arms and cuddled him again there came a sound to her ears which made her
leap like some wilder creature of the forest up to a little vantage
ground. She turned her head, and then--you should have seen the woman!

Very nearly above them swung down one of the branches of a great beech
tree. The mother threw the child into the hollow of her left arm, and
leaped upward a yard to catch the branch with her right hand. So she hung
dangling. Then, instantly, holding him firmly by one arm in her left
hand, she lowered the child between her legs and clasped them about him
closely. And then, had it been your fortune to be born in those times,
you might have seen good climbing. With both her strong arms free, this
vigorous matron ran up the stout beech limb which depended downward from
the great bole of the tree until she was twenty feet above the ground,
and then, lifting herself into a comfortable place, in a moment was
sitting there at ease, her legs and one arm coiled about the big branch
and a smaller upstanding one, while the other arm held the brown babe
close to her bosom.

This charming lady of the period had reached her perch in the beech tree
top none too soon. Even as she swung herself into place upon the huge
bough, there came rushing across the space beneath, snarling, smelling
and seeking, a brute as foul and dangerous as could be imagined for
mother and son upon the ground. It was of a dirty dun color, mottled and
striped with a lighter but still dingy hue. It had a black, hoggish nose,
but there were fangs in its great jaws. It resembled a huge wolf, save as
to its massiveness and club countenance, It was one of the monster hyenas
of the time, a beast which must have been as dangerous to the men then
living as any animal except the cave tiger and the cave bear. Its
degenerate posterity, as they shuffle uneasily back and forth when caged
to-day, are perhaps not less foul of aspect, but are relatively pygmies.