drous--yet who will dare to say they
take precedence over the wondrous ways of the stomach? And the ways are
ironic; is it not conceivable that the two should align in devious
fruition?_ For Gral found answer, not in his groping hands, but tangled
about his clumsy feet!

* * *

The sun came high and hot. Gral emerged from his sleep-place on the
ledge, faint and hungry but knowing he must try yet again. He took a
step, his feet tangled, and growling deep he reached down and tore at a
tough twining substance.

Sinews. Sinews stripped bare by his own hunger, all that Otah and others
had tossed him these past days; they were taut and clinging now,
unresilient, like the vines of the young trees and yet strangely unlike.

_Unlike!_ Gral stared, as his throat went pulsing. He reached out and
touched; one had twined about a rock, was now so fast that his fingers
could not cause it to move. For a long time he crouched, perplexed,
growling deep as his fingers explored. He glanced up at the sun, and
then back, and with that glance two things came together with searing
shock....

For the very first time, man--a Pleistocene man--had made a clear
cerebral distinction of cause and effect.

Gral arose. There was a wild new urgency. Quickly he searched and he
found, across all the great ledge, sinews from the gorging which the sun
had not yet touched. Some among the tribe stared with immobile contempt,
thinking Gral the scavenger was yet hungry. But Gral gathered quickly,
and departed, and was soon at the far place by the great bole, where he
retrieved his stone and set feverishly to work.

Indeed it was not like the vines! It was easy now, but he was doubly
thorough; he made his fingers be strong as he followed the pattern he
knew so well. The sinews held, they held! His part done at last, he went
out from the trees and placed his shaft where the sun's hot stroke could
reach.

And this was perhaps hardest of all--the waiting. Most of that day he
crouched and waited and watched, as the sun's work was done; that great
bright orb, his ally; he had known times when it was beneficent and
times when it was cruel, but now in his need Gral's thoughts were
kindly.

Soon it became as if his own kind thoughts and the sun's hot strength
were one. The thing-that-prodded now was different, now it outpoured,
gracious to meet his need. He could not have known that this was prayer!
And so, by degree and small degree Gral