I turned to walk toward my hut, carrying the hares in my hand, when I heard a shout from the river, and there came to me Black Bow and his wife, he with his weapons, and she carrying a great fish he had speared in the shallows. We had done well. He chopped off a part of the fish, which he gave to me, and took two of the hares, and then I went to my hut, and made a fire, and cooked my meat and fish, and ate, and was most content. And, later, I went out and sat upon a rock with Black Bow, who also had eaten and was content, and we talked there long, the wolf dogs playing about us. The wolf dogs made me think; and I said, as I had said before to Black Bow, that the dogs were useful, and that we should seek to capture more cubs in the caves, and I asked him if he did not think there were other wild things we could tame and use. But Black Bow only laughed loudly. “What think you,” he said, “of Gnawbones and the leopard?” And he laughed again. That indeed made me at a loss to answer, for the adventure of the leopard had been a brisk one. Because of the youth Gnawbones there had been a lively half hour in the glen. He was a strange youth, living with his father and mother, old Three Toes and dark old Night, as they called her, in the cave apart from the rest of the tribe in the gorge which leads from the river caves to the forest and plain above. Unlike most of the Cave people were old Three Toes and Night, and some said that they were the children of River people, captured long ago. I do not know. I know only that they lived much on frogs and fish and clams. But Gnawbones, the youth, was different from his father and mother. He hungered for meat, and was a lonely creature of the woods and hills. He sported little with the Cave youth below, but was ever in the beech woods of the uplands, and the wonder was that the hunting beasts there had not devoured him. But he was keen of sight and quick of ear, and could run swiftly, and climb like the monkey people who live far, very far to the south of us. And he brought alarm to the Cave people, and how it first began he told me after I had beaten him with the handle of my spear. One day, moons before, when the sun had just begun going down the sky to let the darkness come, he was sleeping soundly in a nest he had made in a crotch of one of the great beech trees, when something, so softly purring that it awakened him but slowly, was pressed against his face. He opened his eyes, and there, snuggling close, was what, to the boy, was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. It was tawny, with dark spots, and had shining eyes and soft paws with which it patted the youth’s face, and then sank down to stillness beside him. Much as he knew of the forest, the boy did not recognize the creature; but it was a very young one of the tree leopard, as it is called, though it cannot climb the small trees, and it was a thing which I avoided when hunting.