But the world now seemed changed.

He went about in it with greater confidence, with a feeling of prowess that had not been his in the days before the battle with the lynx.

He had looked upon life in a more ferocious aspect; he had fought; he had buried his teeth in the flesh of a foe; and he had survived.

And because of all this, he carried himself more boldly, with a touch of defiance that was new in him.

He was no longer afraid of minor things, and much of his timidity had vanished, though the unknown never ceased to press upon him with its mysteries and terrors, intangible and ever-menacing.
He began to accompany his mother on the meat-trail, and he saw much of the killing of meat and began to play his part in it.