vering he would long ago have been killed by some wild
creature. In the instant of Finn's move towards him the Professor
took a quick step forward and, with a growling shout of "Down,
Wolf!" smote Finn fairly across the head with the red-hot end of
his iron bar, so that pungent smoke arose. One portion of the
red-hot surface of the iron caught Finn's muzzle, causing him exquisite
pain; pain of a sort he had never known before. At the moment of
the blow, a terrific snarling roar came from the tiger's cage. Half
blinded, wholly maddened, dimly connecting this strange new agony
that bit into him with the tiger's roar, Finn sprang at the
Professor with a snarl that was itself almost a roar. The red-hot
bar met him in mid-air, biting deep into the soft skin of his lips,
furrowing his beautiful neck, and stinging the tip of one silken
ear. The pain was terrible; the smell of his own burnt flesh and
hair was maddening; the deadly implacability of the attack, coming
from a man, too, was baffling beyond description. Finn howled, and
sank abruptly upon his haunches, giving the Professor time for a
flying glance of pride in the direction of the admiring John L.
Rutherford.

And now, had he been really a wild beast, Finn would probably have
remained cowering as far as possible from that terrible bar of
fire. Even as it was, he might have done this if the Professor had
not made the mistake of raising the bar again, with a suddenly
threatening motion. Finn had greater reasoning power, and greater
strength of will, than a wild beast. He was robbed of all restraint
by his surroundings and by the Professor's absolute and crushing
reversal of all his preconceived notions of the relations between
man and hound. The snarl of the tiger in his ears, the smell of his
own burnt flesh in his nostrils, the pitilessness of the
Professor's wholly unexpected attack, filled him with a tumultuous
fury of warring instincts which generations of inherited docility
were powerless to overcome. But, through it all, he was more
capable of thought than a really wild beast, and, as the hot iron
was lifted the third time, he leaped in under it like lightning,
and with a roar of defiance brought its wielder to the ground, and
planted both fore-feet upon his chest, while the iron bar fell
clattering from the man's hand between the bars of the cage.

Be it remembered that Finn stood a foot higher at the shoulder than
the average wolf, and weighed fully twice a