three more fell. The rest ran back to a wider circle, and before they
got over their scare Umpl was on the ground and back again, with his
bow and quiver of arrows; and that was the beginning of the end of
that wolf-pack, while every youth in the trees now believed in the
Star.

They found the Iron Star was heavy. It took Umpl two days to plan out
a way for them to carry it, and to cut down with stone axes saplings
to sling it on. But the rest looked up to him as a leader now; and
when they left the valley he was their chief, with Sptz trotting on
behind carrying a skin of acorn-flour, and the crossed and lighted
firebrands.

It was a weary march through the mountains. For many weeks they
travelled. They found more game than in the valley behind, but nowhere
enough to be worth staying for, and at last one morning they found a
very curious thing. Across the gorge through which they were
travelling there was a barricade of trees, which had been cut down by
men. But why? It could not be for war, since they were not arranged in
a way suitable for that. Still, men had done it, and they looked
carefully around for the cave where the men belonged. It was better to
find it than to be found by its owners.

But they did not find any. Beyond the barricade was a little meadow,
shoulder deep in a curious grass with bristly heads which grew very
thickly. Wading through it, beyond a thicket, the sight that met them
struck them dumb with surprise! Before them was a lake. Out in the
lake what seemed a cluster of dome-shaped rocks rose from the water,
and a narrow path to shore was made with trunks of trees tied
together. Before them, in a place fenced off, were stags of a kind