hat disturbed him a good deal. He wanted no dealings of any
kind with man. But there was nothing else in him just then which
was quite so strong or peremptory as the craving for food and
drink; and so, with ears pricked, and hackles uneasily lifting, he
padded along at the true wolf gait, which devours distance without
much suggestion of fleetness.

When night fell the trail was very warm and fresh, and a quarter of
an hour later a light breeze brought news to the pack of a fire not
far ahead. This, again, brought pictures to Finn's mind of the
encampment from which he had been driven with burning faggots. He
smelled again the singeing of his own coat, and that gave him
recollection of his time of torture and captivity in the circus.
The pack advanced at a foot-pace now, and with the extreme of
caution. A few minutes more brought them within full view of a
camp-fire, beside which there were stretched, in attitudes eloquent
of both dejection and fatigue, two men and a dog; the latter a
large, gaunt fox-terrier. For the last ten miles of their trailing
the pack had been passing through country which supported a certain
amount of timber, and of the curious Australian scrub which seems
to be capable of existence--a pale, bloodless sort of life, but yet
existence--in the most arid kind of soil, and where no moisture can
be discovered. The men had lighted their fire beneath a twisted,
tortured-looking tree, in which there certainly was no life, for
every vestige of its bark had gone from it, and its limbs were
naked as the bones of any skeleton.

The pack drew in as closely as their cover in the scrub permitted,
and crouched, watching the camp-fire. Suddenly, a movement on the
part of one of them attracted the attention of the fox-terrier, and
he flew out into the scrub, barking furiously. The pack, in
crescent formation, retreated perhaps a dozen paces, saliva
trickling from their curling lips. The terrier plunged valiantly
forward, hopping the first low bushes, as a terrier will when
rabbiting or ratting. It was Black-tip who pinned him to the earth,
and Warrigal whose fangs next closed upon his body. But Finn
smashed the terrier's body in half; and, in an instant, the
snarling pack surged over the remains. By the time one of the men
had risen and moved forward towards the line of scrub, there
positively was not a hair of the dog uneaten. His collar lay there
on the ground, between two bushes. For the rest, every particl