understood.
    After this event he found a warmer place in the hearts 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 encyclopædia 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 and 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.
 

                              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 characterized 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