thousand pities he could not have carried his milk with him as a morning
draught for Desdemona.)

There was no sign of the bloodhound near the mouth of the cave when Finn
breasted the steep rise it faced. But as he drew nearer there came
sounds from out the cave which, while altogether bewildering in
themselves, did at least indicate Desdemona's presence there. The first
sound to reach him was a hoarse and threatening growl, a quite
unmistakably minatory growl, from the throat of his own mate as she got
her first wind of his, Finn's, approach to the cave he had helped to
make a home. Finn paused for a moment, head raised and ears cocked, to
consider this truly remarkable manifestation. And as he listened, there
issued from the den other small sounds of a totally different kind:
mild, twittering little bleatings; several voices, each weak and thin,
and in some subtle way most curiously appealing to the wolfhound.

Then, in one flash of memory and reason, came vivid understanding of the
whole business; as usual, in the form of a picture, Finn saw again, from
that sun-washed English hill-side, the gaunt, bald foothills around
Mount Desolation. He saw the heat shimmering above the scorched rocks on
which he slew Lupus in open fight, and witnessed the terrible
disintegration of that fighter's redoubtable sire, Tasman, under the
foaming jaws and flashing feet of his own dingo mate, Warrigal. But the
picture did not show Finn any fighting. It showed himself, at the den's
mouth, gazing in upon Warrigal, and Warrigal's curved flank supporting a
little bunch of wolfhound-dingo pups, helpless, blind, new-born, and
cheeping thinly like caged birds. Again came the sound of the small
bleatings from the cave on the South Downs. The Australian picture faded
out from Finn's excited mind, its task accomplished. He knew now; and
into the gentle whining which escaped his throat as he stepped forward