ting. "The vultures have their
share of Eudena." For a space they remained there, and then first one
and then another dropped back into the thicket.

Then over the eastern woods, and touching the whole world to life and
colour, poured, with the exaltation of a trumpet blast, the light of the
rising sun. At the sight of him the children shouted together, and
clapped their hands and began to race off towards the water. Only little
Si lagged behind and looked wonderingly at the alders where she had seen
the head of Eudena overnight.

But Uya, the old lion, was not abroad, but at home, and he lay very
still, and a little on one side. He was not in his lair, but a little
way from it in a place of trampled grass. Under one eye was a little
wound, the feeble little bite of the first axe. But all the ground
beneath his chest was ruddy brown with a vivid streak, and in his chest
was a little hole that had been made by Ugh-lomi's stabbing-spear. Along
his side and at his neck the vultures had marked their claims. For so
Ugh-lomi had slain him, lying stricken under his paw and thrusting
haphazard at his chest. He had driven the spear in with all his strength
and stabbed the giant to the heart. So it was the reign of the lion, of
the second incarnation of Uya the Master, came to an end.

From the knoll the bustle of preparation grew, the hacking of spears and
throwing-stones. None spake the name of Ugh-lomi for fear that it might
bring him. The men were going to keep together, close together, in the
hunting for a day or so. And their hunting was to be Ugh-lomi, lest
instead he should come a-hunting them.

But Ugh-lomi was lying very still and silent, outside the lion's lair,
and Eudena squatted beside him, with the ash spear, all smeared with
lion's blood, gripped in her hand.

V--THE FIGHT IN THE LION'S THICKET

Ugh-lomi lay still, his back against an alder, and his thigh was a red
mass terrible to see. No civilised man could have lived who had been so
sorely wounded, but Eudena got him thorns to close his wounds, and
squatted beside him day and night, smiting the flies from him with a fan
of reeds by day, and in the night threatening the hyaenas with the first
axe in her hand; and in a little while he began to heal. It was high
summer, and there was no rain. Little food they had during the first two
days his wounds were open. In the low place where they hid were no roots
nor little beasts, and the stream, with its water-s