aid,
nodding to the boys. "Why, before it came, there was no cooked meat,
nor were there any sweet roasted seeds or roots. But the folks tore
their meat from the animal where it was killed, and stood by and ate it
raw.

"Nor was there a home before fire came. My grandmother told me that,
long ago, in the old days, the men and women wandered from place to
place with their little children. And the women hunted and fished and
fought beside the men. And at night the people curled themselves round
as the wild dogs do, and slept on the ground; and the rain wet them,
and the cold winds made them shiver.

"But after fire came, all this was changed. For the fire would go out
unless there was some one to keep it. So a man told his wife that she
might stay and keep the fire, and said that he would hunt for both.

"The woman then took a place that she liked, near a stream, and built a
shelter of branches and made her fire there and kept it. And the man
brought meat to her, and she cooked it. And before very long all the
people were living in that way. And so ever since that time, the man
has been the hunter, and the woman has kept the fire and brought water
from the stream and gathered seeds of the ripe grasses."

[Illustration: Shelter of branches]

"And always since then, too, the family place has been about the fire.
We sit beside it and warm ourselves and work and talk and rest; and
that is home."

"True, true," grunted old Flint; and Strongarm nodded his head.

[Illustration: Acorns]

CHAPTER VII

THE CAVE TIGER

One morning not long after the lion hunt, Thorn and his grandfather
started off to the stone yard. They soon came to the deep forest where
they could not see far ahead of them, because the beeches and oaks and
chestnuts grew close together, and under the branches there was a thick
tangle of low bushes.

Old Flint watched carefully as he led the way through the woods. He
listened to every sound, and looked often behind him. Farther along,
the ground was more open; and from a hill they looked far away over
wide level land. Herds of horses and bison were grazing there, and
packs of wolves skulked through the edge of the forest. They waited to
spring upon the animals that should stray from the herds.

Passing on, old Flint came upon the body of a rhinoceros partly eaten,
and he stopped and looked anxiously around.

"This is the work of a tiger," he said; "and he cannot be far off, for