The next moment I was awake, in my sheeted bed, sweating, trembling,
nauseated. The window was up, and a cool air was blowing through the
room. The night-lamp was burning calmly. And because of this I take it
that the wild pigs did not get us, that we never fetched bottom; else
I should not be here now, a thousand centuries after, to remember the
event.

And now put yourself in my place for a moment. Walk with me a bit in my
tender childhood, bed with me a night and imagine yourself dreaming such
incomprehensible horrors. Remember I was an inexperienced child. I had
never seen a wild boar in my life. For that matter I had never seen
a domesticated pig. The nearest approach to one that I had seen was
breakfast bacon sizzling in its fat. And yet here, real as life, wild
boars dashed through my dreams, and I, with fantastic parents, swung
through the lofty tree-spaces.

Do you wonder that I was frightened and oppressed by my nightmare-ridden
nights? I was accursed. And, worst of all, I was afraid to tell. I do
not know why, except that I had a feeling of guilt, though I knew no
better of what I was guilty. So it was, through long years, that I
suffered in silence, until I came to man's estate and learned the why
and wherefore of my dreams.

CHAPTER IV

There is one puzzling thing about these prehistoric memories of mine. It
is the vagueness of the time element. I lo not always know the order of
events;--or can I tell, between some events, whether one, two, or four
or five years have elapsed. I can only roughly tell the passage of time
by judging the changes in the appearance and pursuits of my fellows.

Also, I can apply the logic of events to the various happenings. For
instance, there is no doubt whatever that my mother and I were treed
by the wild pigs and fled and fell in the days before I made the
acquaintance of Lop-Ear, who became what I may call my boyhood chum. And
it is just as conclusive that between these two periods I must have left
my mother.

I have no memory of my father than the one I have given. Never, in
the years that followed, did he reappear. And from my knowledge of the
times, the only explanation possible lies in that he perished shortly
after the adventure with the wild pigs. That it must have been an
untimely end, there is no discussion. He was in full vigor, and only
sudden and violent death could have taken him off. But I know not
the manner of his going--whether he was drowned