The closer ties of family life, as we know them now, existed but in their outlines to the cave man. The man and woman were faithful to each other with the fidelity of the higher animals and their children were cared for with rough tenderness in their infancy. The time of absolute dependence was made very short, though, and children very early were required to find some of their own food, and taught by necessity to protect themselves. But Little Mok, unable to take up for himself the burden of an independent existence, was not slain nor left to die of neglect as might have been another child thus crippled in the time in which he lived. He, once spared, grew into the wild hearts of those closest to him and became the guarded and cherished one of the rude home of Ab and Lightfoot, and to him was thus given the continuous love and care which the strong-limbed boys and girls of the family lost and never missed. It was a strange thing for the time. The child had qualities other than the negative ones of helplessness and weakness with which to bind to him the hearts of those around him, but the primary fact of his entire dependence upon them was what made him the center of the little circle of untaught, untamed cave people who lived in the Fire Valley. He may have been the first child ever so cherished from such impulse. From his mother the child inherited a joyous disposition which nothing could subdue. Often on the return home from some little expedition on which it had been practicable to take him, sitting on Lightfoot's shoulder, or on the still stronger arm of old One-Ear, his silent, somewhat brooding grandfather, the little brown boy made the woods ring with shrill bird calls, or the mimicry of animals, and ever his laughter filled the spaces in between these sounds. Other children flocked around the merry youngster, seeking to emulate his play of voice and the oldsters smiled as they saw and heard the joyous confusion about the tiny reveler. The excursions to the river were Little Mok's chief delight from his early childhood. He entered into the preparations for them with a zest and keen enjoyment born of the presence of an adventurous spirit in a maimed body, and when the fishing party left the Fire Camp it was incomplete if Little Mok was not carried lightly at the van, the life and joy of the occasion. No one ever forgot the day when Little Mok, then about six years old, caught his first fish. His joy and pride infected all as he exhibited his prize and boasted of what he would catch in the river next, and when, on the return, Old Mok saluted him as the "Great Fisherman," the elf's elation became too great for any expression. His little chest heaved, his eyes flashed, and then he wriggled from Lightfoot's arms into the lap of Old Mok, snuggled down into the old man's furs and hid his face there; and the two understood each other.