dmitted
by those in authority upon sufferance; in which he had hardly room
to turn and twist his great bulk. The Master's walks abroad at this
time took him principally into offices and places of that sort,
where Finn could not accompany him, and, if it had not been for the
Mistress's good care, the Wolfhound's life would have been dreary
indeed, and without any outdoor exercise. All these matters,
however, Finn could have endured cheerfully enough, by reason of
the content that filled his mind when the Master was by, and the
anticipations that possessed him while he waited for the Master's
return. But the thing that sapped Finn's spirits and vitality was
his consciousness of the growing weight of unhappiness and anxiety
and distress which possessed the Master. Finn knew by the manner in
which his friend sat down when he entered the poor little lodging
at night, that things had gone evilly during the day. The touch of
his friend's hand on his head, languid and inert, told the
Wolfhound much; and the nightly messages which reached his
understanding were increasingly depressing. He did not understand
the Master's explanations to the Mistress of how he had been
swindled here, turned away in the other place, and misled by such
and such a person. But he did realize very keenly the effects of
these things, and the distress they produced.

But this little party of strangers in a strange land had not
reached the end of the long train of misfortunes with which the new
world tested them before making them free of its bounty. The climax
of several long-drawn months of unhappiness came to them in the
form of serious illness for the Mistress of the Kennels, which, for
weeks, prevented the Master from seeking any further to better his
fortunes. At the end of a month, in which the Master and Finn
plumbed unsuspected deeps of misery, the Mistress, white and wan,
and desperately shaky, left her bedroom for the tiny sitting-room
which Finn could almost span when he stretched his mighty frame.
(He measured seven feet six and a quarter inches now, from nose-tip
to tail-tip; and when he stood absolutely erect he could just reach
the top of a door six feet six inches high with his fore-paws.) And
there the Mistress sat, and smiled weakly, as she bade the Master
go out to take the air and walk with Finn. By her way of it, she
was to be quite herself again within a few days, but a fortnight
found her practically no stronger; and the doctor s