a recess beside the hearth in the hall at Nuthill Finn found an oaken
platform, or bench, five feet long by two and a half feet wide. It stood
perhaps fifteen inches from the floor, on four stout legs, and its two
ends and back had sides eight inches high. The front was open, and the
bench itself was covered by a 'possum-skin rug.

"This, my friend, is your own bed," said the Master, when he showed the
bench to Finn, after all the household had retired that night. "You've
slept hard, old chap, and you've lived hard, in your time; but when you
want it, there will always be comfort for you here. But you're free, old
chap. You can go wherever you like; still, I'd like you to try this.
See! Up, lad!"

Finn sniffed long and interestedly at the 'possum-rug which had often
covered the Mistress's feet on board ship and elsewhere. Then he stepped
on to the bed and lowered his great bulk gracefully upon it.

"How's that?" asked the Master. And Finn thrust his muzzle gratefully
into the hand he loved. The bed was superlatively good, as a matter of
fact. But when, in the quite early morning hours, the Master opened his
bedroom door, bound for the bath, he found Finn dozing restfully on the
doormat.

So that was the end of the hall bed as a hall bed. That night Finn
found it beside the Master's bedroom door; and there in future he
slept of a night, when indoors at all. But he was allowed perfect
freedom, and there were summer nights he spent in the outer porch and
farther afield than that, including the queer little Sussex slab-paved
courtyard outside the kitchen door, where he spent the better part of
one night on guard over a smelly tramp who, in a moment unlucky for
himself, had decided to try his soft and clumsy hand at burglary. The
gardener found the poor wretch in the morning aching with cramp and
bailed up in a dampish corner by the dust-bin, by a wolfhound who kept
just half an inch of white fang exposed, and responded with a truly
awe-inspiring throaty snarl to the slightest hint of movement on the
tramp's part.

"Six hours 'e's kep' me there, an', bli'me, I'd sooner do six months
quod," the weary tramp explained, when the Master had been roused and
Finn called off.

On the morning of his third day at Nuthill it was that Finn first met
the Lady Desdemona. And it happened in this wise: Colonel Forde, of
Shaws, which, as you may know, lies just across the green shoulder of
Down from Nuthill--its fault is that the hou