After four days of this sort of life, during practically every hour of which Finn was learning bush-craft from Jess, and learning at a great rate for the reason that his intelligence was of a higher order than that of the kangaroo-hound, while his hunting instincts came to him from an older and more direct line of inheritance, the Wolfhound began to feel almost as thoroughly at home in the bush as he had felt on his own hunting-ground in Sussex. But, rather curiously perhaps, he advanced hardly at all in the intimacy of his relations with Bill. In a sense, outwardly at all events, Bill was more closely allied to Sam and the Professor, and to other people of the Southern Cross Circus, than to the Master, or to humans Finn had known at all intimately before. The Wolfhound was conscious that the boundary-rider was friendly; but, on the other hand, he had points in common with the circus people, whose doings had burned right into Finn's very soul; and, in any case, Finn saw no particular reason for taking further risks where this man was concerned. It was extremely pleasant to lie near the camp-fire with Jess of a night, and to run with Jess in the bush by day; but nothing would induce Finn to approach the gunyah more nearly, or to allow Bill's hand to come within a yard of him. The possibility, however remote, of confinement, of torture behind iron bars, was something he could not bring himself to trifle with.
As for Bill, he seemed content. Finn brought rabbits to the camp every day, with occasional bandicoots, and in the evening, sometimes, a kangaroo-rat. And, more than once, Bill took these kills from him, through Jess, and boiled them before giving them to the hounds to eat. In this he was doubtless moved by friendly thought for the dogs' welfare, since these little creatures, and more especially the rabbits, are often inhabited by parasites of a kind most harmful to dogs. Bill never thought of making any use of the over-plentiful supply of rabbits for the replenishment of his own larder. He regarded rabbits as English people regard rats, and would never have eaten them while any other kind of meat was available. And, as Finn found later, the same pronounced distaste for rabbit's flesh holds good, not alone among the men-folk of the country, but with practically all its wild folk, also; even the highly carnivorous and fierce native cat paying no heed to bunnies as game.