VON HORST experienced a sensation of peace and well being. He was vaguely aware that he was awakening from a long and refreshing sleep. He did not open his eyes. He was so comfortable that there seemed no reason to do so, but rather to court a continuance of the carefree bliss he was enjoying.

This passive rapture was rudely interrupted by a growing realization that his head ached. With returning consciousness his nervous system awoke to the fact that he was far from comfortable. The sensation of peace and well being faded as the dream it was. He opened his eyes and looked up into the face of La–ja, bending solicitously close above his own. His head was pillowed in her lap. She was stroking his forehead with a soft palm.

"You are all right, Von?" she whispered. "You will not die?"

He smiled up at her, wryly. "'O Death! Where is thy sting?'" he apostrophized.

"It didn't sting you," La–ja assured him; "it hit you with its paw."

Von Horst grinned. "My head feels as though it had hit me with a sledge hammer. Where is it? What became of it?" He turned his head painfully to one side and saw the dinosaur lying motionless near them.

"It died just as it struck you," explained the girl. "You are a very brave man, Von."

"You are a very brave girl," he retorted. "I saw you running in to help me. You should not have done that."

"Could I have stood and watched you being killed when you had deliberately drawn the charge of the zarith upon yourself to save me?"

"So that is a zarith?"

"Yes, a baby zarith," replied the girl. "It is well for us that it was not a full–grown one, but of course one would never meet a full–grown zarith in a forest."

"No? Why not?"

"For one reason they are too big; and, then, they couldn't find any food here. A full–grown zarith is eight times as long as a man is tall. It couldn't move around easily among all these trees; and when it stood up on its hind feet, it'd bump its head on the branches. They kill thags and tandors and other large game that seldom enters the forests—at least not forests like this one."

Von Horst whistled softly to himself as he tried to visualize a reptile nearly fifty feet in length that fed on the great Bos, the progenitors of modern cattle, and upon the giant mammoth. "Yes," he soliloquized, "I imagine it's just as well that we ran into Junior instead of Papa. But, say, La–ja, what became of that man–thing the zarith was chasing?"

"He never stopped running. I saw him looking back after you made the loud noise with that thing you call peestol, but he did not stop. He should have come back to help you, I think; though he must have thought that you were sick in the head not to run. It takes a very brave man not to run from a zarith."

"There wasn't any place to run. If there had been, I'd still be running."

"I do not believe that," said La–ja. "Gaz would have run, but not you."

"You like me a little better, La–ja?" he asked. He was starved for friendship—for even the friendship of this savage little girl of the stone age.

"No," said La–ja, emphatically. "I do not like you at all, but I know a brave man when I see one."

"Why don't you like me, La–ja?" he asked a little wistfully. "I like you. I like you—a lot." He hesitated. How much did he like her?