as a precaution against the possibility of movement on
Jess's part, he stitched the old blanket behind her in such a way
as to prevent its leaving her wound exposed. He looked over his
shoulder several times after riding away, thinking that Finn would
be likely to follow him. But the Wolfhound remained standing, some
twenty paces from Jess's shelter, and, when the man was almost out
of sight, stepped forward and lay down within a yard or two of the
kangaroo-hound.

"Queer card, that Wolf!" muttered Bill, as he rode away. "But he's
pretty white, too; whiter'n some men, I reckon, for all he's so
mighty suspicious."

In some climates any dog would have succumbed to the injuries Jess
had sustained; and even in the beautiful air of the Tinnaburra, a
town-bred dog would probably have gone under. But Jess was of a
tough, bush-bred stock; she had lived in the open all her life, and
the air she breathed now, in her shelter beside the gunyah, was
aromatic with the scent of that useful antiseptic which in every
part of the world has done good service in the prevention of
fever--eucalyptus. Blue gum, red gum, grey gum, stringy-bark, iron-bark,
and black-butt; the trees which surrounded Jess for fifty miles on
every side were practically all of the eucalyptus family. Insects
bothered her a good deal it is true, but Finn did much in the way
of warding off their attacks, and the wound itself was well
protected.

It was an odd and very interesting and pleasant life that Finn led
now, his time divided pretty evenly between bearing the wounded
kangaroo-hound company and foraging on his own account in the bush
within a radius of two or three miles of the gunyah. He found that
countryside wonderfully full of different forms of wild life, and
wonderfully interesting to a born hunter and carnivorous creature
like himself. He did not know then that the country he traversed,
all within four miles of the camp, was but the fringe of a vastly
more interesting tract of bush; and in the meantime the range he
did learn to know thoroughly proved sufficiently absorbing and
various.

Five miles from Bill's gunyah, in a direct southerly line, stood
the big, rambling station homestead, where Bill's bachelor employer
had lived for many years. He did not live there now, because six
months before this time he had died, and his station had reverted
to distant relatives in other countries. This was the man who was
to have met the Master and the Mistres