Far up the river, far beyond the home of Oak's father and beyond the shining marshlands and the purple heather reaches which made the foothills pleasant, extended to the river's bank a promontory, bold and picturesque and clad heavily with the best of trees. It was a great stretch of land, where, in some of nature's grim work, the earth had been up-heaved and there had been raised good soil for giant forests, and at the same time been made broad caverns to become future habitations of the creature known as man. But the trees bore nuts and fruits, and such creatures as found food in nuts and fruits, and, later, such as loved rich herbage, came to the forest in great numbers, and then followed such as fed upon these again, all the flesh eaters, to whom man was, as any other living thing, to be seized upon and devoured. The promontory, so rich in game and nuts and fruits, was, at the same time, the most dangerous in all the region for human habitation. There were deep, dry caves within its limits, but in none of them had a cave man yet ventured to make his home. It was toward this promontory that the young man in love turned his eyes. Because others had feared to make a home in this lone, high region should he also fear? There was food there in plenty and if there were chance of fighting in plenty, so much the better! Was he not strong and fleet; had he not the best of spears and axes? Above all, had he not the new weapon which made man far above the beasts? Here was the place for a home which should be the best in all this region of the cave men. Here game and food of all kinds would be most abundant. The situation would demand a brave man and a woman scarcely less courageous, but would not he and the girl he was determined to bring there meet all occasion? His mind was fixed.