lling with vigor and virility. When
Thornton passed a caressing hand along his back, a snapping and
crackling followed the hand, each hair discharging its pent magnetism
at the contact. Every part, brain and body, nerve tissue and fibre, was
keyed to the most exquisite pitch; and between all the parts there was a
perfect equilibrium or adjustment. To sights and sounds and events which
required action, he responded with lightning-like rapidity. Quickly as
a husky dog could leap to defend from attack or to attack, he could leap
twice as quickly. He saw the movement, or heard sound, and responded
in less time than another dog required to compass the mere seeing or
hearing. He perceived and determined and responded in the same instant.
In point of fact the three actions of perceiving, determining, and
responding were sequential; but so infinitesimal were the intervals
of time between them that they appeared simultaneous. His muscles were
surcharged with vitality, and snapped into play sharply, like steel
springs. Life streamed through him in splendid flood, glad and rampant,
until it seemed that it would burst him asunder in sheer ecstasy and
pour forth generously over the world.

"Never was there such a dog," said John Thornton one day, as the
partners watched Buck marching out of camp.

"When he was made, the mould was broke," said Pete.

"Py jingo! I t'ink so mineself," Hans affirmed.

They saw him marching out of camp, but they did not see the instant and
terrible transformation which took place as soon as he was within the
secrecy of the forest. He no longer marched. At once he became a thing
of the wild, stealing along softly, cat-footed, a passing shadow
that appeared and disappeared among the shadows. He knew how to take
advantage of every cover, to crawl on his belly like a snake, and like a
snake to leap and strike. He could take a ptarmigan from its nest, kill
a rabbit as it slept, and snap in mid air the little chipmunks fleeing
a second too late for the trees. Fish, in open pools, were not too quick
for him; nor were beaver, mending their dams, too wary. He killed
to eat, not from wantonness; but he preferred to eat what he killed
himself. So a lurking humor ran through his deeds, and it was his
delight to steal upon the squirrels, and, when he all but had them, to
let them go, chattering in mortal fear to the treetops.

As the fall of the year came on, the moose appeared in greater
abundance, moving slowl