k to the cave. But Grom did not hear her. He had been pulled
down, struck senseless and buried under a writhing heap of foes.

Her long hair streaming behind her, her eyes like those of a tigress
protecting her cubs, A-ya darted to the cave-door. But she did not
reach it. Just outside the threshold a club descended upon her head,
and she dropped. Instantly she was pounced upon, and bound. A moment
later three Bow-legs, followed by Mawg, streaming with blood, came
running out of the cave. Mawg swung the limp form across his shoulder
with a grin of satisfaction, and the party beat a hurried retreat up
the slopes.

In a few minutes that last death-grapple along the front of the
plateau came to an end, and Bawr, leaving nearly a third of his
followers slain with the slain Bow-legs, led the exultant survivors
back to the cave. It had been a costly victory for the Children of
the Shining One; but for the invaders it was little less than
annihilation. The flames were raging for a mile up the valley,
wherever they were not choked by the piles and windrows of the dead
or dying Bow-legs. The lurid night was shaken with the incessant
rising and falling chorus of shrieks, and far off under the glare
rolled that awful receding wave of fugitives, with the flames
leaping upon them and slaying them as they fled. Leaning upon his
club and gazing thoughtfully across the scene of incredible
destruction, Bawr told himself that never again, so long as the
memory of this night survived, would the Bow-legs dare to come
against his people.

Then wild lamentation from the women drew the Chief into the cave.
Here he found that half the little ones had been killed in that swift
incursion of Mawg, and that nearly all the old men and women had been
slaughtered in defending their charges. Across Grom's doorway,
crouching on his face and with his great teeth buried in the throat of
a dead Bow-leg, lay the lame captive, Ook-ootsk. Seeing that he still
breathed, and marking the fury with which he had fought in defense of
their little ones, the warriors lifted him aside gently. Beneath him,
and safely guarded in the crook of his shaggy arm, they found Grom's
baby, without a hurt. The women defending the head of the path on the
right having seen the rape of A-ya, Bawr handed the babe to one of his
own wives to cherish.

Then search was made for Grom. At first the Chief imagined that he had
followed the captors of A-ya, in a desperate hope of effecti