The next day Thorn walked along the beach and picked up pretty shells.
"These are for the folks at home," he said to Periwinkle. "They will
put them on the strings around their necks."
"Here is my bow," he went on, handing it to Periwinkle. "You may keep
it. I can make another. I am going back to my grandfather's now."
Periwinkle and Clam and some of the men went part way with Thorn. They
walked for a long time through fir forests and then came to the forests
of oak and beech and ash and chestnut. Here Thorn left his friends,
and waved his arm to them as he ran on to his grandfather's. The shell
people went back to their home by the sea.
CHAPTER XIV
THE FEAST OF MAMMOTH'S MEAT
One morning after Thorn had come back to his grandfather's cave, he
woke up with tears on his face.
"Last night when I was asleep," he said to himself, "my shadow self
went away to the home cave. And there it saw my mother and Pineknot
and the baby sitting about the fire, just as they used to sit. And
they were talking about me, saying that they wanted to see me. And I
want to go home to see them."
The homesick boy went into the woods for comfort; he loved to watch the
wild things going about. Not far off, he saw a herd of mammoths
feeding. He never tired of looking at the big hairy elephants with
their turned-up tusks and long snaky trunks. They were reaching up for
the tender leaves of the birch, or needles of the hemlock, and would
carry the green stuff to their mouths with their trunks.
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