The uncomely
hyenas had gone slinking here and there and had found something worthy
their foul appetite. All this change had come because the two boys, being
boys and full of importance, had neglected their undertaking for about a
week and had talked each in his own home with an air intended to be
imposing, and had met each other with much dignity of bearing, at their
favorite perching-place in the treetop on the hillside. When there came
to them finally a consciousness that, to remain people of magnitude in
the world, they must continue to do something, they went to work bravely.
The change which had come upon the valley in their brief absence tended
to increase their confidence, for, as thus exhibited, early as was the
age, the advent of the human being, young or old, somehow affected all
animate nature and terrified it, and the boys saw this. Not that the
great beasts did not prey upon man, but then, as now, the man to the
great beast was something of a terror, and man, weak as he was, knew
himself and recognized himself as the head of all creation. The mammoth,
the huge, thick-coated rhinoceros, sabre-tooth, the monstrous tiger, or
the bear, or the hyena, or the loping wolf, or short-bodied and vicious
wolverine were to him, even then, but lower creatures. Man felt himself
the master of the world, and his children inherited the perception.
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