Tor felt very badly at the loss of his little bowl, and when he got back to the caves that night, and his mother was busy with the eggs he had brought, he took a stick and began to poke about in the hot ashes of the fire, hoping to find the bowl again. At last he discovered it, among the coals at the bottom of the fire, and dragged it out with the stick, for it was too hot to touch with his hand. When it got cool, he took it up. A piece had been broken from one side of it, when his mother threw it down, but otherwise it was not much hurt. Tor was surprised to find, when he had brushed the ashes from it, that while before it had been yellow, it had now turned a bright red. This pleased him, although he did not understand it, so he took the bowl down to the river-bank, and put it in the water, thinking to soften the clay by wetting it, as he had often done before, and then mould it over again into something else. To his surprise, the water would not soften the clay, but it did wash it clean, and made it seem redder and prettier than ever. Then he struck it against a stone, and at once it broke into many sharp pieces, just as a flower-pot would be shivered to bits, if you were to strike it against something hard. [Illustration: THE FIRST POTTER He worked all night, heating in the fire the clay bowl he had made.] All this puzzled Tor for a long time, but he decided at last that the heat of the fire had dried and burned his clay and changed it so that it became hard and red. He made up his mind to make another bowl for his mother, and this time to burn it in the fire first, before he gave it to her. Very early the next day he got another lump of clay, and made a larger bowl, taking great care this time to shape it carefully, so that it was round and smooth. Then he drew the picture of a turtle on one side, to mark it with his name, and a fish on the other, and hid it away among the rocks until he should have time to make a fire and burn it. That night, when every one was asleep, he took some hot coals from the fire before the cave, and carrying these coals in the clay bowl, he made a new fire at a hiding place he knew of among the rocks. All night he sat beside the fire, watching it, heaping on fresh wood to keep it blazing hot. In the morning, very sleepy and tired, he took the bowl out of the fire with a crooked stick, cooled, washed and dried it, and filling it with water, carried it proudly to his mother. At first she would have nothing to do with it, because the first one had been such a failure, but after awhile, when she saw that the water did not soften it, and that it had such a pretty red colour, she was very much pleased, and called Tor's father and some of the others to come and look at it.