The morning was one to make men far older than these two most confident and full of life. The season was late, though the river's waters were not yet cold. The mast had already begun to fall and the nuts lay thickly among the leaves. Every morning, and more regularly than it comes now, there was a spread of glistening hoar frost upon the lowlands and the little open lands in the forest and upon every spot not tree-protected. At such times there appeared to the eyes of the cave people the splendor of nature such as we now can hardly comprehend. It came most strikingly in spring and autumn, and was something wonderful. The cave men, probably, did not appreciate it. They were accustomed to it, for it was part of the record of every year. Doubtless there came a greater vigor to them in the keen air of the hoar frost time, doubtless the step of each was made more springy and each man's valor more defined in this choice atmosphere. Temperate, with a wonderful keenness to it, was the climate of the cave region in the valley of the present Thames. Even in the days of the cave men, the Gulf Stream, swinging from the equator in the great warm current already formed, laved the then peninsula as it now laves the British Isles. The climate, as has been told, was almost as equable then as now, but with a certain crispness which was a heritage from the glacial epoch. It was a time to live in, and the two were merry on their journey in the glittering morning. The young men idled on their way and wasted an hour or two in vain attempts to approach a feeding deer nearly enough for effective spear-throwing. They were late when, after swimming the creek, they reached the Shell village and there learned that the party had already gone. They decided that they might, perhaps, overtake the fishermen, and so, with the hunter's easy lope, started briskly down the river bank. They were not destined to fish that day.