d never seen
death till now. He recognized it clearly enough. He knew that Tara
was never going to move again; the instant his sensitive nostrils
touched her still, warm body he knew that. But there had been no
killing. That was what baffled Finn, and struck a kind of terror
into his heart, to lend poignancy to his sorrow. One more look he
gave at his mother's sightless face, this time where it rested on
the crook of the Master's arm, and then he sat down on his
haunches, and with muzzle raised high poured out his grief in the
long-drawn Irish Wolfhound howl; the most melancholy cry in nature.

The Master had looked careworn and weary before he called Tara to
him. It was a very grey, sad face he showed when he rose gently and
bade Finn go into the coach-house and be silent. He had known that
Tara's heart was weak, but this thing that had happened he had
never anticipated, and the nature and circumstances of Tara's death
were such as to move a man deeply. In a sense, her love of the
Master had killed this beautiful hound. Her great love had burst
her heart in sunder, and so she died, the very noble daughter of an
ancient, noble line.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER X

A TRANSITION STAGE

To Finn it seemed that life was never the same after the evening of
Tara's death. He did not know, of course, that changes had been set
afoot during many months before his mother's end came. And in a way
he was right; life never was quite the same for him. Active
changes, toward which the Master's circumstances had been leading
for some time past, began immediately after that strange home-coming which
finally separated Finn from his own kin.

For instance, the Master seemed generally to be away from the house
beside the Downs; and the Mistress of the Kennels seemed always to
be busy, and never to be in playful mood. Days passed without even
one of those gentle runs behind a bicycle to which Finn had grown
accustomed; days during which no one ever spoke to Finn except at
meal-times, and the home seemed strangely silent and deserted. Finn
was always locked up at night, or he would have chosen that time
for hunting expeditions. As it was, however, the long days were his
own, and he grew to devote less and less time out of these days to
the home life. He was not inclined, as his mother had been, to lie
dozing and dreaming for hours together in the outside den. He would
slip through the orchard, and over its gate to the open Downs;