But there came, stronger than ever, the hunger for It, and I ranged through the forest for many days and into places strange to me. Food I discovered in abundance. So I wandered restlessly until I passed, one afternoon, across a wide, bare space, almost a plain, where there stood a grove of trees, up one of which I climbed, and slept there in its great crotch. In the morning something made me turn again toward my own region. I was nearing there when I heard a distant cry, and I knew in a moment what it meant. My It had returned to seek me and was again in peril. I bounded forward and saw it all. In a great treetop was my It, and beneath her was the Brown One. I did not know it then, but he had killed her old father and mother, even before he found her with me, and when she fled from our nest he had chased her far away, but vainly. After days of flight and hiding she had eluded him and had come back seeking me, and he had come back as well, thinking, in his dim way, thus to find her. He had found her, indeed, but he was about to find, too, what was not well for him. She was above him, where the branches were weak and where he could not clamber to her easily, but she was shrieking loudly, as well she might. I made no sound at first. I ran to the tree and climbed, with my club between my teeth, until I reached a limb on which was fighting room, and then I roared aloud. The screaming of It changed in an instant to shrieks of joy. The Brown One glared downward and saw me and scrambled downward with a snarling roar, to the limb upon which I stood. He ran close, and we stood as we had in the other fight, scarce a yard apart, each sustained by the grip of our long toes and with one hand clutching an upright branch, leaving the other free. In his free hand was nothing; in mine was the club. He thrust forward to clutch and pull me to him. It was his end! I swung my club aloft as he lurched toward me savagely, and smote down fairly upon his head with all my maddened strength. Like clay, his brute skull caved in, for the blow was devilish. He did not even scream. His fingers and toes clung to the limbs for an instant, and then he dropped silently far to the ground. He drew his arms and legs together quiveringly once or twice and then lay still. He was dead! I danced upon the limb and roared and yelped and mocked. The Brown One was dead! In all the world there was none other so great and wise as I. What other knew the club? My mate came to me wonderingly and chattering, and we caressed each other. We went down the tree and I beat the head of the Brown One as I had that of the wolf, but there was no need. Already the little insects were running over him. He was dead. In the night something would come and eat him.