been bared to the knife that was between
Grip's killing jaws.

In the beginning of Jan's first fight Finn had been dreaming of a hunt
in the Australian bush. Once or twice, as David Crumplin cursed and
ranted in the lane, Finn's dark ears had twitched as though in
semi-consciousness of the trouble. Later, as Jan had snarlingly roared
in his fourth or fifth attack, his sire's brown eyes had opened wide and
he had lain a moment with ears pricked and head well up, at Betty's
feet. And then with a long, formidable growl he had leaped for the
porch. Half a dozen great bounds took him through the garden. A leap
which hardly broke his stride carried him across the iron fence into the
orchard, and a score of strides from there brought him to the
hedge-side. The hedge was six feet high here. In the lane, which lay
low, it was ten feet high. There was a gate twenty yards away. Finn
scorned this and went soaring through the bramble-ends at the top of the
hedge, and thence, a bolt of fire from the blue, to Grip's shoulders.

There was that in Finn's preliminary growl which told Betty serious
things were toward. She dared not try to walk; but she shouted to the
Master, and he very speedily was in the orchard upon Finn's trail.

A Fellow of the Royal Society, with a score of letters after his name
and a reputation in two hemispheres, stitched the worst of Jan's wounds
that morning, on the couch in the Master's study. Even Dr. Vaughan could
not replace the missing section of Jan's right ear; but, short of that,
he made a most masterly job of the repairs. And all the while wise, gray
old Finn sat erect on his haunches beside the writing-table, looking on
approvingly, and reflecting, no doubt, upon the prowess of the youngster
who had caused all this pother.

XVI

GOOD-BY TO DICK

On a day in February, Dr. Vaughan and his son Dick ate their dinner at
Nuthill, and spent most of the evening there, around the hall fire. On
the flanks of the big recessed fireplace, one on either side, Finn and
Jan lay stretched, dozing happily. Jan's wounds were long since healed
now, and the rapid growth of his thick coat had already gone far toward
hiding the scars, though it could not quite mask the fact that a piece
of his right ear was missing. Jan was more than eight months old now,
and scaled just over a hundred and twenty pounds.

Late in the evening Dick Vaughan (who had honorably held to his pact
with the Master where Betty Murdoch