"
"And they tell other strange stories," continued the old man. "They say
that very long ago the cold and ice came down, and all the people and
animals fled before it, and that the summer was cold as now the winter is,
and that the men and beasts fled together to the south, and were there for
a long time, but came back again as the cold and ice went back. They say,
too, that in still later times, the fireplaces where the flames came out
of great cracks in the earth were in tens of places where they are in one
now, and that, even in the ice time, the flames came up, and that the ice
was melted and then ran in rivers to the sea. And these things I do not
believe, for how can men tell of what there was so long ago? They are but
the gabblings of the old, who talk so much."
Many other stories the veteran told, but what most affected Ab was his
account of the vale of fire. He hoped to see it sometime.
CHAPTER XIII.
AB'S GREAT DISCOVERY.
It may be that never in what was destined to be a life of many changes was
Ab happier than in this period of his lusty boyhood and early manhood,
when there was so much that was new, when he was full of hope and
confidence and of ambition regarding what a mighty hunter and great man he
would become in time. As the years passed he was not less indefatigable in
his experiments, and the day came when a marvelous success followed one of
them, although, like most inventions, it was suggested in the most trivial
and accidental manner.
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