e as a
foreshadowing of the altruism and comradeship that have helped make man
the mightiest of the animals.

Once again Lop-Ear tried to drag the arrow through the flesh, and I
angrily stopped him. Then he bent down and began gnawing the shaft of
the arrow with his teeth. As he did so he held the arrow firmly in both
hands so that it would not play about in the wound, and at the same
time I held on to him. I often meditate upon this scene--the two of us,
half-grown cubs, in the childhood of the race, and the one mastering his
fear, beating down his selfish impulse of flight, in order to stand by
and succor the other. And there rises up before me all that was there
foreshadowed, and I see visions of Damon and Pythias, of life-saving
crews and Red Cross nurses, of martyrs and leaders of forlorn hopes, of
Father Damien, and of the Christ himself, and of all the men of earth,
mighty of stature, whose strength may trace back to the elemental loins
of Lop-Ear and Big-Tooth and other dim denizens of the Younger World.

When Lop-Ear had chewed off the head of the arrow, the shaft was
withdrawn easily enough. I started to go on, but this time it was he
that stopped me. My leg was bleeding profusely. Some of the smaller
veins had doubtless been ruptured. Running out to the end of a branch,
Lop-Ear gathered a handful of green leaves. These he stuffed into the
wound. They accomplished the purpose, for the bleeding soon stopped.
Then we went on together, back to the safety of the caves.

CHAPTER VIII

Well do I remember that first winter after I left home. I have long
dreams of sitting shivering in the cold. Lop-Ear and I sit close
together, with our arms and legs about each other, blue-faced and with
chattering teeth. It got particularly crisp along toward morning. In
those chill early hours we slept little, huddling together in numb
misery and waiting for the sunrise in order to get warm.

When we went outside there was a crackle of frost under foot. One
morning we discovered ice on the surface of the quiet water in the eddy
where was the drinking-place, and there was a great How-do-you-do about
it. Old Marrow-Bone was the oldest member of the horde, and he had never
seen anything like it before. I remember the worried, plaintive look
that came into his eyes as he examined the ice. (This plaintive look
always came into our eyes when we did not understand a thing, or when
we felt the prod of some vague and inexpressib