Three or four days were required before Ab and Oak realized, after what
had taken place, that there were in the community any more important
personages than they, and that they had work before them, if they were to
continue in their glorious career. When everyday matters finally asserted
themselves, there was their pit not yet completed. Because of their
absence, a greater aggregation of beasts was feeding in the little
valley. Not only the aurochs, the ancient bison, the urus, the progenitor
of the horned cattle of to-day, wild horse and great elk and reindeer
were seen within short distances from each other, but the big, hairy
rhinoceros of the time was crossing the valley again and rioting in its
herbage or wallowing in the pools where the valley dipped downward to the
marsh. The mammoth with its young had swung clumsily across the area of
rich feed, and, lurking in its train, eyeing hungrily and bloodthirstily
the mammoth's calf, had crept the great cave tiger. The monster cave bear
had shambled through the high grass, seeking some small food in default
of that which might follow the conquest of a beast of size. The uncomely
hyenas had gone slinking here and there and had found something worthy
their foul appetite. All this change had come because the two boys, being
boys and full of importance, had neglected their undertaking for about a
week and had talked each in his own home with an air intended to be
imposing, and had met each other with much dignity of bearing, at their
favorite perching-place in the treetop on the hillside. When there came
to them finally a consciousness that, to remain people of magnitude in
the world, they must continue to do something, they went to work bravely.
The change which had come upon the valley in their brief absence tended
to increase their confidence, for, as thus exhibited, early as was the
age, the advent of the human being, young or old, somehow affected all
animate nature and terrified it, and the boys saw this. Not that the
great beasts did not prey upon man, but then, as now, the man to the
great beast was something of a terror, and man, weak as he was, knew