Copyright, 1915, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
Published October, 1915

CONTENTS

  1. [HOW FINN CAME HOME]
  2. [NUTHILL AND SHAWS]
  3. [INTRODUCING THE LADY DESDEMONA]
  4. [THE OPEN-AIR CALL]
  5. [DESDEMONA'S WANDERINGS]
  6. [HOW DESDEMONA FOUND HER NEST]
  7. [DESDEMONA FORGETS HER MANNERS]
  8. [FINN IS ENLIGHTENED]
  9. [THE LONE MOTHER]
  10. [FAMILY LIFE—AND DEATH]
  11. [JAN GOES TO NUTHILL]
  12. [SOME FIRST STEPS]
  13. [SAPLING DAYS]
  14. [VWITH REFERENCE TO DICK VAUGHAN]
  15. [JAN'S FIRST FIGHT]
  16. [GOOD-BY TO DICK]
  17. [JAN BEFORE THE JUDGES]
  18. [FIT AS A TWO-YEAR-OLD]
  19. [DISCIPLINE]
  20. [SUSSEX TO SASKATCHEWAN]
  21. [INTRODUCING SOURDOUGH]
  22. [MURDER!]
  23. [THE FIGHT ON THE PRAIRIE]
  24. [PROMOTION]
  25. [JAN GOES ON HIS TRAVELS]
  26. [THE RULE OF TRACE AND THONG]
  27. [MUTINY IN THE TEAM]
  28. [THE FEAST AND THE FASTER]
  29. [THE FIGHT IN THE WOODS]
  30. [REAL LEADERSHIP]
  31. [THE COST OF INCOMPETENCE]
  32. [JAN OBEYS ORDERS AT THE GREAT DIVIDE]
  33. [BACK TO THE TRAIL]
  34. [THE PEACE RIVER TRAIL]
  35. [THE END OF JAN'S LONE TRAIL]
  36. ["SO LONG, JAN!"]
  37. [BACK TO REGINA]
  38. [THE FALL OF SOURDOUGH]
  39. [HOW JAN CAME HOME]

JAN

I

HOW FINN CAME HOME

Rightly to appreciate Jan's character and parts you must understand his origin. For this you must go back to the greatest of modern Irish wolfhounds, Finn; and to the Lady Desdemona, of whom it was said, by no less an authority than Major Carthwaite, that she was "the most perfectly typical bloodhound of her decade." And that was in the fifteenth month of her age, just six weeks before Finn's arrival at Nuthill.

When the Master was preparing to leave Australia with Finn he said, "It's 'Sussex by the sea' for us, Finn, boy, in another month or so; and, God willing, that's where you shall end your days."

Just fourteen weeks after making that remark (and, too, after a deal more of land and sea travel for Finn than comes into the whole lives of most hounds) the Master bought Nuthill, the little estate on the lee of the most beautiful of the South Downs from the upper part of which one sees quite easily on a clear day the red chimneys and white gables of the cottage in which Finn was born. But at the time of that important purchase Finn was lying perdu in quarantine, down in Devonshire; a melancholy period for the wolfhound, that. The Master spent many shipboard hours in discussing this very matter with the Mistress of the Kennels on their passage home from Australia, and he tried hard to find a way out of the difficulty, for Finn's sake. But there it was. You cannot hope to smuggle ashore, even in the most fashionably capacious of lady's muffs, a hound standing thirty-six inches high at the shoulder and weighing nearer two hundred than one hundred pounds. It was a case of quarantine or perpetual exile, and so Finn went into quarantine. But, as you may guess, there were pretty careful arrangements made for his welfare.