rd to be set aside and taken back to the den against
the time when Warrigal should care to dispose of it. For the rest,
be his kill what it might, Finn made the pack free of it.

But no sort of temptation seemed strong enough to take the
Wolfhound near to the haunts of men. It came to be understood that
Finn would not touch sheep, and, reasoning it out amongst
themselves, the rest of the pack accepted this as a prohibition
meant to apply to all of them; so that Finn's mastership was an
exceedingly good thing for the squatters and their flocks all
through the Tinnaburra. But a full-grown kangaroo, no matter how
heavy and strong in the leg, never seemed too much for Finn; and
so, all dingoes liking big game better than small, it came about
that every night saw the Mount Desolation dingoes hunting in pack
formation at the heels of the great Wolfhound. They scorned the
lesser creatures whose flesh had fed them hitherto, and expected to
taste wallaby or kangaroo flesh every night. Finn thoroughly
enjoyed the hunting, and did not care how many fed at his kill, so
that his mate and he had ample.

Once, the two youngest members of the pack, puppies quite new to
the trail, were attacked and driven from the remains of a big kill
the leader had made by an outlier, a strange dingo from some other
range. The youngsters, bleeding and yelping, carried their woes to
the scrub below the mountain, and within the hour Finn learned of
it. Followed by Black-tip and one or two others of the more
adventurous sort, he set out upon the trail of the outlier, now
full fed, ran it down at the end of four or five miles' hard
galloping, pinned the unfortunate creature to the earth and shook
it into the long sleep, almost before they had come to a standstill
together. This was true leadership the pack felt, a thing Lupus
would never have done; something to be placed to the great
Wolfhound's credit, and not forgotten. The mother of the whelps
that were attacked, a big, light-coloured dingo, with sharp, prick
ears, was particularly grateful to Finn.

During this time a subtle change crept over Finn's appearance. In
its details the change was so slight that the casual observer would
have said it did not exist at all; yet, in truth, it was radical.
It would be impossible to put this change precisely into words. An
Irish Wolfhound is never sleek; at least, that is never a
characteristic of the breed. Yet, as compared with the wild folk,
every sort of