to keep her at home, as
the children were looked after by Ook-ootsk.

It was a very little party which started southward from the
Caves--simply Grom, A-ya, young Mo, and a dwarfish kinsman of Grom's,
named Loob, who was the swiftest runner in the tribe and noted for his
cunning as a scout. He could go through underbrush like a shadow, and
hide where there was apparently no hiding-place, making himself
indistinguishable from the surroundings like a squatting partridge.
Each one carried a bow, two light spears, and a club--except A-ya, who
had no club, and only one spear. The weapon she chiefly relied upon
was the bow, which she loved with passion. She considered herself the
inventor of it; and in the accuracy of her shooting she outdid even
Grom. In addition to these weapons, each member of the party except
the leader himself carried a fire-basket, in which a mass of red coals
mixed with punk smouldered in a bed of moist clay.

The little expedition traveled Indian file, Grom leading the way, with
A-ya at his heels, then Loob the Scout, and young Mo bringing up the
rear. They had started about dawn, when the first of the morning rose
was just beginning to pale the cave-mouth fires. They traveled
swiftly, but every two hours or so they would make a brief halt beside
a spring to drink and breathe themselves and to look to the precious
fires in the fire-baskets. When it wanted perhaps an hour of noon,
they came to a little patch of meadow surrounding a solitary
Judas-tree covered with bloom. Here they built a fire, for the
replenishing of the coals in the fire-baskets, and as a menace to
prowling beasts. Then they dined on their sun-dried meat and on ripe
plantains gathered during the journey. Having dined, the three younger
members of the party stretched themselves out in the shade for their
noon sleep, while Grom, whose restless brain never suffered him to
sleep by day, kept watch, and pondered the adventure which lay before
them.

As Grom sat there, ten or a dozen paces from the fire, absorbed in thought,
his eyes gradually focussed themselves upon a big purple-and-lemon orchid
bloom, which glowed forth conspicuously from the rank green
jungle-growth fringing the meadow. The gorgeous bloom seemed to rise out of
a black, curiously gnarled elbow of branch or trunk which thrust itself out
through the leafage. Grom's eyes dwelt for a time, unheeding, upon this
piece of misshapen tree trunk. Suddenly he saw the blackness w