iated, the bull roared and pawed the sod, and glared
about him to locate his unseen assailant. He had not the remotest idea
of the direction from which the strange attack had come. The galling
smart in his shoulder grew momentarily more severe. He lashed back at
it savagely with the side of his horn, but the arrow was just out of
his reach. Then, bewildered and alarmed, he tried to escape from this
new kind of fly with the intolerable sting by galloping furiously up
and down the glade. As he passed the deodar, Grom let drive another
arrow, at close range. This, too, struck, and stuck. But it did not go
deep enough to produce any serious effect. The animal roared again,
stared about him as if he thought the place was bewitched, and plunged
headlong into the nearest thicket, tearing out both arrows as he went
through the close-set stems. Grom heard him crashing onward down the
slope, and smiled to think of the surprise in store for any antagonist
that might cross the mad brute's path.

This experiment upon the wild bull had shown Grom one thing clearly.
He must arm his arrows with a more penetrating point. Until he could
carry out his idea of giving them tips of bones, he must find some
shoots of solid, pithless growth to take the place of his light hollow
canes. For the next hour or two he searched the jungle carefully and
warily, looking for a young growth that might immediately serve his
purpose.

But there in the jungle everything that was hard enough was crooked or
gnarled, everything that was straight enough was soft and sappy. It
was not till the sun was almost over his head, and the heat was urging
him back to the coolness of his grotto, that he came across something
worth making a trial of. On a bleak wind-swept knoll, far out on the
mountain-side, lay the trunk of an old hickory-tree, which had
evidently been shattered by lightning. From the roots, tenacious of
life, had sprung up a throng of saplings, ranging from a foot or two
in height to the level of Grom's head. They were as straight and slim
as the canes. And their hardness was proved to Grom's satisfaction
when he tried to break them off. They were tough, too, so that he
almost lost his patience over them, before he learned that the best
way to deal with them was to strip them down, in the direction of the
fiber, where they sprang from the parent trunk or root. Having at
length gathered an armful, he returned to his grotto and proceeded to
shape the ref