Finn the wolfhound

by A. J. Dawson

After his meal Finn strolled along the hedge-side till he came to a gap, and then slipped through to the road. For a mile or two he trotted along the silent road with no particular object in view, and then, coming to a grassy lane, turned into that, and trotted for another mile or two, leaping a gate and a stile which barred his way at intervals, and coming presently to a group of three large ricks. His side was aching dully, and Finn was rather unhappy over finding no sign of the home beside the Downs where his friends were, and his own comfortable bed. Having allowed his mind to dwell upon this for several minutes, he sat down on his haunches near one of the ricks, and howled to the stars about it all for quite a while, and so effectively that a farmer, sitting in his comfortable dining-room nearly half a mile away, made a remark to his daughter about the new-fangled way these pesky motor-car people have of blowing fog-horns like the ships at sea, and carrying on as if the road belonged to them--drat 'un!

It was not active unhappiness, let alone misery like that of the previous night, that moved Finn to this vocal display; but only a kind of gentle melancholy such as we call home-sickness, and after five minutes of it, he curled up beside one of the ricks, after scratching and turning round and round sufficiently to make a kind of burrow for himself, and was fast asleep in about two minutes.

In the morning, long before the dew was off the grass, Finn set out to do what he had never done a before: he set out deliberately to hunt and kill some creature for his breakfast. He very nearly caught an unwary partridge, though the bird did not tempt him nearly so strongly as a thing that ran upon the earth, and ran fast. In the end his menu was that of the previous evening, and, as he eyed its still warm and furry remains, Finn felt that life was really a very good thing, even when one had a pain in one's side, and a large assortment of bruises and sore places in various other parts of one's body.

Towards midday Finn lounged into a rather large village, and did not like it at all. It stirred up in him the recollection of Matey and his horrible environment, and he began to hurry, impelled by a nervous dread of some kind of treachery. Towards the end of the village he passed a pretty, creeper-grown cottage, from the door of which a policeman issued. The policeman stared at Finn, and smacked his own leg. Then he bent his body in an insinuating manner and called to the Wolfhound: "Here, boy! Here, good dog! Come along!" But Finn only lengthened his stride, and presently broke into a gallop. He was no longer the guileless, trustful Finn of a week ago. The rural constable sighed as he resumed an erect position and watched Finn's disappearing form.

"He must be the dog that's wanted, all right; reg'ler monster, I'm blessed if he isn't. But, takin' one thing with another, I'd just as soon they catched him somewhere else than here. Why, I reckon my missis 'ud have a fit. I don't call it hardly right, myself; not 'avin' 'em that size."

Half an hour later, to his great delight, Finn found himself clear of roads and houses, and on the warm, chalky slopes of the Sussex Downs. These great, smooth, immemorial hills, with their blunt crests, and close-cropped, springy turf, brought a rush of home-feeling into Finn's heart, which made his eyes misty, so that he had to sit down and give vent to two or three long-drawn howls by way of expressing his gentle melancholy. But Finn's nose told him plainly that he had never before been on these particular Downs. And so, good and kindly as this ancient British soil was to him, it brought him no sight of actual home.

Towards evening he coursed and killed another rabbit, eating half of it, and providing, in the other half which he left, a substantial repast for a prowling weasel who followed in his trail.

Something--it may have been merely the fact that the day had not been in any way exhausting like its predecessors--prevented Finn from being inclined to curl down and sleep, when he passed a convenient wheat rick in a valley an hour after his supper. The night was fine and clear, and night life in the open, with its many mysterious rustlings, bird and animal calls, and other enticing sounds and smells, was beginning to present considerable attractions to Finn. The events of the past few days had aroused all sorts of latent tendencies and inclinations in him; feelings which resembled memories of bygone days in their effects upon him, but yet were not memories of any life that he had known, though they may have been blood memories of the experiences of his forbears. Later on, however, the young Wolfhound began to tire of the freedom of the night, and home-sick longings rose in his heart as he thought of the coach-house and of Kathleen. It was at about this time that Finn fell to walking along a narrow, white sheep-walk, on the side of a big, billowy down, which seemed to him pleasanter and more homely than any of the hills he had traversed that evening. Gradually the track in the chalk deepened and widened a little, until it became a path sunk in the hill-side to a depth of fifteen or twenty feet, and ended in a five-barred gate beside a road. Finn leaped the gate with a strange feeling of exultation in his heart, which made him careless of the sharp pain the leap brought to his side. Something rose in his throat as he reached the road. His eyes became misty, his nose drooped eagerly to the surface of the road, and he whimpered softly as he ran, with tail swaying from side to side, and a great tenderness welling up within him.

Two minutes later he came to a white gate leading to a shrub-sheltered garden before a small, low, rambling little house. He leaped the little gate, and turned sharply to the right in the garden. But then his way was blocked by high doors, set in masonry, which could not possibly be climbed or jumped. Before these gates, which evidently led to the stables and rear of the house, Finn sat down on his haunches. Then he lifted his long muzzle heavenward and howled lugubriously. He continued his howling steadily for about one minute and a half, and at the end of that time a door opened behind him in the front of the house, and a man clad in pyjamas rushed out into the garden. Finn had studiously avoided men for these two days past now; but, so far from avoiding this man, he rose on his hind-legs to give greeting, and could hardly be induced to lower his front paws, even when the man in pyjamas had removed his caressing arms from about the Wolfhound's shoulders. The man, you see, was the Master, and three minutes afterwards he was joined by the Mistress of the Kennels. But they were all three in the Master's outside den then with Tara.