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Updated: June 15, 2025
He saw the great, gray, lordly Finn pacing gravely beside the Master and Betty Murdoch on the Downs at Nuthill; himself trotting to and fro between Betty and the noble hound that sired him. He heard Dick Vaughan's long, throbbing whistle, and then the old familiar call: "Jan, boy! Ja an!"
And it happened in this wise: Colonel Forde, of Shaws, which, as you may know, lies just across the green shoulder of Down from Nuthill its fault is that the house is reached only by the westering sun, while Nuthill's windows catch the first morning rays on one side and hold some of any sunshine there may be the day through wrote, saying that he had heard of Finn's arrival, and would the Master come across to luncheon with the Mistress and Miss Murdoch, and bring the wolfhound.
And that was in the fifteenth month of her age, just six weeks before Finn's arrival at Nuthill. When the Master was preparing to leave Australia with Finn he said, "It's 'Sussex by the sea' for us, Finn, boy, in another month or so; and, God willing, that's where you shall end your days."
"And if all goes well, he will be as strong a hound as any in England; won't he, Betty? You'll see to that." "I will if you'll help to keep us going the right way," said Betty, smiling at the Master. And so, directly after an early breakfast, the Nuthill party drove to the station, with Jan on the floor of the wagonette and Finn pacing easily beside it.
He will make a wonderful dog, that, unless I'm greatly mistaken. Well, now I must get over to Shaws and let them know about Desdemona. I dare say the Colonel will want to come back with me to see the bitch; so I'll ask him to have dinner with us." As the event proved, the Nuthill family and Colonel Forde spent most of the evening in that loose box.
"Wouldn't Dick Vaughan have been proud of him!" said the Master. And when Betty nodded her excited assent, he added: "I'll tell you what, we'll send him a cable." And so it was that, a few hours later, a trooper in the Regina Barracks of the R.N.W.M. Police, five thousand miles away, read, with keen delight, this message: Greeting from Nuthill. Jan won first prize any variety class Brighton.
Across the Downs' shoulder there was Desdemona; and he was free, save for the ties of affection stronger these than any dog-chain which bound him to the Nuthill folk. And as for Desdemona; owing to what many fanciers would have regarded as the reprehensible eccentricity of the owner of Shaws, Desdemona was almost as free as Finn.
This process ended, the two hounds turned and, with many friendly nudges and shoulder-rubbings, proceeded up the meadow together in the wake of the Nuthill party, toward the house of Shaws. One cannot translate precisely Finn's remark to Desdemona at the end of the examination, but the sense of it was probably something of this sort: "Yes, you are all right. I like you. Let's be friends."
But Colonel Forde's references to Othello well, it was all so much puppy talk, just amiable, meaningless nickering to Finn and Desdemona. That evening, while the Master and his folk were dining at Nuthill, Finn arose from a nap in the hall and, strolling out through the garden, loped easily away across the shoulder of Down betwixt Shaws and Nuthill to visit Desdemona.
Bates sighed, but the Colonel agreed; and very little was said about it when, a few days later, Desdemona passed out beyond the ken of her friends at Shaws and Nuthill, and for the time was seen no more.
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