d associations died down
again and passed into the grave from which they had been resurrected. He
looked at Kiche licking her puppy and stopping now and then to snarl at
him. She was without value to him. He had learned to get along without
her. Her meaning was forgotten. There was no place for her in his
scheme of things, as there was no place for him in hers.

He was still standing, stupid and bewildered, the memories forgotten,
wondering what it was all about, when Kiche attacked him a third time,
intent on driving him away altogether from the vicinity. And White Fang
allowed himself to be driven away. This was a female of his kind, and it
was a law of his kind that the males must not fight the females. He did
not know anything about this law, for it was no generalisation of the
mind, not a something acquired by experience of the world. He knew it as
a secret prompting, as an urge of instinct--of the same instinct that
made him howl at the moon and stars of nights, and that made him fear
death and the unknown.

The months went by. White Fang grew stronger, heavier, and more compact,
while his character was developing along the lines laid down by his
heredity and his environment. His heredity was a life-stuff that may be
likened to clay. It possessed many possibilities, was capable of being
moulded into many different forms. Environment served to model the clay,
to give it a particular form. Thus, had White Fang never come in to the
fires of man, the Wild would have moulded him into a true wolf. But the
gods had given him a different environment, and he was moulded into a dog
that was rather wolfish, but that was a dog and not a wolf.

And so, according to the clay of his nature and the pressure of his
surroundings, his character was being moulded into a certain particular
shape. There was no escaping it. He was becoming more morose, more
uncompanionable, more solitary, more ferocious; while the dogs were
learning more and more that it was better to be at peace with him than at
war, and Grey Beaver was coming to prize him more greatly with the
passage of each day.

White Fang, seeming to sum up strength in all his qualities, nevertheless
suffered from one besetting weakness. He could not stand being laughed
at. The laughter of men was a hateful thing. They might laugh among
themselves about anything they pleased except himself, and he did not
mind. But the moment laughter was turned upon him he