and with a head of stone tied and
wrapped with leather thongs; but Gor of the tribe of Zoran swung it
easily with one of his long arms. He paid only casual attention as the
great cat passed on into the night.

One leathery hand was raised to shield his slitted eyes; the wind from
the north struck toward the mouth of the cave, and it brought with it
cold driving rain and whirling flurries of frozen pellets that bit and
stung.

Snow! Gor had traveled far, but never had he seen a storm like this
with white cold in the air. Again a shiver that was part fear rippled
through his muscles and gripped with invisible fingers at his knotted
arms.

"The Beast of the North is angry!" he told himself.

Through the dark and storm, animals drifted past before the blasts of
cold. They were fleeing; they were full of fear--fear of something
that the dull mind of Gor could not picture. But in that mind was the
same wordless panic.

Gor, the man-animal of that pre-glacial day, stared wondering,
stupidly, into the storm with eyes like those of the wild pig. His
arms were long, almost to his knees; his hair, coarse and matted, hung
in greasy locks about his savage face. Behind his low, retreating
forehead was place for little of thought or reason. Yet Gor was a man,
and he met the threat of disaster by something better than blind,
terrified, animal flight.

A scant hundred in the tribe--men and women and little pot-bellied
brown children--Gor gathered them together in the cave far back from
the mouth.

"For many moons," he told them by words and signs, "the fear has been
upon us. There have been signs for us to see and for all the
Four-feet--for Hathor, the great, and for little Wahti in his hole in
the sand-hill. Hathor has swung his long snout above his curved tusks
and has cried his fear, and the Eaters of the Dead have circled above
him and cried _their_ cry.

"And now the Sun-god does not warm us. He has gone to hide behind the
clouds. He is afraid--afraid of the cold monster that blows white
stinging things in his breath.

"The Sun-god is gone--now, when he should be making hot summer! The
Four-feet are going. Even Gwanga, the long-toothed, puts his tail
between his legs and runs from the cold."

* * * * *

The naked bodies shivered in the chill that struck in from the
storm-wrapped world; they drew closer their coverings of fur and
hides. The light of their flickering fires played strange