id him down to rest at
length, on the rocky edge of a gully fully four miles from the
camp, there was not a living thing in that district but felt the
terror of his presence, and cowered from sight or sound of his
flying feet and rending, blood-stained fangs. It was as the night
of an earthquake or a bush fire to the wild folk of that range; and
the cause and meaning of it all was that Finn, the Irish Wolfhound,
had been hunted out of the men-folk's world into the world of the
wild people.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXIV

A LONE BACHELOR

If Finn had deliberately thought out a bad way of beginning his
life as one of the wild folk, who have no concern at all with
humans, he could have devised nothing much worse, or more
disadvantageous to himself, than the indulgence of his wild burst
of Berserker-like fury, after being driven out of the clear patch.
And of this he was made aware when he set forth the next morning in
quest of a breakfast. Every one of his hunting trails in the
neighbourhood of the encampment he ranged with growing thoroughness
and care, without finding so much as a mouse with which to satisfy
his appetite. Even Koala and Echidna were nowhere to be found. It
was as though a blight had descended upon the countryside, and the
only living thing Finn saw that morning, besides the crows, was a
laughing jackass on the stump of a blasted stringy-bark tree, who
jeered at him hoarsely as he passed. Disconsolate and rather sore,
as the result of his frenzied exertions of the night, Finn curled
himself up in the sandy bed of a little gully and slept again,
without food. The many small scavengers of the bush had already
made away with the remains of the different creatures he had slain
during his madness.

Finn did not know it, but hundreds of small bright eyes had watched
him as he ranged the trails that morning; and the most of these
eyes had in them the light of resentment, as well as fear. Finn had
been guilty of real crime according to the standards of the wild;
and, had he been a lesser creature, swift punishment would have
descended upon him. As it was, he was left to work out his own
punishment by finding that his hunting was ruined. These wild folk,
who were judging Finn now, tacitly admitted the right of all
flesh-eating creatures to kill for food. But wilful slaughter,
particularly when accompanied by all the evidences of reckless
fury, was a crime not readily to be forgiven, for it struck a