t, but only swayed its tubby
body to and fro, moaning and wailing and generally behaving like a
distressed child, Finn made no attempt to kill it, but simply took
firm hold of the loose, furry skin about its thick neck, and
dragged it, complaining piteously, through the bush to the gunyah,
where he deposited it gingerly upon the ground for Jess's
inspection. Bill found the two hounds playing with the koala on his
return to camp that night. It was a one-sided kind of game, for the
bear only sat up on his haunches between the hounds, rocking to and
fro, and sobbing and moaning with grotesque appealing pathos, while
Finn and Jess gambolled about him, occasionally toppling him over
with a thrust of their muzzles, and growling angrily at him, till
he sat up again, when they appeared quite satisfied. Bill sat on
his horse and shook with laughter as he watched the game. He
thought of killing the bear, for there is a small bounty given on
bears' heads. But long laughter moved his good-nature to ignore the
bounty, and after a while he called Jess off, and drove the bear
away into the scrub. He did not call Finn, because that was
unnecessary. Finn withdrew immediately upon Bill's approach.

It was perhaps a week after the bear-baiting episode, when for
several days Jess had been following her man by day in the same
manner as before her hurt, that both hounds began to notice that
Bill was undergoing a change of some sort. He never talked to them
now. He took not the smallest notice of Finn, and but rarely looked
at Jess. When she approached him of an evening he would gruffly bid
her lie down, and once he thrust her from him with his foot when
she had nosed close up to him beside the fire. Jess had vague
recollections of similar changes in her man having occurred before
this time, and she had vague, uncomfortable stirrings which told
her that further change of some sort was imminent. This made the
kangaroo-hound restless and uneasy, and before long her uneasiness
communicated itself to Finn, who immediately began to think of the
worst things he knew of--men in leathern coats, iron-barred cages,
and the like. All this made the Wolfhound more shy than ever where
Bill was concerned, and more like a creature of the real wild in
all his movements and general demeanour. He slept a little farther
from the gunyah now, and relied almost entirely upon his own
hunting for food. Still, he had no wish to leave the camp, and
regarded Jess as h