brown fronds of Royal Fern, through which the crosiers of this year's

growth were unrolling to the light and warmth. The fire was a

smouldering heap of char, light grey and black, replenished by the old

women from time to time with brown leaves. Most of the men were

asleep--they slept sitting with their foreheads on their knees. They had

killed that morning a good quarry, enough for all, a deer that had been

wounded by hunting dogs; so that there had been no quarrelling among

them, and some of the women were still gnawing the bones that lay

scattered about. Others were making a heap of leaves and sticks to feed

Brother Fire when the darkness came again, that he might grow strong and

tall therewith, and guard them against the beasts. And two were piling

flints that they brought, an armful at a time, from the bend of the

river where the children were at play.

None of these buff-skinned savages were clothed, but some wore about

their hips rude girdles of adder-skin or crackling undressed hide, from

which depended little bags, not made, but torn from the paws of beasts,

and carrying the rudely-dressed flints that were men's chief weapons and

tools. And one woman, the mate of Uya the Cunning Man, wore a wonderful

necklace of perforated fossils--that others had worn before her. Beside

some of the sleeping men lay the big antlers of the elk, with the tines

chipped to sharp edges, and long sticks, hacked at the ends with flints

into sharp points. There was little else save these things and the

smouldering fire to mark these human beings off from the wild animals

that ranged the country. But Uya the Cunning did not sleep, but sat with

a bone in his hand and scraped busily thereon with a flint, a thing no

Tales of Space and Time