One night we were together, a company of us, in the great cave of Hair and Gurr, and we were hungry, because we had come from bad hunting toward the north. We could have found more had we not feared to invade the bushy plain, and I could have howled aloud in anger, for I was half famished. I thought of the purple berries and the sweet nuts and the sucking roots and the little things to kill, and I sulked off alone and dared and ventured in my mind, and there came the thought, a thing so dreadful that I gasped in the thinking of it, yet which clung to me as fiercely as cling the vines which bear the blood-red blossoms on the rocks. And my dreams came to a red climax the next day, when one man, venturing into the borders of the plain, just narrowly escaped the monster. All through the night I tossed fitfully, and again the desperate fancy gripped me. I leaped to my feet and swung my axe and yelled out “Bear” and “Kill!” and Woof awakened and leaped in alarm, and laughed when he saw that I seemed raving. Sometimes Cave men had madness. But the craze was on me, and, the next morning, I ran up and down the valley and howled aloud and screamed and yelped that I, I alone, would kill the monster in the plain. The others heard my ravings and came out, but they only grinned and chuckled, though all followed me as I turned and ran southward and toward the wood-path which led through the forest to where was the little plain--and death. I did not linger, and my following tribe ran close behind me until I reached the very edge of the dangerous ground, when, as monkeys climb, they swarmed into the treetops while I slipped forward among the bushes, a crazed and yet contained thing, half demented, strong and unconsciously, blindly, seeking what seemed suicide, but--with the Axe. I crept into a little pathway and saw nothing, and so slipped along unhindered until I reached the rock. I climbed it, tremblingly, for another mood had come upon me now. I was afraid. I threw myself down upon the stone and shook all over as the leaves shake in the aspen tree which the wind owns. So in awful terror I tossed about for a time until, in my very desperation, the rage came back again and I cared for nothing in all the world, for the blue sky or the people in the treetops or myself or death or mangling. I leaped to my feet and danced up and down and whooped and swung my arms. Then, in a near thicket, there was a rustle, and “woof,” and the huge cave bear rushed forth and gazed about. Slowly at first, looking up toward me, the monster came shuffling and shambling into the open. He saw me plainly now, and there was another great “woof,” a growl, and he lurched forward with astounding swiftness. And then just when the dread was most appalling, the awful sickness, which had come again, left me, and I became cold of blood and insanely crafty and blood-hungry. Then I, the Axeman, dropped to the ground, not a score of yards before the approaching beast!