They grunted
and strained, with eyes staring and the sweat jumping forth on their
foreheads. Then something gave. A great slice of the rock-face began
to slip. Some of the toilers scrambled back to safety, their long,
white hair flying behind them. But others, unable to recover
themselves in time, fell sprawling forward. Then with a thunderous
growl a huge slab of rock and earth and debris crashed down upon the
packed hordes in the neck of the pass. A long shout of triumph went up
from the Hillmen. The outer ranks of the invaders stood for a second
or two petrified with horror. Then they turned and fled, screaming,
down the slope. On their heels the Hillmen pursued, slaughtering, till
the brook-bed was choked with the dead. Of that filthy horde hardly a
score escaped, and these fled back, gibbering, to meet the migrant
hosts of their kin who were following on their trail. The story they
told was of a tribe of tall, fair-skinned demons, invincible in war,
who tore up mountains to hurl them on their adversaries. And
thereafter, for a time, the Bow-legged hosts changed the path of their
migration, sweeping far to the southward to avoid the land of the
Little Hills.

II

A white, high-sailing moon streamed down into the amphitheater, where
the scarred remnant of the tribe of the Little Hills, squatting before
their cave-mouths, took counsel. Their dead had all been reverently
buried, under heaps of stones, on the bare and wind-swept shoulder of
the downs. Outside the pass the giant jackals, cave-hyenas and other
scavengers of the night, howled and scuffled over the carcasses of the
slain invaders.

Endless and tumultuous was the talk, the white-haired, bent old men
and the women who had borne children being listened to as attentively
as the warriors. The Chief, sitting on a rock which raised him above
the rest, spoke only a word now and then, but gave ear to all,
glancing from speaker to speaker with narrowed eyes, weighing all
suggestions. On the outskirts of the circle stood Grom, leaning on his
club, staring at the moon, apparently lost in dreams.

Suddenly the Chief uttered a sharp word, and the tribe fell silent. He
rose, yet stiff from his wounds, and, towering masterfully over the
council announced his decision.

"I have heard much foolishness," said he, "but also some wisdom. And
the greatest wisdom has come from the lips of my father yonder, Alp
the old." He pointed to a decrepit figure, whose bowed head w