TOO LATE
It was doubtless the camp-fire picture which filled the lone
Wolfhound's mind with thoughts of the Master; but, while there is
no suggestion of telepathy about it, it was none the less an odd
coincidence that, at the very hour of Finn's approach to a
camp-fire in the bush, a dozen miles and more to the south-east of
Tinnaburra, the Master should have been approaching the big house
by the harbour outside the capital city, three hundred miles away,
with a mind full of Finn. Yet so it was. And at that moment the
Master's reminiscent thoughts of the Wolfhound were to the full as
affectionate as were Finn's thoughts of him.
The Mistress of the Kennels had more than justified the doctor's
prophecies. Less than a month of life in the mountains had given
her back her old energy and strength. The third week there had
given her also the acquaintance, soon to ripen into friendship, of
a certain squatter's wife, who was spending a few weeks in the
hills with her husband and three children. Before the acquaintance
was a week old the Mistress of the Kennels had been pressingly
invited to make her home with the squatter and his wife at their
station, for a time at all events, in order that she might
supervise the education of the three youngsters, and, also, give
the squatter's wife the benefit of some of her experience in the
rearing of dogs. The Master could have found a minor opening on the
same station, but decided that he could not afford to take up a
life which offered no particular prospect of advancement, and was
confirmed in his decision by an offer that was made to him at this
time to join, in a working capacity, a small prospecting party
which was setting out for a tract of back-block country said to be
extremely rich in gold, copper, and silver. And so, for a time, the
Master and the Mistress had parted company.
Now, while there are many prospectors in Australia who, during a
lifetime of adventurous toil, have never made much more than a
labourer's wage, there are others who have made and lost many
fortunes, to whose credit may be placed a score or more of rich
discoveries, and much wealth enjoyed by other people. The leader of
the Master's party was of this latter class, and less than three
weeks after the outsetting of this particular expedition, the party
had pegged out a considerable number of rich claims. Some of these
claims had been of a kind which admitted of good deal of highly
profitable alluvial working but the majority called for the use of
machinery and the outlay of capital. Accordingly, the party
gathered to themselves such surface gold as was obtainable--the
Master's share came to L260--and then, laden with samples of ore,
returned townward, with a view to selling their claims to mining
capitalists, before starting out upon a second and more protracted
journey. The fascination of the prospector's calling had gripped
the Master strongly, and he gladly agreed to remain a member of the
party. But, in the meantime, having reached the city, he had
determined to pay a visit to Mr. Sandbrook's house, first, that he
might have the satisfaction of seeing Finn again and, secondly, in
order that he might try the effect of a substantial money offer in
the matter of regaining possession of his Wolfhound. And so now
while Finn was thinking of him, in the heart of the wildest part of
the Tinnaburra country, three hundred miles away, the Master strode
up the hill overlooking the city and the harbour, strongly hopeful
that he might soon have the great hound he had bred trotting by his
side.
Mr. and Mrs. Sandbrook were both away from home, but one of the
daughters of the house explained to the Master how, after "sulking
desperately for two whole days," the Wolfhound had basely deserted
his luxurious new home, and never been heard of since. She showed
the Master an advertisement offering a reward of five-and-twenty
pounds for Finn's recovery, and was at some pains to make clear the
indubitable fact that her father had paid very dearly indeed for
the doubtful privilege of possessing for two days a Wolfhound who
had "treated everybody as if they were dirt under his feet." The
Master expressed sympathy in sentences which were meant to be loyal
excuses for Finn; and then he turned and walked back to the city,
heavy at heart for the loss of the great Wolfhound whom he had
loved, and feeling vaguely that the money he had made was not such
a very precious thing after all. He placed the greater part of it
at the disposal of the Mistress of the Kennels, and went back to
his fellow-prospectors.
[Illustration]