There was prompt and unanimous agreement that this plan should be tried. The spearmen went hunting. Presently they returned with a buck and a roe. By this time the other animals prescribed had been slain in due number. It remained that the feast should be borne noiselessly up the hill and spread before the slumbering dragon. The homelanders surprised one another, surprised even themselves, by their zeal for a share of this task. Why should any one of them be wanting to do work that others could do? and willing to take a risk that others would take? Really they did not know. It was a strange foible. But there it was. A child can carry the largest of ducks; but as many as four men were lending a hand in porterage of a duck to-day. Not one of the porters enjoyed this work. But somehow they all wanted to do it, and did it with energy and good humour. Very soon, up yonder on the flat shelf of ground in front of the cave’s mouth, lay temptingly ranged in a semicircular pattern two goats, three ducks, two deer, three geese and two sheep. All had been done that was to be done. The homelanders suddenly began to feel the effects of their sleepless night. They would have denied that they were sleepy, but they felt a desire to lie down and think. The valley soon had a coverlet of sleeping figures, prone and supine. But, as you know, the mind has a way of waking us when it should; and the homelanders were all wide awake when the shadows began to lengthen. Very still the air was; and very still stood those men and women and children, on the other side of the dividing stream. The sun, setting red behind them, sent their shadows across the stream, on and on slowly, to the very foot of the hill up to which they were so intently looking. The column of smoke, little by little, lost its flush. But anon it showed fitful glimpses of a brighter red at the base of it, making known that the dragon’s head was not inside the cave. And now it seemed to the homelanders, in these long moments, that their hearts ceased beating, and all hope died in them. Suddenly--clash! the dragon’s jaws echoed all over the valley; and then what silence! Through the veil of smoke, dimly, it was seen that the red glow rose, paused, fell--clash! again. Twelve was a number that the homelanders could count up to quite correctly. Yet even after the twelfth clash they stood silent and still. Not till the red glow faded away into the cave did they feel sure that to-night all was well with them.