his nostrils, no matter
how ordered and humanized his days at Nuthill; just as consciousness of
human cruelty and the torture of imprisonment had been burned into his
memory and nature, indelibly as though branded there by the hot irons of
the circus folk in New South Wales. Finn adapted himself perfectly to
the life of the household at Nuthill, and with ease. Had he not a
thousand years of royal breeding in his veins? But he never forgot the
wild. He never forgot his days of circus imprisonment as a wild beast.
He never for one instant reverted to the gaily credulous attitude toward
mankind which had helped the dog-stealers to kidnap him after the first
great triumph of his youth, when he defeated all comers, from puppy and
novice to full-fledged champion, and carried off the blue riband of his
year at the Crystal Palace. Well-mannered he would always be; but in
these later days his attitude toward all humans, and most animal folk
outside his own household, was characterized by a gravely alert and
watchful kind of reserve. As the Master once said, in talking on his
homeward way to England of that dog-stealing episode of the wolfhound's
salad days:

"It would take a tough and wily old thief to tempt Finn across a
garden-path nowadays, with the best doctored meat ever prepared. And as
for really getting away with him--well, they're welcome to try; and I
fancy they'd get pretty well all they deserve from old Finn, without the
law's assistance."

Betty Murdoch--round-figured, rosy, high-spirited, a great lover of out
of doors, and aged now twenty-two--had been much exercised in her mind
as to what Finn would think of her, when he arrived at Nuthill, after
the long railway journey from Plymouth. She had seen the wolfhound only
once before, when she was somewhat less grown-up and he was still in
puppyhood, before the visit to Australia. The Master, who went specially
to Plymouth to fetch Finn, said Betty must expect a certain reserve at
first in the wolfhound's attitude.

"He can't possibly remember you, of course, and, nowadays, he is not
effusive, not very ready to make new friends."

The Mistress of the Kennels, on the other hand--she still was spoken of
as "the Mistress," though at Nuthill there never were any
kennels--insisted that Finn would know perfectly well that Betty was one
of the family; as, of course, he did. Apart from her physical
resemblance to her aunt, Betty had very many of the Mistress's little
way