ong
down the steep slope outside, grunting and growling the while (instead
of whimpering, as his sister would have done), and threatening the whole
South Downs with his displeasure. With never a hint of anything to fill
the place of the much-discussed attribute we call filial instinct in the
young of human kind, the black-and-gray pup conceived the greatest
admiration for his father. But it was little he recked of fatherhood and
he always vigorously challenged Finn's entry to the cave, which he
regarded as his property and his mother's. Her authority he was, of
course, obliged to recognize, and, too, he liked her well. But though he
recognized Desdemona's authority, he disputed it a dozen times a day,
and made a brave show of resistance every time he was washed.

His little sister was his abject slave, and if in her slow
peregrinations about the cave she should stumble upon a scrap of
anything edible, he would promptly roll her over with one of his
exaggeratedly podgy front paws and snatch the morsel from her without
the slightest compunction. In the same way he would chase her from teat
to teat when they both were nursing, and when full-fed himself would
ruthlessly scratch and tug at his mother's aching flanks from sheer
boisterous wantonness. At such times he would climb about her hollow
sides, holding on by his sharp claws, and scratch and chew her huge
pendulous ears, rarely meeting with any more serious check or rebuke
than a low, rumbling hint of a maternal growl, which, as a matter of
fact, alarmed his little sister more than it impressed him. In fact,
Master Black-and-Gray was a healthily thriving and insolent young cub,
who enjoyed every minute of his life and gave every promise of growing
into a big hound--providing he should chance to escape the
thousand-and-one pitfalls that lay before him, regarding the whole of
which his ignorance was, of course, complete.

The greatest adventure of his infancy came when he was just twenty-eight
days old. The time was late afternoon on a warm day. Having thrust his
sister out from the coolest innermost corner of the cave, the
black-and-gray pup had curled himself up there, and was sleeping
soundly, while his sister lay somewhat nearer the opening of the cave.
Had the weather been less warm, the black-and-gray pup would have used
his sister as a pillow, a blanket, or a mattress, and in that case the
adventure might have ended differently. As it was, his dream fancies
were