It is the greatest mistake in the world to suppose that an animal like Finn has no imagination. Indeed, the animals which have no imagination are comparatively few; while such an Irish Wolfhound as Finn has, at the least, as much of it as some men the writer has known. A fiery picture of the issues at stake was floating in Finn's mind as he crept in and out among the tents and wagons of the enclosure: and he was conscious neither of wounds, or weakness, or stiffness; but only of his great resolve, based upon the wonderful chance that had come to him. Once he came to a place where ten feet of brilliant moonlight lay between the black shadow he occupied and the next. He paused for a moment or two, looking about him upon every side with all the cunning of the truly wild kindred; and then, with a very good imitation of the lightness and elasticity of other, happier days, he sprang clear from the one shadow to the other, landing as delicately and silently as a cat, though the impact jarred all his stiffened joints, and touched, as with living fire, every one of his almost innumerable wounds. Then he came to the outer canvas wall of the big enclosure. It was too high to jump, a good twelve feet. An attempt to jump and scramble over it might have led to noise. Finn approached it in the deep shadow cast by a caravan wagon, and, thrusting his muzzle underneath the canvas, midway between two stakes, easily forced it up, and crawled under it into the open. When he was half-way out, the boss's fox-terrier gave one sleepy half-bark, too languid and indifferent a sound to be taken as a warning; and for the rest, complete silence paid tribute to the extreme deftness of Finn's passage through the sleeping camp. But that low, sleepy bark from the fox-terrier who slept beside the boss's own caravan, served to stop the beating of Finn's heart for one long moment. In the next moment, almost as silently as a passing cloud shadow, the great Wolfhound streaked across the thirty yards of moonlit paddock which divided the camp from the ring-barked bush, and melted away among that crowded assembly of tree ghosts. The barbed wire fence of the paddock was no more than four feet high, and this Finn took in his stride, without appreciable pause.