tly behind, now
bristling up to the running horses and warning them that he was there to
see that no harm befell the god they dragged so swiftly across the earth.

At the end of fifteen minutes, the carriage swung in through a stone
gateway and on between a double row of arched and interlacing walnut
trees. On either side stretched lawns, their broad sweep broken here and
there by great sturdy-limbed oaks. In the near distance, in contrast
with the young-green of the tended grass, sunburnt hay-fields showed tan
and gold; while beyond were the tawny hills and upland pastures. From
the head of the lawn, on the first soft swell from the valley-level,
looked down the deep-porched, many-windowed house.

Little opportunity was given White Fang to see all this. Hardly had the
carriage entered the grounds, when he was set upon by a sheep-dog, bright-
eyed, sharp-muzzled, righteously indignant and angry. It was between him
and the master, cutting him off. White Fang snarled no warning, but his
hair bristled as he made his silent and deadly rush. This rush was never
completed. He halted with awkward abruptness, with stiff fore-legs
bracing himself against his momentum, almost sitting down on his
haunches, so desirous was he of avoiding contact with the dog he was in
the act of attacking. It was a female, and the law of his kind thrust a
barrier between. For him to attack her would require nothing less than a
violation of his instinct.

But with the sheep-dog it was otherwise. Being a female, she possessed
no such instinct. On the other hand, being a sheep-dog, her instinctive
fear of the Wild, and especially of the wolf, was unusually keen. White
Fang was to her a wolf, the hereditary marauder who had preyed upon her
flocks from the time sheep were first herded and guarded by some dim
ancestor of hers. And so, as he abandoned his rush at her and braced
himself to avoid the contact, she sprang upon him. He snarled
involuntarily as he felt her teeth in his shoulder, but beyond this made
no offer to hurt her. He backed away, stiff-legged with
self-consciousness, and tried to go around her. He dodged this way and
that, and curved and turned, but to no purpose. She remained always
between him and the way he wanted to go.

"Here, Collie!" called the strange man in the carriage.

Weedon Scott laughed.

"Never mind, father. It is good discipline. White Fang will have to
learn many things, and it's just as well t