_JAN_




I

HOW FINN CAME HOME


Rightly to appreciate Jan's character and parts you must understand
his origin. For this you must go back to the greatest of modern Irish
wolfhounds, Finn; and to the Lady Desdemona, of whom it was said, by
no less an authority than Major Carthwaite, that she was "the most
perfectly typical bloodhound of her decade." And that was in the
fifteenth month of her age, just six weeks before Finn's arrival at
Nuthill.

When the Master was preparing to leave Australia with Finn he said,
"It's 'Sussex by the sea' for us, Finn, boy, in another month or so;
and, God willing, that's where you shall end your days."

Just fourteen weeks after making that remark (and, too, after a deal
more of land and sea travel for Finn than comes into the whole lives
of most hounds) the Master bought Nuthill, the little estate on the
lee of the most beautiful of the South Downs from the upper part of
which one sees quite easily on a clear day the red chimneys and white
gables of the cottage in which Finn was born. But at the time of that
important purchase Finn was lying perdu in quarantine, down in
Devonshire; a melancholy period for the wolfhound, that. The Master