It was a dream that caused Finn to give that growling bark, and it was a dream of a kind that had been foreign to his breed for generations. He dreamed that he was chasing Matey, in the form of a huge rabbit, armed with a stick. Matey, the rabbit, bounded away from him, just as ordinary rabbits did; but sounds came from Matey's rabbit mouth, and they were the horrid, venomous sounds of the curses with which Matey had followed him that morning in the walled-in yard. In the dream Finn was always on the point of leaping upon the back of rabbit-Matey's neck, with jaws stretched wide for slaughter. But something always intervened to prevent Finn taking the leap. The something was this: at the moment of the leap, Matey always looked more like a man and less like a rabbit, and the instinct which told Finn not to slay a man was a very strong one. But, somehow, rabbit-Matey seemed an exception. Finn was very anxious to feel the crunching of his shoulder and neck bones; and altogether it was unfortunate that such a dream should have been inspired in the brain of so nobly born a hound. When Finn finally woke he gaped right in the eye of the setting sun, and all about him was the solemn silence of a fine October twilight. He yawned cavernously, and, raising his haunches, stretched his huge trunk from fore-paws placed far out. But, in the midst of the stretch, he gave a little smothered yelp of pain, and came to earth again, solicitously licking at the ribs of his right side. Matey's heavy boot had done great execution there. Slowly, then, Finn rose, and walked out into the darkening twilight of the field. Before he had covered a hundred yards, a rabbit started up from behind a bush, and scurried hedgewards for its life. But the distance was too great for bunny by three yards, and Finn's jaws snapped his backbone in sunder within six feet of his own burrow. This was hard on the rabbit; but it was no more than one tiny instance of the outworking of Nature's most inexorable law. Finn had killed many rabbits before this evening; but in the past he had merely obeyed his hunting and killing instinct. Now this instinct in him was sharpened by hunger, by having slept on the open earth, and by being conscious of no human control or protection. Finn proceeded to eat this particular rabbit, and that was distinctly a new experience for him, and one that left him upon the whole pleased with himself. He was not aware of the fact, of course, but this simple act placed him more nearly on terms with his ancestors than anything else he had ever done, unless, perhaps, one counts the dream acts of that afternoon.