time--nor did he attend a private school, for the private schools were
weak, as well, but he did attend the great school of Nature from the
moment he opened his eyes in the morning until he closed them at night.
Of his schoolboy days and his friendships and his various affairs, this
is the immediate story.

The father and mother of Ab as has, it is hoped, been made apparent, were
strong people, intelligent up to the grade of the time and worthy of
regard in many ways. The two could fairly hold their own, not only
against the wild beasts, but against any other cave pair, should the
emergency arise. They had names, of course. The name of Ab's father was
One-Ear, the sequence of an incident occurring when he was very young, an
accidental and too intimate acquaintance with a species of wildcat which
infested the region and from which the babe had been rescued none too
soon. The name of Ab's mother was Red-Spot, and she had been so called
because of a not unsightly but conspicuous birthmark appearing on her
left shoulder. As to ancestry, Ab's father could distinctly remember his
own grandfather as the old gentleman had appeared just previous to his
consumption by a monstrous bear, and Red-Spot had some vague remembrance
of her own grandmother.

As for Ab's own name, it came from no personal mark or peculiarity or as
the result of any particular incident of his babyhood. It was merely a
convenient adaptation by his parents of a childish expression of his own,
a labial attempt to say something. His mother had mimicked his babyish
prattlings, the father had laughed over the mimicry, and, almost
unconsciously, they referred to their baby afterward as "Ab," until it
grew into a name which should be his for life. There was no formal early
naming of a child in those days; the name eventually made itself, and
that was all there was to it. There was, for instance, a child living not