When their relations had grown temperately fond and familiar they took to the western trail together, and presently Warrigal "pointed" a big bandicoot for Finn, and Finn, delighted to exhibit his prowess, stalked and slew the creature with a good deal of style. Then the two fed together, Finn politely yielding the hind-quarters to his inamorata. And then they lay and licked and nosed, and chatted amicably for an hour. After this, Warrigal rose and stretched her handsome figure to its full length--there was not a white hair about her, nor any other trace of cross-breeding--her nose pointing west and by south a little, for the back ranges, whence she came. When she trotted sedately off in that direction Finn followed her as a matter of course, though he had never been this way before. There were no longer any ties which bound him to his old hunting-ground. It was not in nature to spare a thought for lugubrious Koala or prickly Echidna, when Warrigal waved her bushy tail and trotted on before. Finn had never before been appealed to by the scent of any of the wild people, but there was a subtle atmosphere about Warrigal's thick red-brown coat which drew him to her strongly. [Illustration] CHAPTER XXV MATED Finn knew the life of his own range pretty well, and was more familiar with the life of the wild generally than any other hound of his race has been for very many generations. Yet, when he contentedly took up the back-blocks trail with Warrigal, after their supper together upon the bandicoot he had slain, Finn was absolutely and entirely ignorant of the life of the world in which the handsome dingo had spent her days and attained her high position as the acknowledged belle and beauty of her range. One hour afterwards, however, he knew quite a good deal about it. Possibly from a sense of gallantry, or it may have been because the trail was a new one to him, Finn trotted slightly behind his mate, his muzzle about level with her flank. His great bulk was less noticeable now in relation to the size of his companion, partly by reason of the coquettish pride which puffed out Warrigal's fine coat and the lofty way in which she pranced along, and partly because Finn had now adopted his usual trailing deportment and exaggerated it a little, owing to his being on a strange trail. He went warily, with hind-quarters carried well under him ready for springing, and that suggestion of tenseness about his whole body which made it actually, as well as apparently, lower to the ground than when he stood erect. As for Warrigal, she trod a home trail, and one in which she was accustomed to meet with deferential treatment from all and sundry. The law of her race prevented a male dingo from attacking her, and no female in that countryside would have cared to face Warrigal in single combat.