, and slowly piecing together his connection with Bill
and Jess through the horse. Bush folk have a way of arriving at
their knowledge of people through horseflesh.

"My oath!" exclaimed one of the men. "He's got a touch of the
Tasmanian blood in him, all right. I guess old man Hall's pets have
been busy back in the hills there. Wonder how Bill got a-holt o'
_him_!"

And then, with every sign of deferential friendliness, the man
endeavoured to approach Finn. But though Jess lay still, showing
only pointed indifference where the men were concerned, Finn leaped
backward like a stag, and kept a good score of paces between the
men-folk and himself.

The man who made the remark about Finn and Tasmanian blood had
never seen the zebra wolf, as it is sometimes called, owing to the
stripes which often occur in its coat, or he would not have thought
of Finn in this connection. The Tasmanian wolf is a heavy, long
beast, with a truncated muzzle, short legs, a thin, taper tail, and
a very massive shoulder and neck. Wolves of this type have been
known to keep six hunting-dogs absolutely at bay, and finally to
escape from them. Their appearance is more suggestive of the
hyaena than of any such symmetrically beautiful lines as those of
Finn's graceful, racy build. But, by reason of his great height and
size, Finn was strange to the Nargoola man, and he, having heard of
old Jacob Hall's strange importations from Tasmania, at once linked
the two kinds of strangeness together in his mind, and saw only
further reason for so doing in the fact that he was quite unable to
get within a dozen paces of touching the Wolfhound.

Out of consideration for the patient Jess, Finn endured the
discomfort of waiting beside the "First Nugget" all through that
day, though he never ventured to sit down even for a moment; there
among the man-smells and the threatening shadows of the houses,
each one of which he regarded as the possible headquarters of a
circus, the possible home of a "Professor." But when evening set
in, and Jess still showed no sign of forsaking her post, Finn could
endure it no longer, and told his friend several times over that he
must go; that he would return to the camp in the bush and wait
there. The nuzzling touches of Jess's nose said plainly, "Wait a
bit, yet! What's your hurry?" But Finn was in deadly earnest now.
He refused to be restrained even by a little whimpering appeal, in
which Jess made every use she could of the cra