drive them away. All I know of fighting I learned from mother,
watching her picking the ash-heaps for me when I was too little to
fight for myself. No one ever was so good to me as mother. When it
snowed and the ice was in the St. Lawrence she used to hunt alone,
and bring me back new bones, and she'd sit and laugh to see me trying
to swallow 'em whole. I was just a puppy then, my teeth was falling
out. When I was able to fight we kept the whole river-range to
ourselves, I had the genuine long, "punishing" jaw, so mother said,
and there wasn't a man or a dog that dared worry us. Those were happy
days, those were; and we lived well, share and share alike, and when
we wanted a bit of fun, we chased the fat old wharf-rats. My! how
they would squeal!

Then the trouble came. It was no trouble to me. I was too young to
care then. But mother took it so to heart that she grew ailing, and
wouldn't go abroad with me by day. It was the same old scandal that
they're always bringing up against me. I was so young then that I
didn't know. I couldn't see any difference between mother--and other
mothers.

But one day a pack of curs we drove off snarled back some new names
at her, and mother dropped her head and ran, just as though they had
whipped us. After that she wouldn't go out with me except in the
dark, and one day she went away and never came back, and though I
hunted for her in every court and alley and back street of Montreal,
I never found her.

One night, a month after mother ran away, I asked Guardian, the old
blind mastiff, whose Master is the night-watchman on our slip, what
it all meant. And he told me.