ere across the valley-mouth,
kept leaping and dancing those unquenchable flames of scarlet, amber
and violet, fed by the volcanic gases from within the crevice, and
utterly regardless of whatever floods the sky might loose upon them.
This was evidence conclusive that the Shining One was master of the
storm, no less than of the monsters which fled so terror-stricken
before him.

In the early spring, the girl A-ya bore a child to Grom; a big-limbed,
vigorous boy, with shapely head and spacious brow. In this event, and
in the mother's happiness about it (a happiness that seemed to the
rest of the women to savor of foolish extravagance), Grom felt a
gladness which dignity forbade him to betray.

But pondering over the little one with bent brows, and with deep eyes
full of visions, he conceived such an ambition as had perhaps never
before entered into the heart of man. It was that this child might
grow up to achieve some wonderful thing, as he himself had done, for
the advancement of his people. Of this baby, child of the woman toward
whom he felt emotions so new and so profound, he had a premonition
that new and incalculable things would come.

One day Grom was following the trail of a deer some distance up the
valley. Skilled hunter that he was, he could read in the trail that
his quarry was not far ahead, and also that it had not yet taken
alarm. He followed cautiously, up the wind, noiseless as a leopard,
his sagacious eyes taking note of every detail about him.

Presently he came to a spot where the trail was broken. There was a
twenty-foot gap to the next hoofprints, and these went off at right
angles to the direction which the quarry had hitherto been pursuing.
Grom halted abruptly, slipped behind a tree, crouched, and peered
about him with the tense vigilance of a startled fox. He knew that
something had frightened the deer, and frightened it badly. It
behooved him to find out what that something was.

For some minutes he stood motionless as the trunk against which he
leant, searching every bush and thicket with his keen gaze, and
sniffing the air with expert nostrils. There was nothing perceptible
to explain that sudden fright of the deer. He was on the point of
slipping around the trunk to investigate from another angle. But stop!
There on a patch of soil where some bear had been grubbing for tubers
he detected a strange footprint. Instantly, he sank to the ground, and
wormed his way over, silently as a snake