"Then ez you've cleared out the place, Henry," said Long Jim, "I guess it's all safe, an' here goes."
He bent down from his mighty height and entered, the others following silently in single file, swallowed up by the dusk. Then they stood in a group, until they could see one another, the faint light from the door helping.
"Well," said Henry, proudly, "haven't I done well by you? Isn't our new house equal to my announcement of it?"
"Equal, and more than equal!" exclaimed Paul with enthusiasm. "Why, we haven't had such a place since that time we lived on the island in the lake, and this is a greater protection from danger."
"An' we hev plenty o' water, too, I see," said Shif'less Sol. "Look at the river over thar, runnin' along ag'in the wall. 'Tain't more'n three inches wide, an' an inch deep, but it runs fast."
"I've no doubt that a cave family lived here two or three hundred thousand years ago," said Paul, his vivid fancy blossoming forth at once.
"What are you talkin' about, Paul?" said Long Jim. "People livin' here two or three hundred thousand years ago! Why, the world is only six thousand years old! The Bible says so!"
"In the Biblical sense a year did not mean what a year does now, Jim. It may have been a thousand times as long. Men did live in caves several hundred thousand years ago. A book that Mr. Pennypacker has says so."
"If the book says it, I reckon it's so," said Long Jim, with the borderer's sublime faith in the printed word.
"The man of that time was a big, hairy fellow. He didn't have even bows and arrows. He fought with a stone club or ax of stone."