Better than the acorns, better even than the dried berries, do I like the nuts of the beech tree; and Humpback, my mate, knowing this, had gone often to the great beech forest which lay far up the river, and had brought a store of nuts for the winter. But still more I wanted; and so one day, at the time when the seeds were ripe, and the nuts were nearly fallen, I told her to gather yet more of the beechnuts, and went with her, for sometimes there was good hunting there, the grouse and bustard and the wild hogs coming to eat the nuts, which they liked as well as I. The land was high and rolling, and there were pleasant open spaces down into which the sun shone, making them warm, but sometimes bringing out a little brown snake, the bite of which was deadly. These spaces had always been avoided by Humpback, my wise mate; and as I started to cross one of them she warned me, but I only laughed. I was standing in the midst of the opening even as she called to me, and, even as I laughed, I felt a sharp sting upon my ankle. I leaped aside, and, looking downward, saw one of the terrible little snakes gliding away through the thin grass. I struck blindly with my bow, and broke its back, killing it; but what could that avail me? I yelled aloud in fear, and ran to where Humpback, frightened, was standing beneath the trees. I told her what had happened, and she shrieked and put her arms about me. So we stood for a little time, and soon there came a numbness in my ankle, where I had been bitten, and then in my leg, and soon the deadness seemed to reach farther and farther all over me, and then came a dimness as I drew closer still to Humpback, and then all knowing passed! CHAPTER VIII THE DELUGE Bees were humming in my head, and I did not like it. The humming hurt me. I opened my eyes and passed my hand across my forehead and brought it away with blood upon it. I began to understand now the humming of the bees, for I remembered dimly having heard them hum in my head at other times and of what hurt had been the cause. I must have struck there heavily. Yet all seemed strange. I looked about me, and looked upon what, assuredly, I had never seen before.