If a tramp on the road carried a big stick, that fact would not deter Jan from trotting up to make the man's acquaintance, whereas Finn, without introduction, never went within reach of any stranger with any amiable intent. Again, if any person at all, with the exception of Betty, the Master, or the Mistress, approached Finn when he was in a recumbent position, he would invariably rise to his feet. Jan would loll at full length right across a footpath when he felt like taking his ease, even to the point of allowing people to step across his body. On the strength of a ten minutes' acquaintance he would go to sleep with his head under your foot, if it chanced that he was sleepy at the time.
Yet, for all his trustfulness, Jan probably growled a score of times or more for every one that Finn growled, and no doubt barked more often in a day than Finn barked in a month. Jan hunted with joyous bays; Finn in perfect silence. Jan trusted everybody and observed folk—when they interested him and he felt like observing. Finn, without necessarily mistrusting anybody, observed everybody watchfully and trusted only his proven friends. Jan, in his eagerness for praise and commendation, sought these from any one. Finn would not seek praise even from the Master, and was gratified by it only when it came from a real friend.
By the same token Finn was far more sensitive to spoken words than Jan. It was not once in three months that the Master so much as raised or sharpened his voice in speaking to Finn. If Finn were verbally reproached by a member of the household, one saw his head droop and his eyes cloud. Jan would wag his tail while being scolded, even vehemently, and five minutes later would require a second call, and in a sharp tone, before turning aside from an interesting scent or a twig in the path.
Withal, Jan's faults, such as they were, were no more seriously objectionable than the faults of a well-bred, high-spirited, good-hearted English school-boy. Finn's disposition was knightly; but it was the disposition of a tried and veteran knight and not of a dashing young gallant. Under his thick black-and-gray coat Jan did carry a few scars, so shrewdly had Grip's fangs done their work; but life had hardly marked him as yet; certainly he carried none of life's scars. Also, good and sound as his heart was, clean and straight though he was by nature, he never had that rare and delicate courtliness which so distinguished his sire among hounds. Even Desdemona, great lady that she undoubtedly was, had not the wolfhound's grave courtesy. Neither had Jan. He was more bluff. The bloodhound in him made him look solemn at times; but he was not naturally a grave person at all.
On the other hand, Jan was no longer a puppy. The hardening and furnishing process would continue to improve his physique till after the end of his second year; but he had definitely laid aside puppyhood in his eighteenth month and had a truly commanding presence. He was three inches lower at the shoulder than his sire—the tallest hound in England—yet looked as big a dog because built on slightly heavier lines. He had the wolfhound's fleetness, but with it much of the massy solidity of the bloodhound. His chest was immensely deep, his fore legs, haunches, and thighs enormously powerful. And the wrinkled massiveness of his head, like the breadth of his black saddle, gave him the appearance of great size, strength, and weight.
As a fact he scaled one hundred and sixty-four pounds on his second birthday, and that was eight pounds heavier than his sire; a notable thing in view of the fact that he was in no way gross and carried no soft fat, thanks to the many miles of downland he covered every day of his life in hunting with Finn and walking with Betty Murdoch.
Taking him for all in all, Jan was probably as finely conditioned and developed a hound as any in England when he reached his second birthday, and it is hardly likely that a stronger hound could have been found in all the world. It may be that for hardness and toughness and endurance he might have found his master without much difficulty; for hardship begets hardihood, and Jan had known no hardship as yet. But at the end of his second year he was a very splendid specimen of complete canine development, and, by reason of his breeding, easily to be distinguished from all other hounds.
And then, two months after that second birthday, Dick Vaughan came home on short furlough, a privilege which, as Captain Will Arnutt wrote to Dr. Vaughan, he had very thoroughly earned.