advanced. But the free and healthy life he led, combined with a generous
and correctly thought-out diet, had given him remarkably rapid
development, and the strength to carry it without strain.

At this time Jan had, in outline, assumed his adult appearance. As time
went on he would increase greatly in weight, and to some extent in
height and length. His body would thicken, and his frame would harden
and set; his coat would improve, and his muscles would develop to more
than double their present growth. But in his seventh month one knew what
Jan's appearance was to be; his type had declared itself, and so, to a
considerable extent, had his personality.

There was not a brown hair in Jan's coat; not one hair of any other
color than black or iron-gray. His saddle and haunches were jetty black,
so was the crown of his head. But his muzzle was the right wolfhound
steel-gray. So were his chest, belly, and legs, though the black hairs
crept fairly low down on the outsides of his thighs and hocks, the inner
sides being all hard gray. The gray of his chest extended, like a ruff,
right round the upper part of his neck, forming a break of three or four
inches between the silky blackness of his head and saddle. And all his
coat was thicker, more dense, and longer in the hair than his sire's
coat, which, again, was of course much longer than Desdemona's.

Thus, in color and texture of coat Jan was neither all wolfhound nor all
bloodhound. For the rest, his bodily appearance and build favored his
mother's race more than his father's. The depth and solidity of his head
and muzzle, the length and shape of his ears, the rolling elasticity and
plenitude of his skin and the deep wrinkles it had already formed about
his face, were all features true to bloodhound type, as were also the
thickness and solidity of his frame, the downward poise of his head, and