o kill, maim, or torture; he
did not eat them, because hunger was satisfied, and he possessed a
child's dislike of radical change.

Deprived of friction with other minds, he was slower than his social
prototype in the reproduction of the epochs. At a stage when most boys
are passing through the age of stone, with its marbles, caves, and
slings, he was yet in the earlier arboreal period--a climber--and would
swing from branch to branch with almost the agility of an ape.

On fine, sunny days, influenced by the weather, he would laugh and
shout hilariously; a gloomy sky made him morose. When hurt, or angered
by disappointment in the hunt, he would cry out inarticulately; but
having no use for language, did not talk, hence did not think, as the
term is understood. His mind received the impressions of his senses,
and could fear, hate, and remember, but knew nothing of love, for
nothing lovable appealed to it. He could hardly reason, as yet; his
shadow puzzled, angered, and annoyed him until he noticed its
concomitance with the sun, when he reversed cause and effect,
considered it a beneficent, mysterious Something that had life, and
endeavored by gesture and grimace to placate and please it. It was his
beginning of religion.

His dreams were often horrible. Strange shapes, immense snakes and
reptiles, and nondescript monsters made up of prehistoric legs, teeth,
and heads, afflicted his sleep. He had never seen them; they were an
inheritance, but as real to him as the sea and sky, the wind and rain.

Every six months, at the breaking up of the monsoon, would come squalls
and typhoons--full of menace, for his kindly, protecting shadow then
deserted him. One day, when about ten years old, during a wild burst of
storm, he fled down the beach in an agony of terror; for, considering
all that moved as alive, he thought that the crashing sea and swaying,
falling trees were attacking him, and, half buried in the sand near the
bushes, found the forgotten life-buoy, stained and weather-worn. It was
quiescent, and new to him,--like nothing he had seen,--and he clung to
it. At that moment the sun appeared, and in a short time the storm had
passed. He carried the life-buoy back with him--spurning and
threatening his delinquent shadow--and looked for a place to put it,
deciding at last on a small cave in the rocky wall near to the pool. In
a corner of this he installed the ring of cork and canvas, and remained
by it, patting and caress