er park that hez got so many trees in it ez ourn, or ez much big
game all fur the takin'. Now lead on, Henry, an' we'll go to our new
home."

"No, you lead, Sol. I've been on a big strain, an' I'd like to follow
for a while."

"O' course you would, you poor little peaked thing. I ought to hev
thought o' that when I spoke. Never out in the woods afore by hisself
an' nigh scared to death by the trees an' the dark. But jest you come
on. I'll lead you an' I won't let no squirrel or rabbit hurt you
neither."

Henry laughed. The humor and unction of the shiftless one always amused
him.

"Go ahead, Sol," he said, "and I'll promise to keep close behind you,
where nothing will harm me."

Thus they set off, Sol in front and Henry five feet away, treading in
his footsteps.

"There wuz a time when I'd hev been afraid o' the dark," said Shif'less
Sol, whose conversational powers were great. "You've been to the Big
Bone Lick, an' so hev I, an' we've seen the bones o' the monsters that
roamed the earth afore the flood, a long time afore. I wouldn't hev
believed that such critters ever tramped around our globe ef I hadn't
seen their bones. I come acrost a little salt lick last night--we may
see it in passin' afore mornin'--but thar wuz big bones 'roun' it too. I
measured myself by 'em an' geewhillikins, Henry, what critters them wuz!
Ef I'd been caught out o' my cave after night an' one o' them things got
after me I'd hev been so skeered that I'd hev dropped my stone club
'cause my hands trembled so, my teeth would hev rattled together in
reg'lar tunes, an' I'd hev run so fast that I'd only hev touched the
tops o' the hills, skippin' all the low ones too, an' by the time I
reached the mouth o' my cave, I'd be goin' so swift that I'd run clear
out o' my clothes, leavin' 'em fur the monster to trample on an' then
chaw up, me all the while settin' inside the cave safe, but tremblin'
all over, an' with no appetite. Them shore wuz lively times fur our
race, Henry, an' I guess we did a pow'ful lot o' runnin' an' hidin'."

"It was certainly time to run, Sol, when a tiger eight feet high and
fifteen feet long got after you, or a mammoth or a mastodon twenty feet
high and fifty feet long was feeling around in the bushes for you with a
trunk that could pick you up and throw you a mile."

"Henry, ef we wuzn't in a hurry I'd stop here an' give thanks."

"What for?"

"'Cause I didn't live in them times, when the beast wuz bigger an'
m