Their belts were drawn too tight--men, women, and little children--their belts too tight.

That was it! Father Roland emphasized it.

Too much hunger in the long, terrible months of winter, when to keep body and soul together they trapped the furred creatures for the hordes of luxurious barbarians in the great cities of the earth.

Just a steady, gnawing hunger all through the winter--hunger for something besides meat, a hunger that got into the bones, into the eyes, into arms and legs--a hunger that brought sickness, and then death.
That winter he saw grown men and women die of measles as easily as flies that had devoured poison.

They were over at Metoosin's, sixty miles to the west of the Chateau, when Metoosin returned to his shack with supplies from a Post.