And then the Master would say something about the Mistress of the Kennels, and Finn would beat the deck with his thirty-inch tail, which was as thick and strong at its roots as a man's arm. Or perhaps, if the weather were calm as well as fine, the Mistress herself would come along and join them, seated in a low deck chair; and then, though Finn's eyes would take on a momentarily anxious look if her hand touched the Master, he would yet be very happy, stretched out between them, with the half of one dark eye to spare for one of them, and his whole big heart shining out upon the Master in the gaze which held his head always turned the one way. Just as something always seems to strike a balance in the affairs of men-folk, so the gods who watch over the affairs of Finn's kind are wont to provide compensations. For months, before this sea voyage, Finn's whole being had been absorbed by the interests of the half-tame wild, in the country beside the Sussex Downs. Dreaming and waking, the hunt had held his thoughts, and solitary roaming had been his delight. Here aboard the great steamer he was suddenly and completely cut off from all these things; but something else had come to take possession of his active nature, his busy mind, his growing heart; and the great love of the Master which grew in him now effectually shut out anything like regret for the old life, by making the new life all-sufficing and more compact of interest, of satisfying fullness, than ever the home life had been at its best. If it had not been for this remarkable development of Finn's character which was brought about by his confinement on board a ship with the Master, he would never have played the part he did in what was really the most important event of his life up till this time; and one, too, which taught the Master a good deal, regarding his own relationship to the great Wolfhound he had bred. It all happened on a Sunday morning when, the weather being very hot, the captain held service on the upper deck, under awnings, of course. Half a dozen children were allowed, during the latter part of the service, to withdraw, and play quietly by themselves, twenty yards away from the last row of chairs occupied by the congregation. At one end of this last row the Master sat, with Finn beside him on the deck. Among the children, one, a curly-headed rascal of a boy named Tim, aged eight, was everybody's favourite, and the leader of the rest in most kinds of mischief. Exactly how he managed it was never rightly understood, but when the piercing sound of a childish scream smote upon the Master's ears, through the droning periods of the captain's read sermon, Tim was in mid-air, half-way between the ship's rail and the sea, and the other children were staring, horror-stricken, at the place he had occupied a moment before, with his chubby arms about the stem of a boat's davit, and his brown legs astride the rail.