In the end, Finn gave a cold bark of displeasure and trotted off into the gathering twilight, leaping the fence and plunging into the bush the moment he had passed the last house of the township. Half an hour later he killed a fat bandicoot, who was engaged at that moment in killing a tiny marsupial mouse. A quarter of an hour after that, Finn lay down beside the ashes of the fire before the gunyah, his kill between his fore-legs. He rested there for a few minutes, and then, tearing off its furry skin in strips, devoured the greater part of the bandicoot before settling down for the night; as much, that is, as he ever did settle down, these days. His eyes were not often completely closed; less often at night, perhaps, than in the daytime. But he dozed now, out there in the clear patch where the gunyah stood, free of all thoughts of men and cages. And the bush air seemed sweeter than ever to him to-night after his brief stay in the man-haunted township. [Illustration] CHAPTER XXIII THE OUTCAST For nine consecutive days and nights Finn continued to regard the empty gunyah in the clear patch as his home, to eat there, and to rest there, beside the ashes of the fire, or in the shadow of the shanty itself. And still Jess and her man came not, and the Wolfhound was left in solitary possession. Once, when the heat of the day was past, Finn trotted down the trail to the township, and peered long and earnestly through the dog-leg fence in the direction of the "First Nugget." But he saw no trace of Jess or her man; and, for his part, he was glad to get back to the clear patch again, and to take his ease beside the gunyah. He had recently struck up a more than bowing acquaintance with the koala that he had once dragged through a quarter of a mile of scrub to the gunyah, and was now in the habit of meeting this quaint little bear nearly every day. For his part, Koala never presumed to make the slightest advance in Finn's direction, but he had come to realize that the great Wolfhound wished him no harm, and, though his conversation seldom went beyond plaintive complainings and lugubrious assertions of his own complete in offensiveness, Finn liked to sit near the little beast occasionally, and watch his fubsy antics and listen to his plaint. Koala was rather like the Mad Hatter that Alice met in Wonderland; he was "a very poor man," by his way of it; and, though in reality rather a contented creature, seemed generally to be upon the extreme verge of shedding tears.