e sand, licking his wounds, he remembered many strange
things. First of all, there was the trouble with his mother.

She was a Labrador Husky, dirty yellowish gray, with bristling neck,
sharp fangs, and green eyes, like a wolf. Her name was Babette. She had
a fiendish temper, but no courage. His father was supposed to be a huge
black and white Newfoundland that came over in a schooner from Miquelon.
Perhaps it was from him that the black patch was inherited. And perhaps
there were other things in the inheritance, too, which came from this
nobler strain of blood Pichon's unwillingness to howl with the other
dogs when they made night hideous; his silent, dignified ways; his sense
of fair play; his love of the water; his longing for human society and
friendship.

But all this was beyond Pichou's horizon, though it was within his
nature. He remembered only that Babette had taken a hate for him, almost
from the first, and had always treated him worse than his all-yellow
brothers. She would have starved him if she could. Once when he was half
grown, she fell upon him for some small offence and tried to throttle
him. The rest of the pack looked on snarling and slavering. He caught
Babette by the fore-leg and broke the bone. She hobbled away, shrieking.
What else could he do? Must a dog let himself be killed by his mother?

As for his brothers--was it fair that two of them should fall foul of
him about the rabbit which he had tracked and caught and killed? He
would have shared it with them, if they had asked him, for they ran
behind him on the trail. But when they both set their teeth in his
neck, there was nothing to do but to lay them both out: which he did.
Afterward he was willing enough to make friends, but they bristled and
cursed whenever he came near them.

It was the same with everybody. If he went out for a walk on the beach,
Vigneau's dogs or Simard's dogs regarded it as an insult, and there
was a fight. Men picked up sticks, or showed him the butt-end of their
dog-whips, when he made friendly approaches. With the children it was
different; they seemed to like him a little; but never did he follow one
of them that a mother did not call from the house-door: "Pierre! Marie!
come away quick! That bad dog will bite you!" Once when he ran down to
the shore to watch the boat coming in from the mail-steamer, the
purser had refused to let the boat go to land, and called out, "M'sieu'
MacIntosh, you git no malle dis trip,