unhappily in
a poky London lodging with his friends; and on the third day, he
walked with the Master to a railway station, while the Mistress of
the Kennels drove in a cab with a mountain of baggage. Finn was not
allowed in the carriage with his friends, but had to travel in a
van full of boxes and bags, with a rough but amiable man whose coat
had shiny buttons, and whose attitude toward Finn was one of
respectful and distant deference.

Some time before this, Finn had come to the conclusion that they
were all going to a Dog Show; and, remembering vividly a Great Dane
who had snarled viciously at him in the last show he had visited
during the middle of the summer (when, as on each other occasion of
his being exhibited, he had been awarded first prize in each class
for which he was eligible), he decided that he would adopt a
killing demeanour and stand no nonsense at all. Four or five months
ago, at the time of this last show, the Dane's fang-bearing snarl
had made him shudder. To-day he would have rather welcomed it than
otherwise, and returned it with interest.

After walking some fifty or sixty yards from the train, among a
great crowd of people and baggage, Finn, with the Master, entered
what he supposed was the show building. The chief reason, by the
way, of his conviction that he was bound for a show, lay in the
fact that a long, bright steel chain was attached to his best green
collar, with its brass name-plate bearing Finn's name and the
Master's. The odd thing about this show building, however, was that
there appeared to be only two other dogs in it, besides Finn; one a
collie, and one an Irish terrier, whose head, so far as its shape
went, was a tiny miniature of Finn's own head. In colour, however,
the terrier reminded him rather of the big fox he had slain. Finn
found these two dogs--both, of course, unimportant small fry, from
his lofty standpoint--each chained to the front part of a barrel
half filled with straw; and that seemed to the Wolfhound an
extremely odd kind of show bench. But the bed to which Finn himself
was chained was a good deal more like the kind he had seen before
at shows, in that it was a flat bench, well strawed, and a good
foot above the floor level; but it had solid wooden sides and roof,
so that, while he lay on it, Finn could not see the other dogs,
unless by craning his head round the corner. And before he left,
the Master fixed up some wirework before the bench, so as to shut
F