o be cherished by White Fang and
guarded carefully.

Thus it was with the two children. All his life he had disliked
children. He hated and feared their hands. The lessons were not tender
that he had learned of their tyranny and cruelty in the days of the
Indian villages. When Weedon and Maud had first approached him, he
growled warningly and looked malignant. A cuff from the master and a
sharp word had then compelled him to permit their caresses, though he
growled and growled under their tiny hands, and in the growl there was no
crooning note. Later, he observed that the boy and girl were of great
value in the master's eyes. Then it was that no cuff nor sharp word was
necessary before they could pat him.

Yet White Fang was never effusively affectionate. He yielded to the
master's children with an ill but honest grace, and endured their fooling
as one would endure a painful operation. When he could no longer endure,
he would get up and stalk determinedly away from them. But after a time,
he grew even to like the children. Still he was not demonstrative. He
would not go up to them. On the other hand, instead of walking away at
sight of them, he waited for them to come to him. And still later, it
was noticed that a pleased light came into his eyes when he saw them
approaching, and that he looked after them with an appearance of curious
regret when they left him for other amusements.

All this was a matter of development, and took time. Next in his regard,
after the children, was Judge Scott. There were two reasons, possibly,
for this. First, he was evidently a valuable possession of the master's,
and next, he was undemonstrative. White Fang liked to lie at his feet on
the wide porch when he read the newspaper, from time to time favouring
White Fang with a look or a word--untroublesome tokens that he recognised
White Fang's presence and existence. But this was only when the master
was not around. When the master appeared, all other beings ceased to
exist so far as White Fang was concerned.

White Fang allowed all the members of the family to pet him and make much
of him; but he never gave to them what he gave to the master. No caress
of theirs could put the love-croon into his throat, and, try as they
would, they could never persuade him into snuggling against them. This
expression of abandon and surrender, of absolute trust, he reserved for
the master alone. In fact, he never regarded the member