nd gratitude (even when not in the
least need of food) from an instinctive sense of _noblesse oblige_,
and of the courtesy which came to him with the blood of a long line
of kingly ancestors. Vague thoughts, too, of the Master drifted
through Finn's mind as he watched the stranger at his supper; and,
somehow, the circle of firelit grass attracted. Forgiveness came
natural to the Wolfhound and, for the moment, he forgot the
humiliation and the bitterness of being driven out as a creature of
the wild, having no right to trespass upon the human environment.

Slowly, not with any particular caution, but with stately, gracious
step, Finn moved forward toward the firelight, intending to take up
his old resting-place, perhaps a score of paces from the fire. No
sooner had Finn entered the outermost ring of dim firelight than
the man looked up and saw, not the whole of him, but the light
flickering on his legs.

"Well, I'll be teetotally damned if that ain't the limit!" gasped
the man, as he sprang to his feet. He snatched a three-foot length
of burning sapling from the fire and, rushing forward, flung it so
truly after the retreating Wolfhound that it fell athwart his neck,
singeing his coat and enveloping him from nose to tail in a cloud
of glowing sparks. A stone followed the burning wood, and the man
himself, shouting and cursing, followed the stone. But he had no
need to run. The flying sparks, the smell of burned hair, the
horrible suggestion of the red-hot iron bar--these were amply
sufficient for Finn, without the added humiliation of the stone,
and the curses, and the man's loud, blundering footfalls. The
Wolfhound broke into a gallop, shocked, amazed, alarmed, and beyond
words embittered. He snarled as he ran, and he ran till the camp
was a mile behind him, beyond scent and hearing.

There was no mistaking this for anything but what it was. This was
being driven out of the human world into the world of the wild with
a vengeance. The burning sapling made a most profound impression
upon Finn, and roused bitter hostility and resentment in him. The
stock-whip and the stone were as nothing beside this thing--this
fire that had been flung at him. From time immemorial men have
frightened and chased wolves from their chosen neighbourhood with
burning faggots. The thing is being done to-day in the world's far
places; it was being done thousands of years before our era began.
Finn had never before experienced it, and yet, in