He toiled for many days. With his ax he chipped away the
cavern's sharp protuberances at each side, and with the stone chips from
the walls and with what he brought from outside, he made the floor white
and clean and nearly level. He built a fireplace and chipped into a huge
stone, which, fortunately, lay inside the cave, a hollow for holding
drinking water, or for the boiling of meat. He built up a passage-way at
the entrance, allowing something but not too much more than his own width,
as the gauge for measurement of its breadth. He brought into the cave a
deep carpet of leaves and made a wide bed in one corner and this he
covered with furred skins, for many skins Ab owned in his own right. Then,
with a thick fragment of tough branch as a lever, he rolled a big stone
near the cave's entrance and left it ready to be occupied as a home. The
woman was still lacking.
There came a day when Ab, impatient after his searching and waiting, but
yet resolute, had killed a capercailzie--the great grouse-like bird of the
time, the descendants of which live to-day in northern forests--and had
built a fire and feasted, and then, instinctively careful, had climbed to
the first broad, low branch of an enormous tree and there adjusted himself
to sleep the sleep of one who has eaten heartily.
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