knows as much about it as you and I."

The Chief pondered a moment.

"Either the girl must die," said he, eyeing Grom's face, "or she must
be a priest along with us."

"I think she will be a very good priest," said Grom drily, his eyes
resting upon her.

Then the Chief, ascending a rock between the two fires, spoke to the
people, and decreed as he had said. He told a little about the Shining
One, just so much as he thought it good for his hearers to know. He
declared that the ones he had chosen for the great honor of serving
the fires must tend them by turns, night and day, and guard them with
their lives; for that, if one or the other should be suffered to die
out, some great disaster would assuredly come upon the tribe.

"And henceforth," he concluded, "you shall not be called the People of
the Little Hills; for these ridges, indeed, are not such hills as
those whose bald and windy tops are keeping the bones of our fathers.
But you shall be known and feared greatly by our enemies as 'The
Children of the Shining One,' under whose protection I declare you."

CHAPTER V

THE PULLER-DOWN OF TREES

On the broken hill-slope overlooking the Valley of Fire, in the two
great caves known as the Cave of the Bears and the Cave of the Hyenas,
the tribe of the Children of the Shining One now dwelt secure and
began to recover heart. Before each cave-mouth, tended night and day,
burned the sacred flame, its tongues licked upwards in gold and
scarlet with a radiance from which all the tribe, with the sole
exceptions of Bawr, the Chief, and Grom, his right hand and councilor,
were wont to avert their eyes in awe whenever they passed it in their
comings and goings. Only from a distance would they presume to look at
the flames directly; and ever as they looked their wonder and their
reverence grew. Their trust in the protection of the Shining One came
to have no bounds, for night after night would the great red bears
return, prowling in the mysterious gloom just beyond the ring of
light, with their dreadful eyes turned fixedly upon their former
habitation, only to be driven off ignominiously when Grom rushed at
them with a shout and a flaming torch above his head. And night after
night would the troops of the hyenas come back, their monstrous-jowled
heads swinging low from their mighty shoulders, to sit and howl their
devilish laughter above their ancient lair, only to slink off in cowed
silence when the Chief would hur