next. There are a lot of oak trees together there and we were going along from one to the other, when there was a loud whirring noise and a big bird flew out of the top branches right over our heads! We looked up and saw the nest. It was made of sticks. I got the eggs and handed them down to Firefly, and then we came home.”

“You didn’t come all the way by the tree path and carry the eggs, did you?” cried Grannie admiringly.

“Oh, no,” said Firefly. “The eggs were too big to carry in our mouths. So Firetop dropped to the ground and I handed the eggs down to him. Then we ran back home as fast as we could.”

“You will be as great hunters as your father and mother one of these days if you keep on,” said Grannie. “And no one in the whole clan can do better than they can. My, my, I can remember when your father was a boy, how he used to hunt eggs! That’s how he got the name of Hawk-Eye. He could find eggs, and other things too, where nobody else could find anything at all. How he could swing along through the trees! No wild creatures could ever get the start of him. And then your mother! She could run faster than the wind could blow. She wasn’t easily scared, I can tell you. She had always her legs to depend upon! I’ve seen her run from a mad buck so fast that she made just a streak of light through the forest. And when the buck got too near, she swung herself into a tree and then hung by her legs safe above his head and teased the buck crazy because he could not reach her. Ah! She was a wild one in those days, and well she earned her name of Limberleg!”

“I’m sure the eggs must be done by this time,” said Firetop.

Grannie reached down and poked the ashes away from the eggs. They were very hot, but her hands were so tough and horny that she could even handle live coals. She gave one egg to Firefly. Firefly took it in her hand, but her hands were not quite so tough as Grannie’s and it burned her like everything! She dropped it on the ground, squealing with pain. It was cooked so hard that it did not spill, though the shell was broken. Grannie laughed.

“Aha,” she said, “I’m even with you now for giving me such a scare.”

“Ho,” boasted Firetop, “that’s nothing. Watch me! I guess if you can handle them I can.” He reached down and picked up an egg and held it in his hand. It was just as hot as a coal of fire, but he pretended it didn’t hurt him. He cracked and ate it in two bites, and though I’m sure it must have burned a red path all the way to his stomach, he never said a word. But when Firefly wasn’t looking he did suck the air into his mouth to cool his tongue!

“Grannie can have the other egg, can’t she, Firetop, because we scared her so,” said Firefly, when they had each eaten one.

“You may scare me every day that you bring me bird’s eggs,” said Grannie.

Grannie took the last egg from the ashes and was just cracking it when suddenly there was a shout which made them all jump. Those were pretty jumpy times, I can tell you, for a new sound might mean almost any kind of danger. There were so many wild beasts in the forest that no one could feel safe a single minute unless he was deep in a cave. Even then the cave had to have an entrance so narrow that no man-hunting animal could get into it, or else a fire must be kept burning before it to frighten them away.

The moment they heard the sound, Grannie dropped her egg and sprang to her feet. Firetop and Firefly popped into the cave and were out of sight in an instant. Grannie threw fresh sticks on the fire, and as it blazed up, she looked fearfully about in every direction. Now she heard another sound besides the shouts and screams of children’s voices. From far away down the river came a long low roar and the tramp, tramp of many feet. A group of children came tearing up the path toward the cave, shouting at the top of their lungs, “The bison are coming, the bison are coming!”

Grannie took up the cry. “The bison are coming, the bison are coming!” she shouted into the cave, and out tumbled Firetop and Firefly in the twinkling of an eye.

“Where, where?” they screamed.

“There, there, in the river bottom,” panted Squaretoes, the biggest of the boys. “We were hunting for frogs and all of a sudden there was a roar,—at first so faint we could hardly hear it,—then far down the river we saw them coming! Run, run to the big rock, and you can see them too.”

Grannie threw a great heap of dry wood upon the fire and ran with the children to the big rock, which lay part way down the path toward the river. From the top of this rock the whole valley was spread out before them like a map.

Squaretoes pointed toward the south, and there in the green marshy land bordering the river were hundreds and hundreds of great dark hairy beasts. They were running, and as they ran, they made a low roaring sound that was frightful to hear.

“We shall have fresh meat to-night,” said Grannie to the children. “The herd has been frightened. I could not see the leaders. Some of our hunters have surely found them.”

They stood on the rock until the great herd had thundered by and was out of sight around a bend in the bluff. Then Grannie said, “Come, let us go back to the fire and gather plenty of fuel, so we can cook the meat when it comes, and have a great feast.”

Chapter Two.

The Bison Feast.

For hours Grannie and the children worked together to get a huge pile of fuel ready for a feast which they hoped to have at night. It was something like getting ready for Thanksgiving.

“It is likely that old Sabre-tooth will be having a feast too,” said Grannie. “He is as glad as any of us to see the bison come back. Maybe now he won’t catch any bad children who stray too far into the wood.”

You see, the fierce sabre-toothed tiger was the beast they feared most of all, but they always had to be on the watch for wolves and hyenas, and for the dreadful cave bear as well. There were wild horses, too, and elephants, and mammoths, and lions. Grannie had to keep telling the children about these dangers, just as our mothers tell us to-day to keep out of the way of trolley-cars and steam-engines and automobiles. Only trolley-cars and steam-engines don’t run after us and stick their heads right into our front doors and try to eat us up, as the wild creatures did in those days.

It seems to us now that no one could possibly have had any happiness in a world so full of dangers, but you see Grannie and all the rest of the clan did not know that life could be any different. Just because there were so many dangers, they grew brave to meet them, and a brave man among dangers is far happier than a coward in a safe place. So perhaps they had just as good a time living as we do, after all.

By the time the children had gathered a heap of wood large enough to cook the biggest kind of a feast, it was afternoon. There was nothing in the cave to eat, and they grew hungrier and hungrier, but there were no signs of any hunters. Shadows began to gather in the woods. Now and then there was a cry of some night bird, or of a distant wolf. These were lonely sounds. Firefly began to be discouraged.

“Suppose they shouldn’t bring home any meat after all,” she said.

“Then we’ll just have to go hungry,” said Grannie.

Firetop laid his hand on his stomach