The hut, which was made of poles leaning against the perpendicular side of the rocky height, was cool and pleasant to lie in during the heat of the day. It was mid-afternoon, and why I should have been sleeping at such a time of day I could not understand. Through the entrance to the hut I could look across the valley, through which ran a shallow little river, and could see huts like the one I occupied ranged against the extending wall of the precipice, and people moving about. For a moment or two I was lost in mind. Surely I never had seen the valley and the huts before. I dreamed I had been somewhere else--in a boat tossing madly on a wild river. But soon my senses returned. I, Scar, the Strong, was in my own hut, and with my own people, and all was well. Where was Thin Legs? Where was our boat? How came I to be wearing a coat of deerskin, and how came I to be wearing leggings of the same skin? Always had my legs been bare. Then I laughed; for, all at once, my mind came back to me. I had only dreamed. I was in my own hut, in the village of my clan, than which there was none more prosperous. What clan had better homes or better bows and spears and axes in the hands of better hunters and fisherman living near the broad lake which lay between the rocky hills sloping downward to the plain and woods, through which a river led to the not-far-distant sea? The water of the lake was salt, for the tides came up the river to it; and there were many fish there, and shell-fish, where the wild things fed. There were no people who excelled us, and indeed we knew of no other tribes, save one living far to the south and another which it was said lived still farther to the westward. We were a satisfied people, remaining long in one place, though sometimes, in the summer, we abandoned the village to the women and children and old men, and made hunting trips to where the great ox, the urus, was more abundant than nearer us, to bring home the dried meat to make full the winter’s store. Fish from the lake we had, and dried them, and from the forest the women brought the wild plums and a sort of apple, and many berries, which also were dried, and which we ate in winter. Also the women gathered seeds and grains, which they pounded into a coarse meal, between smooth stones, and this they mixed with water into cakes, and made that which was good to eat with the meat and fish, either fresh or dried, as in the winter-time, when the game might have drifted southward, and the ice was thick upon the lakes, so that the hunting and fishing were not easy, and starvation might come had we not the dried things. We were ordinarily provident, though, for Old Bear, the head of the clan, had wisdom, and his axe was heavy. He was a huge old man, heavy of aspect, and strong, and rarely was he disobeyed.