nd overwhelmed the mightiest by sheer
weight of numbers. But again the victory was dearly bought. When the
last of the monsters, sullen and amazed, withdrew to seek less
difficult encounters, he left mourning and lamentation in the caves.

This war had been a matter of some seasons. Then had followed a summer
of peace and good hunting, which had given wounds time to heal. But
with winter had swept down another dreadful invasion again from the
unfriendly east--wolves, wolves of gigantic stature, and hunting in
such huge packs that many outlying sections of the tribe were cut off
and devoured before the Hillmen could combine to withstand them.
Fortunately, the different packs had no combined action, so after the
first shock the sagacious warrior who ruled the men of the Little
Hills was able to get his diminished followers together, along with
most of their stored supplies, and mass them in the amphitheater of
the central caves.

So dragged by half the desperate winter. Then suddenly the wolves,
having exterminated or driven off all the game among the Little Hills,
once more took the trail, though with diminished ranks, and swept off
ravaging to the south-westward. The People of the Little Hills were
free once more to come out into the sun. But there was no more game to
hunt, neither in the forest, nor on the upland slopes, nor in the
reeking marshes by the estuary. The tribe was driven to fumbling in
the pools at low tide for scallops and clams and mussels, a diet which
their souls despised and their bodies resented.

The fact that the invasion of the wolves had forced the tribe to
concentrate, however, presently proved to have been a painfully
disguised blessing. Had they remained as before, scattered all over
their domain for the convenience of the chase, their next and hardest
trial would surely have annihilated them.

It was once more out of the east that it came upon them, by the trail
of the vanished Ape-men and the ravaging wolves. About sunrise of a
summer's day a woman of the tribe was grubbing for roots with a
pointed stick by the banks of a brook when she was pounced upon by a
pair of squat, yellow-brown, filthy men with enormous shoulders, short
bow-legs and flat faces with gaping, upturned nostrils. Young and
vigorous, she fought like a tigress till stunned by a blow on the
head, which was not before both her assailants were streaming with
blood from the jabs of her sharp digging-stick. Her cries had aro