I was glad to hear the summons of Droopeye--he was called so because he had had a hurt in his youth such that one eyelid drooped, and gave him an odd look--since there had come to me strange dreams as I slept there beside the brook which tumbled down the hillside into the lake. I wonder why it is that I have always had strange dreams? Queer and singular they have been, not like those dreamed by my tribesmen, as they have told them to me. They dream of the hunt or the fishing or of the men and women among us; but I do not dream of such things. My dreams are such as I cannot understand; for they are of places and people and ways ever different from what is all about me, of men and women and lands and beasts I have never seen, of countries of hot sands and mighty deserts, or deep, steaming jungles, or cold lands of ice and snow, or of mighty forests where were no men at all, but only fierce, wild creatures upon the ground, and in the treetops other creatures looking somewhat like men indeed, but living in lofty nests, and ever fearful of the beasts below. I do not understand these dreams, and they make me wonder, with almost a little fear. Before the call of Droopeye I had dreamed of a far land of caves and people somewhat like our own, it is true, but with cruder spears and bows and arrows, and with some trouble in the making of fire, which has become to us so easy. And it seemed to me, too, that in my dreams I had myself been in some great peril, but I remembered it only dimly. So, when I awoke to the call of Droopeye, I answered lustily and leaped to my feet, and met him as he came running up the slope from the shining water. He held in his hand a wonderfully bright shell, which he had found upon the shore, and which he showed to me laughingly. It is hard to say why I, so different in all my ways, should care at all for the companionship of such a man as Droopeye, who was not the best aid in the hunt, and who could not run as fast or far as I, nor send an arrow from his bow so surely and so strongly. But I liked to have him with me, to hear his merry words, often, it seemed to me, not at all unwise, and to laugh at his shots, when, as he often did, he missed the little standing deer upon which he had crept unseen, or the great bustard which offered so fair a mark. Surely a poor bowman was Droopeye, though a good fisherman, and knowing as to all the roots and fruits and berries which were fit for eating. So I liked to have him with me in the forest or in the hills, despite his uselessness in the hunt, and cared for him as I have seen some great wild beast endure and seem to care for a lesser one about him. Ever ready was Droopeye to build the fire with the hard pointed stick twisted with the bowstring into the dried, punky wood, and he was ready in the skinning and in carrying his burden of whatever might be our spoil to the distant camp.