One result was that, within three days of the arrival of the puppies, Desdemona was doing a certain amount of hunting on her own account, especially in the seasons of twilight, both morning and evening.  In her movements she was, of course, infinitely slower than her wolfhound mate.  He could easily have run circles round her when she was traveling at her fastest.  Her sense of smell and tracking ability were immeasurably ahead of Finn’s powers in these directions, and in some countries this would have stood her in good stead.  It was no very great help to her, however, in rabbit-hunting; and many a long and patient tracking ended for Desdemona in nothing more nutritious than a view of her intended quarry disappearing into the security of its earth or burrow while the hungry hunter was still twenty paces distant.  Then, perforce, poor Desdemona would hurry back to her nursing, hungry as when she left it.

If Finn should arrive with food on such an evening or morning, so much the better.  If not—­well, Desdemona gave herself utterly to her puppies.  There was no thought of grievance or complaint in her mind, but only the earnest endeavor to satisfy, so far as she was able, all the calls of her little blind tyrants.  Her will to succeed as a mother was at least equal to that which any creature of the wild could have known.  But her powers of contrivance, her cunning, endurance, and, in short, her command of success, in conditions approximating to those of motherhood in the wild, were necessarily not equal to those of wild-born folk.

For the first time in her life the Lady Desdemona was now living hardly, but it must not be supposed that this meant unhappiness for her.  That would be far from the truth.  The modern hound’s sophisticated ancestry is almost as ancient as that of men-folk; but withal he remains very much nearer in every way to the life of the wild, and can revert to it with far more ease.  There are penalties attaching to the process, however, and even at the time her puppies were born the Lady Desdemona had grown noticeably less sleek than her habit had been at Shaws; just as even a few days of unsheltered life in the woods—­nay, even twenty-four hours without a bedroom—­will make a man or woman notably less sleek.

The fact was that, upon her present diet, at all events, the young bloodhound was not quite equal to the task of nourishing five puppies.  No doubt Nature—­whose wisdom so often is mistaken for ruthlessness by pessimistically inclined observers of the surfaces of things—­had a watchful eye upon Desdemona in her cave.

On the morning of the fifth day of the puppies’ lives Desdemona was out and about before the sun, and her hunting took her somewhat far afield.  While she hunted—­doubtless introducing fear into several rabbit earths, and tragedy into one—­Destiny came knocking at the door of her own cave, and left his sign manual there in letters of blood.  On her homeward way, the half of a young rabbit gripped between her jaws, Desdemona suddenly picked up a fresh trail close to the cave.  In the same instant the half-rabbit fell from her parted jaws and her nose went to earth, while premonition of disaster smote at her heart and all the channeled lines of her forehead deepened.