o much the farther from reaching them as food.

The man's shout of anger and defiance reached Finn's ears, and
thrilled the Wolfhound to the marrow. The voice of man in anger; he
had not heard it since the night of his being driven out from the
boundary-rider's camp. The memories which it aroused in him were
all, without exception, of man's tyranny and cruelty, and of his
own suffering at man's hands. He growled low in his throat, but
very fiercely. And yet, with it all, what thrilled him so was not
mere anger, or bitterness, or resentment. It was more than all
that. It was the warring within him of inherited respect for man's
authority with acquired wildness; with his acquired freedom of the
wild folk. The conflict of instinct and emotions in Finn was so
ardent as almost to overcome consciousness of the great hunger
which was his real master at this time; the furious hunger which
had made him chew savagely at the tough fibre of a dry root held
between his two fore-paws.

But the man had taken only three steps, and when he sank down to
the earth again it was not in the place he had occupied before. He
lay down where he had stood when he threw the billet of wood, and
there was that in the manner of his lying down which boded ill for
his future activity. It was observed most carefully by three of the
crows, who had followed him all day; and upon the strength of it,
they settled within a dozen paces of his recumbent figure, with an
air which seemed to say plainly that they could afford a little
more patience now, since they would not have long to wait.

[Illustration: They settled within a dozen paces of his recumbent
figure.]

When full daylight came, Warrigal and her mates were closer in than
ever; hidden in the scrub within forty paces of the man. Finn
retained his old place, some five-and-thirty yards farther back,
behind a bush. The crows preened their funereal plumage and waited,
full of bright-eyed expectancy. Finn gnawed bitterly at his dry
fragment of scrub root. The splendid pitiless sun climbed slowly
clear of its bed on the horizon, thrusting up long, keen blades of
heat and light to herald the coming of another blazing day in the
long drought.

Presently, a long spear of the new day's light thrust its point
between the man's curved arm and his face. He turned on his side so
that he faced the sun, and evidently its message to him was that he
must be up and doing; that he must proceed with his journey.