stags disappeared. Food was hard to earn, and every meat-eater in the
valley found it so, and many of them lived only by eating each other.
Umpl's eyes were brighter, and he was thinner than in better days; yet
he still managed to find some things eatable; and he laid it all to
the Star. And one day he found himself a long way from the cave and
among a dozen young men as hungry as himself, and each one ready to
kill the other. It was very much as though they had all met there for
a picnic.

It was a part of Umpl's good fortune that he had of late been carrying
with him the Star-club that his father had made. On his arm gleamed
the Cave Bear's teeth, grim and white; and when the others saw that
they stopped to think a moment. They feared the bear. Who dared, then,
to meet the Cave Bear's slayer? And then something happened which gave
them other thoughts still more unpleasant.

Straight through the glade came the rush of galloping feet, and an
antlered stag swept by like a stone from a sling. So swiftly did he
pass that no arrow was ready save Umpl's. His went hurtling after,
straight at the back of the tossing head, and the great deer fell in a
heap, stone-dead. But what had scared him?

Ah! They did not need to ask. Gaunt, grey forms were rushing toward
them. Green eyes were flashing in the black shadows beyond. They did
not need the long howl to tell them that it was the wolf-pack from
beyond the mountains, starved out of its usual range.

There was but one thing to do--to take to the trees; and it was well
that the trees near by were low limbed. Umpl was the last one up. But
he was also the only one who had a great slice of that stag as a