ound once more, and all his wounds and bruises were healed, though
a light-coloured scar remained, and would remain on his muzzle,
where the dog-stealer's stick had bitten into the bone. If it had
come nine months earlier, such an experience would have been bad
indeed, for sets-back in puppyhood are hard to make up. But at
fifteen months Finn had as perfect a physical foundation to go upon
as any living creature could have. He was fortified against
physical ills as few animals can be; his system lacked nothing that
makes for resisting power; he had attained his full growth without
having known a day's illness, and his reserve strength was
enormous.

And now came a long and rather severe winter, in which no evil
thing befell Finn, and the process of "furnishing" went on in him
with never a hitch of any sort, and in circumstances that could not
possibly have been more favourable. All day long he drank in the
heartiest air in England; on every day he had ample exercise and
ample food, and when young summer of the next year brought him to
his second birthday, Finn scaled 149 lbs., and his shoulder bones
just skimmed the under side of the measuring standard at thirty-six
inches. Hard measurement brought him within an eighth of an inch of
the yard, and it was fair to say that, favourably measured,
standing well up, he did reach full thirty-six inches at the
shoulder.

Remember that, when his head was inclined upward, the tip of his
nose would be more than a foot higher than his shoulder. With all
four feet on the floor, he could rest his nose on a window-ledge
that was exactly four feet high. His eyes, and shaggy brows and
beard, like the tip of his tail, were dark as night; there were
some extra dark hairs at his hocks, fetlocks and shoulder blades;
and all the rest of Finn was of a hard, steely grey brindle colour;
the typical wolf colour of northern climes, very steely, and with
odd suggestions about it of ghostly fleetness, of great speed and
enduring strength. His fore-legs were straight as gun-barrels, his
knees flat as the palm of your hand; his feet hard, close, round,
and rather cat-like, save that his claws were more like chisels,
black, and hard, and strongly curved. His hind-legs, on the other
hand, were finely curved, with swelling rolls of muscle in the
upper thighs. The first or upper thighs were very long and strong,
curving sharply out to hocks that were well let down, and without a
hint of turn inward or