On the fourth evening, with a rather sad heart, Finn turned his
back on the familiar trails, and hunted west and by south from the
little gully in which he slept, heading toward the back ranges and
the stony foot of Mount Desolation, that is. For a mile or more,
even in this direction, he found that his evil fame preceded him,
and no good hunting came his way. But presently a flanking movement
to the eastward was rewarded by a glimpse of a fat wallaby-hare,
which Finn stalked with the most exquisite patience, till he was
able to spring upon it with a snap of his great jaws that gave
instantaneous and everlasting sleep. Finn carried this fat kill
back to his den, and feasted right royally that night for the first
time since he was expelled from the purlieus of the gunyah and the
easy-going old life. These few days had changed the Wolfhound a
good deal. He walked the trails now with far less of gracious pride
and dignity, and more of eager, watchful stealth than he had been
wont to use. He walked more silently, he stalked more carefully,
and sprang more swiftly, and bit more fiercely. He was no longer
the amateur of the wild life, but an actual part of it, and subject
to all its laws and customs.

Thus it was that, in the afternoon of the day following that of his
first hunt outside his own range, he leaped in a single instant
from full sleep to fullest wakefulness in response to the sound of
a tiny twig rolling down the side of his little gully. There,
facing him from the western lip of the gully, with a rather eager,
curious, inviting sort of look upon her intelligent face, stood a
fine, upstanding, red-brown female dingo, or warrigal. The stranger
stood fully twenty-three inches high at the shoulder, and was
unusually long in the body for such a height--thirteen inches less
than Finn's shoulder height it is true, but yet about the same
measurement as a big foxhound and of greater proportionate length.
Her ruddy brown tail was bushy and handsome, and at this moment she
was carrying it high and flirtatiously curled. Also, she wagged it
encouragingly when Finn's eyes met her own, which were of a pale
greenish hue. Her hind feet were planted well apart; she stood
almost as a show cob stands, her tail twitching slightly, and her
nostrils contracting and expanding in eloquent inquiry. She had
heard of Finn some time since, this belle of the back ranges, but
it was only on that day, when Nature recommended her to find a
mat