While Burleigh was speaking the caveman had reached the doorway and reared up just beside it in the shadow.Clutching a brutal-looking club in his hairy,rough hand,he stood listening to the story of the murder that had left Victor fatherless.
The face of the listener made clear the need for guardian angels.
One leap,one blow,and Victor Burleigh would carry only one more scar to his grave.
Suddenly a faint piping voice floated in upon the glen:
Little childwen pwessing near To the feet of Thwist,the Ting,Have you neiver doubt nor fear Or some twibute do you bwing?
And Bug Buler,flushed and splashed,and generally muddy and happy,came around the fallen ledges and debauched into the grassy sunshiny space before the cavern.Only a tiny,tumbled-up,joyous child,with no power in his pudgy little arm;and Victor Burleigh,tall,muscular and agile.
Against this man of tremendous strength the caveman's club was lifted.
But with the sound of the child's voice and the sight of the innocent face the club fell harmless.A look of fright,deepening to a maniac's terror,seized the creature,and noiselessly and swiftly as a serpent would escape he crawled back into the darkness and burrowed deep from the eyes of men.
So strength that day was ruled by weakness.
"I ist followed you,Vic,"Bug said,clutching Vic's hand.
"This is n't a safe place to come,Bug.You must n't follow me here.""Nen you must n't go into is n't safe places,so I won't follow.
Little folks don't know,"Bug said,with cunning gravity.
"He is right,"Elinor said."I think we'd better leave now."They knew that henceforth this spot would be holy ground for them,but they did not dare to think further than that.
They only wished that the moments would stay,that the sun would loiter slowly down the afternoon sky.
"I know a way out,"Bug declared.Turn,I'll show you."Then,with a child's sense of direction,he led away from the cave out to where the deep ravine headed in a rough mass of broken rock.
"Tlimb up that and you're out,"Bug declared.
They climbed up to the high level prairie that sweeps westward from the Walnut bluffs.
"Doodby,folks.I want to Botany wiv urn over there.
I turn wiv Limpy out here."
Bug pointed to a group of students wandering about in search of dogtooth violets and other botanical plunder from Nature's springtime treasury.
Among the group was Bug's chum,the crippled student.
"Well,stay with them this time,you little wandering Jew,"Vic admonished,nor dreamed how his guardian angel had come to him this day in the guise of this same little wanderer.
When Victor and Elinor had come at last to the west bluff above the Walnut River,the late afternoon was already casting long shadows across the grassy level of the old Kickapoo Corral.And again the camp fires were glowing where a Sorority "spread"was merrily in the ******.
They must go down soon and join in the hilarity.But a golden half hour yet hung in the west--and the going down meant the going back to all that had been.
"Look at the foam on the whirlpool,Elinor.See how deliberately it swings upstream.Isn't that a most deceiving bit of treachery?"Vic said as he watched the river.
Elinor looked thoughtfully at the slow-moving water.
"I cannot endure deceit,"she said at last."I like honesty in everything.
I said I would tell you sometime about a sacrifice I was forced to make.
I'll tell you now if you will not speak of what I say."How delicious to have her confidence in anything.
Vic smiled assent.