'm
blessed if he isn't. But, takin' one thing with another, I'd just
as soon they catched him somewhere else than here. Why, I reckon my
missis 'ud have a fit. I don't call it hardly right, myself; not
'avin' 'em that size."

Half an hour later, to his great delight, Finn found himself clear
of roads and houses, and on the warm, chalky slopes of the Sussex
Downs. These great, smooth, immemorial hills, with their blunt
crests, and close-cropped, springy turf, brought a rush of home-feeling
into Finn's heart, which made his eyes misty, so that he
had to sit down and give vent to two or three long-drawn howls by
way of expressing his gentle melancholy. But Finn's nose told him
plainly that he had never before been on these particular Downs.
And so, good and kindly as this ancient British soil was to him, it
brought him no sight of actual home.

Towards evening he coursed and killed another rabbit, eating half
of it, and providing, in the other half which he left, a
substantial repast for a prowling weasel who followed in his trail.

Something--it may have been merely the fact that the day had not
been in any way exhausting like its predecessors--prevented Finn
from being inclined to curl down and sleep, when he passed a
convenient wheat rick in a valley an hour after his supper. The
night was fine and clear, and night life in the open, with its many
mysterious rustlings, bird and animal calls, and other enticing
sounds and smells, was beginning to present considerable
attractions to Finn. The events of the past few days had aroused
all sorts of latent tendencies and inclinations in him; feelings
which resembled memories of bygone days in their effects upon him,
but yet were not memories of any life that he had known, though
they may have been blood memories of the experiences of his
forbears. Later on, however, the young Wolfhound began to tire of
the freedom of the night, and home-sick longings rose in his heart
as he thought of the coach-house and of Kathleen. It was at about
this time that Finn fell to walking along a narrow, white sheep-walk,
on the side of a big, billowy down, which seemed to him
pleasanter and more homely than any of the hills he had traversed
that evening. Gradually the track in the chalk deepened and widened
a little, until it became a path sunk in the hill-side to a depth
of fifteen or twenty feet, and ended in a five-barred gate beside a
road. Finn leaped the gate with a strange feeling of e