his
kind was concerned, and lonely he would continue to live. In his
puppyhood, under the persecution of Lip-lip and the puppy-pack, and in
his fighting days with Beauty Smith, he had acquired a fixed aversion for
dogs. The natural course of his life had been diverted, and, recoiling
from his kind, he had clung to the human.

Besides, all Southland dogs looked upon him with suspicion. He aroused
in them their instinctive fear of the Wild, and they greeted him always
with snarl and growl and belligerent hatred. He, on the other hand,
learned that it was not necessary to use his teeth upon them. His naked
fangs and writhing lips were uniformly efficacious, rarely failing to
send a bellowing on-rushing dog back on its haunches.

But there was one trial in White Fang's life--Collie. She never gave him
a moment's peace. She was not so amenable to the law as he. She defied
all efforts of the master to make her become friends with White Fang.
Ever in his ears was sounding her sharp and nervous snarl. She had never
forgiven him the chicken-killing episode, and persistently held to the
belief that his intentions were bad. She found him guilty before the
act, and treated him accordingly. She became a pest to him, like a
policeman following him around the stable and the hounds, and, if he even
so much as glanced curiously at a pigeon or chicken, bursting into an
outcry of indignation and wrath. His favourite way of ignoring her was
to lie down, with his head on his fore-paws, and pretend sleep. This
always dumfounded and silenced her.

With the exception of Collie, all things went well with White Fang. He
had learned control and poise, and he knew the law. He achieved a
staidness, and calmness, and philosophic tolerance. He no longer lived
in a hostile environment. Danger and hurt and death did not lurk
everywhere about him. In time, the unknown, as a thing of terror and
menace ever impending, faded away. Life was soft and easy. It flowed
along smoothly, and neither fear nor foe lurked by the way.

He missed the snow without being aware of it. "An unduly long summer,"
would have been his thought had he thought about it; as it was, he merely
missed the snow in a vague, subconscious way. In the same fashion,
especially in the heat of summer when he suffered from the sun, he
experienced faint longings for the Northland. Their only effect upon
him, however, was to make him uneasy and restless without his know