Another of the wild folk that Finn met for the first time in his life during these nine days, and continued to meet on a friendly footing, was a large native porcupine, or echidna. Finn was sniffing one afternoon at what he took to be the opening to a rabbit's burrow, when, greatly to his surprise, Echidna showed up, some three or four yards away, from one of the exits of the same earth. The creature's shock of fretful quills was not inviting, and Finn discovered no inclination to risk touching it with his nose; but, having jumped forward in such a way as to shut Echidna off from his home, they were left perforce face to face for a few moments. During those moments, Finn decided that he had no wish to slay the ant-eating porcupine, and Echidna, for his part, made up his exceedingly rudimentary little mind that Finn was a fairly harmless person. So they sat up looking at one another, and Finn marvelled that the world should contain so curious a creature as his new acquaintance; while Echidna doubtless wondered, in his primitive, prickly fashion, how much larger dogs were likely to grow in that part of the country. Then the flying tail of a bandicoot caught Finn's attention, and the passing that way of an unusually fat bull-dog ant drew Echidna from reflection to business, and the oddly ill-matched couple parted after their first meeting. After this, they frequently exchanged civil greeting when their paths happened to cross in the bush. But, unlike the large majority of Australia's wild folk, Finn was exclusively a carnivorous animal, and this fact rather placed him out of court in the matter of striking up acquaintances in the bush, since meetings with the Wolfhound were apt, as a general thing, to end in that very close form of intimacy which involves the complete absorption of the lesser personality into the greater, not merely figuratively, but physically. Finn might, and frequently did, ask a stray bandicoot, or rabbit, or kangaroo-rat to dinner; but by the time the meal was ended, the guest was no more; and so the acquaintance could never be pursued further. Finn would have been delighted, really, to make friends with creatures like the bandicoot people, and to enjoy their society at intervals--when he was well fed. But the bandicoots and their kind could never forget that they were, after all, food in the Wolfhound's eyes, and it was not possible to know for certain exactly when his appetite was likely to rise within him and claim attention--and bandicoots. Therefore, full or empty, hunting or lounging, Finn was a scourge and an enemy in the eyes of these small folk, and, as such, a person to be avoided at all cost, and at all seasons. [Illustration: Spurring his horse forward.]