"If that great brute had not obliged us to feed so hurriedly, _this_ wouldn't have happened!" a mother bandicoot thought, as she gazed out tremulously from her den under a rotten log upon the specks of hair and blood which marked the spot where, a few moments before, that fine strapping young fellow, her only son, had been busily chewing grubs. For another three days Finn continued in his old hunting-ground, and during the whole of that time he had to content himself with a diet consisting exclusively of rabbit meat. Indeed, during the last couple of days he found that even the despised rabbit required a good deal of careful stalking, so deeply had the fear and hatred of the Wolfhound penetrated into the minds and hearts of that particular wild community. If it had not been for the rabbits' incorrigible habit of forgetting caution during the hours of twilight and daybreak, Finn might have gone hungry altogether. Apart from their hatred and resentment, the wild people of that range felt that the giant's madness might return to him at any moment, and that for this reason alone it would be unsafe to permit of any relaxation in their attitude towards him. On the fourth evening, with a rather sad heart, Finn turned his back on the familiar trails, and hunted west and by south from the little gully in which he slept, heading toward the back ranges and the stony foot of Mount Desolation, that is. For a mile or more, even in this direction, he found that his evil fame preceded him, and no good hunting came his way. But presently a flanking movement to the eastward was rewarded by a glimpse of a fat wallaby-hare, which Finn stalked with the most exquisite patience, till he was able to spring upon it with a snap of his great jaws that gave instantaneous and everlasting sleep. Finn carried this fat kill back to his den, and feasted right royally that night for the first time since he was expelled from the purlieus of the gunyah and the easy-going old life. These few days had changed the Wolfhound a good deal. He walked the trails now with far less of gracious pride and dignity, and more of eager, watchful stealth than he had been wont to use. He walked more silently, he stalked more carefully, and sprang more swiftly, and bit more fiercely. He was no longer the amateur of the wild life, but an actual part of it, and subject to all its laws and customs.