n arrow had driven
through the calf of his leg and tripped him. He tried to run, but was
tripped and thrown by it a second time. He sat up, crouching, trembling
with fear, and called to me pleadingly. I dashed back. He showed me the
arrow. I caught hold of it to pull it out, but the consequent hurt made
him seize my hand and stop me. A flying arrow passed between us. Another
struck a rock, splintered, and fell to the ground. This was too much. I
pulled, suddenly, with all my might. Lop-Ear screamed as the arrow
came out, and struck at me angrily. But the next moment we were in full
flight again.

I looked back. Old Marrow-Bone, deserted and far behind, was tottering
silently along in his handicapped race with death. Sometimes he almost
fell, and once he did fall; but no more arrows were coming. He scrambled
weakly to his feet. Age burdened him heavily, but he did not want to
die. The three Fire-Men, who were now running forward from their forest
ambush, could easily have got him, but they did not try. Perhaps he was
too old and tough. But they did want the Hairless One and my sister,
for as I looked back from the trees I could see the Fire-Men beating in
their heads with rocks. One of the Fire-Men was the wizened old hunter
who limped.

We went on through the trees toward the caves--an excited and disorderly
mob that drove before it to their holes all the small life of the
forest, and that set the blue-jays screaming impudently. Now that
there was no immediate danger, Long-Lip waited for his grand-father,
Marrow-Bone; and with the gap of a generation between them, the old
fellow and the youth brought up our rear.

And so it was that Lop-Ear became a bachelor once more. That night
I slept with him in the old cave, and our old life of chumming began
again. The loss of his mate seemed to cause him no grief. At least he
showed no signs of it, nor of need for her. It was the wound in his leg
that seemed to bother him, and it was all of a week before he got back
again to his old spryness.

Marrow-Bone was the only old member in the horde. Sometimes, on looking
back upon him, when the vision of him is most clear, I note a striking
resemblance between him and the father of my father's gardener. The
gardener's father was very old, very wrinkled and withered; and for all
the world, when he peered through his tiny, bleary eyes and mumbled
with his toothless gums, he looked and acted like old Marrow-Bone. This
resemblance, as