In the fall of the year, when the days were shortening and the bite ofthe frost was coming into the air, White Fang got his chance for liberty.

　　For several days there had been a great hubbub in the village. The summercamp was being dismantled, and the tribe, bag and baggage, was preparingto go off to the fall hunting. White Fang watched it all with eager eyes,and when the tepees began to come down and the canoes were loading atthe bank, he understood. Already the canoes were departing, and some haddisappeared down the river.

　　Quite deliberately he determined to stay behind. He waited hisopportunity to slink out of camp to the woods. Here, in the running streamwhere ice was beginning to form, he hid his trail. Then he crawled into theheart of a dense thicket and waited. The time passed by, and he sleptintermittently for hours. Then he was aroused by Grey Beaver's voicecalling him by name. There were other voices. White Fang could hearGrey Beaver's squaw taking part in the search, and Mit-sah, who was GreyBeaver's son.

　　White Fang trembled with fear, and though the impulse came to crawlout of his hiding-place, he resisted it. After a time the voices died away,and some time after that he crept out to enjoy the success of hisundertaking. Darkness was coming on, and for a while he played aboutamong the trees, pleasuring in his freedom. Then, and quite suddenly, hebecame aware of loneliness. He sat down to consider, listening to thesilence of the forest and perturbed by it. That nothing moved nor sounded,seemed ominous. He felt the lurking of danger, unseen and unguessed. Hewas suspicious of the looming bulks of the trees and of the dark shadowsthat might conceal all manner of perilous things.

　　Then it was cold. Here was no warm side of a tepee against which tosnuggle. The frost was in his feet, and he kept lifting first one fore-footand then the other. He curved his bushy tail around to cover them, and atthe same time he saw a vision. There was nothing strange about it. Uponhis inward sight was impressed a succession of memory-pictures. He sawthe camp again, the tepees, and the blaze of the fires. He heard the shrillvoices of the women, the gruff basses of the men, and the snarling of thedogs. He was hungry, and he remembered pieces of meat and fish that hadbeen thrown him. Here was no meat, nothing but a threatening andinedible silence.

　　His bondage had softened him. Irresponsibility had weakened him. Hehad forgotten how to shift for himself. The night yawned about him. Hissenses, accustomed to the hum and bustle of the camp, used to thecontinuous impact of sights and sounds, were now left idle. There wasnothing to do, nothing to see nor hear. They strained to catch someinterruption of the silence and immobility of nature. They were appalledby inaction and by the feel of something terrible impending.

　　He gave a great start of fright. A colossal and formless something wasrushing across the field of his vision. It was a tree-shadow flung by themoon, from whose face the clouds had been brushed away. Reassured, hewhimpered softly; then he suppressed the whimper for fear that it mightattract the attention of the lurking dangers.

　　A tree, contracting in the cool of the night, made a loud noise. It wasdirectly above him. He yelped in his fright. A panic seized him, and he ranmadly toward the village. He knew an overpowering desire for theprotection and companionship of man. In his nostrils was the smell of thecamp-smoke. In his ears the camp-sounds and cries were ringing loud. Hepassed out of the forest and into the moonlit open where were no shadowsnor darknesses. But no village greeted his eyes. He had forgotten. Thevillage had gone away.

　　His wild flight ceased abruptly. There was no place to which to flee.

　　He slunk forlornly through the deserted camp, smelling the rubbish-heapsand the discarded rags and tags of the gods. He would have been glad forthe rattle of stones about him, flung by an angry squaw, glad for the handof Grey Beaver descending upon him in wrath; while he would havewelcomed with delight Lip-lip and the whole snarling, cowardly pack.

　　He came to where Grey Beaver's tepee had stood. In the centre of thespace it had occupied, he sat down. He pointed his nose at the moon. Histhroat was afflicted by rigid spasms, his mouth opened, and in a heart-broken cry bubbled up his loneliness and fear, his grief for Kiche, all hispast sorrows and miseries as well as his apprehension of sufferings anddangers to come. It was the long wolf-howl, full-throated and mournful,the first howl he had ever uttered.

　　The coming of daylight dispelled his fears but increased his loneliness.

　　The naked earth, which so shortly before had been so populous; thrust hisloneliness more forcibly upon him. It did not take him long to make up hismind. He plunged into the forest and followed the river bank down thestream. All day he ran. He did not rest. He seemed made to run on for ever.

　�............