and his tail lashing. He gave one last snarl and slid
from view among the trees.

And then such a chattering as went up. We swarmed out
of our holes, examining the marks his claws had made on
the crumbling rock of the bluff, all of us talking at
once. One of the two Folk who had been caught in the
double cave was part-grown, half child and half youth.
They had come out proudly from their refuge, and we
surrounded them in an admiring crowd. Then the young
fellow's mother broke through and fell upon him in a
tremendous rage, boxing his ears, pulling his hair, and
shrieking like a demon. She was a strapping big woman,
very hairy, and the thrashing she gave him was a
delight to the horde. We roared with laughter, holding
on to one another or rolling on the ground in our glee.

In spite of the reign of fear under which we lived, the
Folk were always great laughers. We had the sense of
humor. Our merriment was Gargantuan. It was never
restrained. There was nothing half way about it. When
a thing was funny we were convulsed with appreciation
of it, and the simplest, crudest things were funny to
us. Oh, we were great laughers, I can tell you.

The way we had treated Saber-Tooth was the way we
treated all animals that invaded the village. We kept
our run-ways and drinking-places to ourselves by making
life miserable for the animals that trespassed or
strayed upon our immediate territory. Even the fiercest