of the Sierra
Vista people, and even the groom whose arm he had slashed admitted that
he was a wise dog even if he was a wolf. Judge Scott still held to the
same opinion, and proved it to everybody's dissatisfaction by
measurements and descriptions taken from the encyclopaedia and various
works on natural history.

The days came and went, streaming their unbroken sunshine over the Santa
Clara Valley. But as they grew shorter and White Fang's second winter in
the Southland came on, he made a strange discovery. Collie's teeth were
no longer sharp. There was a playfulness about her nips and a gentleness
that prevented them from really hurting him. He forgot that she had made
life a burden to him, and when she disported herself around him he
responded solemnly, striving to be playful and becoming no more than
ridiculous.

One day she led him off on a long chase through the back-pasture land
into the woods. It was the afternoon that the master was to ride, and
White Fang knew it. The horse stood saddled and waiting at the door.
White Fang hesitated. But there was that in him deeper than all the law
he had learned, than the customs that had moulded him, than his love for
the master, than the very will to live of himself; and when, in the
moment of his indecision, Collie nipped him and scampered off, he turned
and followed after. The master rode alone that day; and in the woods,
side by side, White Fang ran with Collie, as his mother, Kiche, and old
One Eye had run long years before in the silent Northland forest.

CHAPTER V--THE SLEEPING WOLF

It was about this time that the newspapers were full of the daring escape
of a convict from San Quentin prison. He was a ferocious man. He had
been ill-made in the making. He had not been born right, and he had not
been helped any by the moulding he had received at the hands of society.
The hands of society are harsh, and this man was a striking sample of its
handiwork. He was a beast--a human beast, it is true, but nevertheless
so terrible a beast that he can best be characterised as carnivorous.

In San Quentin prison he had proved incorrigible. Punishment failed to
break his spirit. He could die dumb-mad and fighting to the last, but he
could not live and be beaten. The more fiercely he fought, the more
harshly society handled him, and the only effect of harshness was to make
him fiercer. Straight-jackets, starvation, and beatings and clubbings
were the wr