ed out a nice dry Cave,
instead of a heap of wet leaves, to lie down in; and she strewed clean
sand on the floor; and she lit a nice fire of wood at the back of the
Cave; and she hung a dried wild-horse skin, tail-down, across the
opening of the Cave; and she said, 'Wipe your feet, dear, when you come
in, and now we'll keep house.'

That night, Best Beloved, they ate wild sheep roasted on the hot stones,
and flavoured with wild garlic and wild pepper; and wild duck stuffed
with wild rice and wild fenugreek and wild coriander; and marrow-bones
of wild oxen; and wild cherries, and wild grenadillas. Then the Man went
to sleep in front of the fire ever so happy; but the Woman sat up,
combing her hair. She took the bone of the shoulder of mutton--the big
fat blade-bone--and she looked at the wonderful marks on it, and she
threw more wood on the fire, and she made a Magic. She made the First
Singing Magic in the world.

Out in the Wet Wild Woods all the wild animals gathered together where
they could see the light of the fire a long way off, and they wondered
what it meant.

Then Wild Horse stamped with his wild foot and said, 'O my Friends and O
my Enemies, why have the Man and the Woman made that great light in that
great Cave, and what harm will it do us?'

Wild Dog lifted up his wild nose and smelled the smell of roast mutton,
and said, 'I will go up and see and look, and say; for I think it is
good. Cat, come with me.'

'Nenni!' said the Cat. 'I am the Cat who walks by himself, and all
places are alike to me. I will not come.'

'Then we can never be friends again,' said Wild Dog, and he trotted off
to the Cave. But when he had gone a little way the Cat said to himself,
'All places are alike to me. Why should I not go too and see and look
and come away at my own liking.' So he slipped after Wild Dog softly,
very softly, and hid himself where he could hear everything.

[Illustration: THIS is the picture of the Cave where the Man and the
Woman lived first of all. It was really a very nice Cave, and much
warmer than it looks. The Man had a canoe. It is on the edge of the
river, being soaked in the water to make it swell up. The
tattery-looking thing across the river is the Man's salmon-net to catch
salmon with. There are nice clean stones leading up from the river to
the mouth of the Cave, so that the Man and the Woman could go down for
water without getting sand between their toes. The things like
black-beetles far