Through the woods the smell of fresh blood reached the keen nose of the bear and she made her way thither to satisfy the hunger that gnawed her continually. But the branches gave way under her great bulk and she fell crashing into the pit below, where the Cave People killed her with their long bone weapons. It was after one of these great bear feasts, when the Cave People had fed the Fire into a roaring blaze to protect them from the animals that grew over-bold at this season of the year, that the Old Woman renewed her warnings. The waters of the great river continued to climb upward and there remained but a little way before they should overflow the banks. Then the Old Woman gathered the members of the tribe together and told them the story of her childhood days. The new words of the tribe came stumblingly to her lips, therefore she made known her thoughts chiefly in the gesture language. First she pointed to the land across the river, waving her wrinkled hands northward. That way lay the home of her birth. Many, many years before—she held up both hands to indicate the time was beyond the power of counting—she had lived with her fathers and mothers, on a river bank. Very small she was in those days. Her head came only to the thigh of a man. Came a time when the waters of the river crept up over the lands, just as they had begun to steal over the wood north of the Hollow. The people of her tribe had climbed into the great trees, but with the coming of every new sun, the waters rose higher and higher. Long the waters continued to climb till they became a great surging flood, creeping through the forest and at last joining the waters of the river that flowed beside the homes of the Cave People. Over all the world there remained no dry land. And the Old Woman, who was then a child, dwelt for many suns with her fathers and mothers, in the tall trees. But there came one day a storm, when the waters foamed and whirled and tore up the trunks of the great trees and hurled them into the flood. And the limbs of the tree, on which the Old Woman clung, were beaten and bent in the mighty struggle till at last, she was whipped from the branches and thrown into the waters, as nuts are shaken from the trees. And the Old Woman was borne away in the swift current. She heard many cries, as the waters threw her about, and some of her people leaped into the flood to save her. But she was beaten about like a leaf in the wind and unable to call to them. Soon she found herself dashed against the trunk of a tree, and she climbed upon it and clung to it for a long time. Often she grew very weary and slipped back into the waters, but always she clung to the branches of the tree, till, at last, she had been washed ashore. And she made her way into the new land till she came, by and by, to the homes of the Cave Dwellers. Tubers they fed her and the eggs of the wild fowl. And she remained with them and became a member of the tribe.