ed toward the old
encampment of the Indians. A faint tinge came to her cheeks. "It is
strange," said she, "I feel as if the world had absolutely come to an
end, and yet--"

"It is just beginning," said I to her. "We are alone. This is the first
garden of the world. You are the first woman; I am the first cave man,
and all the world depends on us. See," I said--perhaps still a trifle
confused in my mind--"all the arts and letters of the future, all the
paintings, all the money and goods of all the world; all the peace and
war, and all the happiness and content of the world rest with us, just
us two. We are the world, you and I."

She sat thoughtful and silent for a time, a faint pink, as I said, just
showing on her cheeks.

"John Cowles, of Virginia," she said simply, "now tell me, how shall I
mend this broken kettle?"

CHAPTER XXVII

WITH ALL MY WORLDLY GOODS I THEE ENDOW

Poor, indeed, in worldly goods must be those to whom the discarded
refuse of an abandoned Indian camp seems wealth. Yet such was the case
with us, two representatives of the higher civilization, thus removed
from that civilization by no more than a few days' span. As soon as I
was able to stand we removed our little encampment to the ground lately
occupied by the Indian village.

We must have food, and I could not yet hunt. Here at the camp we found
some bits of dried meat. We found a ragged and half-hairless robe,
discarded by some squaw, and to us it seemed priceless, for now we had a
house by day and a bed by night. A half-dozen broken lodge poles seemed
riches to us. We hoarded some broken moccasins which had been thrown
away. Like jackals we prowled around the filth and refuse of this savage
encampment---we, so lately used to all the comforts that civilization
could give.

In the minds of us both came a thought new to both--a desire for food.
Never before had we known how urgent is this desire. How few, indeed,
ever really know what hunger is! If our great men, those who shape the
destinies of a people, could know what hunger means, how different would
be their acts! The trail of the lodge poles of these departing savages
showed where they had gone farther in their own senseless pursuit of
food, food. We also must eat. After that might begin all the deeds of
the world. The surplus beyond the necessary provender of the hour is
what constitutes the world's progress, its philosophy, its art, all its
stored material gains. We who s