ur cunning and cowardice, and our inordinate capacity for fear,
that we survived in that frightfully hostile environment of the Younger
World.

Lop-Ear, I figure, was a year older than I. What his past history was
he had no way of telling me, but as I never saw anything of his mother
I believed him to be an orphan. After all, fathers did not count in our
horde. Marriage was as yet in a rude state, and couples had a way of
quarrelling and separating. Modern man, what of his divorce institution,
does the same thing legally. But we had no laws. Custom was all we went
by, and our custom in this particular matter was rather promiscuous.

Nevertheless, as this narrative will show later on, we betrayed
glimmering adumbrations of the monogamy that was later to give power to,
and make mighty, such tribes as embraced it. Furthermore, even at the
time I was born, there were several faithful couples that lived in the
trees in the neighborhood of my mother. Living in the thick of the horde
did not conduce to monogamy. It was for this reason, undoubtedly, that
the faithful couples went away and lived by themselves. Through many
years these couples stayed together, though when the man or woman died
or was eaten the survivor invariably found a new mate.

There was one thing that greatly puzzled me during the first days of
my residence in the horde. There was a nameless and incommunicable fear
that rested upon all. At first it appeared to be connected wholly
with direction. The horde feared the northeast. It lived in perpetual
apprehension of that quarter of the compass. And every individual gazed
more frequently and with greater alarm in that direction than in any
other.

When Lop-Ear and I went toward the north-east to eat the stringy-rooted
carrots that at that season were at their best, he became unusually
timid. He was content to eat the leavings, the big tough carrots and the
little ropy ones, rather than to venture a short distance farther on to
where the carrots were as yet untouched. When I so ventured, he scolded
me and quarrelled with me. He gave me to understand that in that
direction was some horrible danger, but just what the horrible danger
was his paucity of language would not permit him to say.

Many a good meal I got in this fashion, while he scolded and chattered
vainly at me. I could not understand. I kept very alert, but I could
see no danger. I calculated always the distance between myself and the
nearest tree