ich they had come, until he reached the open country where he had
first seen them; and here, rooting under the bushes at the margin of
the wood, he discovered a family--a mother and four young ones--which
had possibly contained the victim of the dogs. He stalked them slowly
and cautiously, keeping bushes between himself and them, but was seen
by the mother when about twenty yards away. She sniffed suspiciously,
then, with a warning grunt and a scattering of dust and twigs, scurried
into the woods, with her brood--all but one--in her wake.

A frightened pig is as easy a target as a darting dorsal fin, and a fat
suckling lay kicking convulsively on the ground. He hurried up, the
hunting gleam bright in his eyes, and hurled the second stone at the
little animal. It still kicked, and he picked up the first stone,
thinking it might be more potent to kill, and crashed it down on the
unfortunate pig's head. It glanced from the head to the other stone and
struck a spark--which he noticed.

The pig now lay still, and satisfied that he had killed it, he tried to
repeat the carom, but failed. Yet the spark had interested him,--he
wanted to see it again,--and it was only after he had reduced the pig's
head to a pulp that he became disgusted and angrily threw the stone in
his hand at the one on the ground. The resulting spark delighted him.
He repeated the experiment again and again, each concussion drawing a
spark, and finally used one stone as a hammer on the other, with the
same result--to him, a bright and pretty thing, very small, but alive,
which came from either of the dead stones. Tired of the play at last,
he turned to the pig--the food that he had yearned for.

It was well for him, perhaps, that the initial taste of bristle and fat
prevented his taking the second mouthful. Slightly nauseated, he
dropped the carcass and turned to go, but immediately bounded in the
air with a howl of pain. His left foot was red and smarting. Once he
had cut it on a sharp shell, and now searched for a wound, but found
none. Rubbing increased the pain. Looking on the ground for the cause,
he discovered a wavering, widening ring of strange appearance, and
within it a blackened surface on which rested the two stones. They were
dry flint nodules, and he had set fire to the grass with the sparks.

Considering this to be a new animal that had attacked him, he pelted it
with stones, dancing around it in a rage and shouting hoarsely. He
might have