front, and Finn, not as yet so clever
in tracking, following up the