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.
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