ass, shouted arrogantly, and rushed at the beast with
a blazing handful. It was a light and harmless flame, almost instantly
extinguished. But it was too mysterious for the monster to face.

Grom was wise enough not to follow up his victory. Returning to the
fire he fed it to a safe volume. And the girl, flinging herself down
in a passion of relief and adoration, embraced his knees.

After this they journeyed slowly, Grom tending the brands with
vigilant care, and striving to break down the girl's terror of
them. That night he built three fires about the base of a huge
tree, gathered a supply of dry wood, taught the girl to feed the
flames--which she did with head bowed in awe--and passed the hours
of darkness, once so dreaded, in proud defiance of the great beasts
which prowled and roared beyond the circle of light. He made the
girl sleep, but he himself was too prudent to sleep, lest these
fires of his own creation should prove false when his eye was not upon
them.

The following day, about midday, when he slept heavily in the heat,
the fire went out. It had got low, and the girl, attempting to revive
it, had smothered it with too much fuel. In an agony of fear and
remorse, she knelt at Grom's side, awakened him, and showed him what
she had done. She expected a merciless beating, according to the
rough-and-ready customs of her tribe. But Grom had always been held a
little peculiar, especially in his aversion to the beating of women,
so that certain females of the tribe had even been known to question
his manhood on that account.

Furthermore, he regarded the girl with a tenderness, an admiration, an
appreciation, which he could not but wonder at in himself, seeing that
he had never heard of it as a customary thing that a man should regard
a woman in any such manner. At the same time he was in a state of
exaltation over his strange achievements, and hardly open, at the
moment, to any common or base brutality of rage.

He gave the girl one terrible look, then went and strove silently with
the dead, black embers. The girl crept up to him on her knees,
weeping. For a few seconds he paid her no heed. But when he found that
the flames had fled beyond recovery, he lifted her up, drew her close
to him, and comforted her.

"You have let the Bright One escape," said he. "But do not be afraid.
He lives back there in the valley of the bears, and I will capture him
again."

And when the girl realized that he had no though