But this must be the place; a sort of bunker right at the end of the bank. Here, cuddling down almost luxuriously into loose dry sand, still warm from yesterday's sun, he waited for that hint of light in the far east to grow strong enough for him to see. It is always an experience to sit and wait for daylight, ignorant, helpless till it comes, of what lies close at hand. Lance Carlyon, crouching in that still warm sand, felt a sudden forlornness, a sense of having parted with something. But, almost on the heels of this, came a sense of having found something; of strange, quick, new, yet familiar companionship. It seemed to him as he watched that faint grey lightening in the far east, that he did so, not as Lance Carlyon, but as an atom in the great, round, spinning world whose curved edge grew darker against the coming light. He laid his gun beside him, and, kneeling in the soft, still warm sand, rested his arms on the edge of the bunker, ears and eyes alert as any wild creature's. He could hear the soft rustle of feathers in the dark, the soft swish of the water as something stirred in it, the soft sob with which an inch or two of that tiny, unseen sand-cliff gave way to the stream, the softer gurgle, as of laughter, with which the water took its toll of earth. So, thinking not at all, simply as a sand grain in the sand around him, the mystery, the certainty of dawn held him, as it held all things. The curved line of the world darkened, the shadow of it deepened, as the grey of the sky grew tender as the eye of a mother watching her child asleep. But only for a space. Then the grey hardened, and a trumpet call from a whistling teal told that the great fight of dawn had come. So, for another space, the Dark and the Light faced each other, waiting for that second trumpet call. It came, borne on a faint rustle of wind which crept over the edge of the world from the footsteps of the coming day. The shiver of it swept through the shadows; they broke into battalions to face the foe. So into companies, till, as the red spear-points of the sun showed over the horizon, they rallied darkly, desperately, behind each hint of rising ground, in each hint of sheltering hollow. Rallied in vain, for below the spear-points a glittering curve, as of a golden helmet, came resistless. Then Lance Carlyon stood up, hastily, gun in hand. But he was too late. The mystery of Dawn had held him helpless, as it had held the birds; and now they, too, were freemen of the conquering day. He fired a couple of shots after them, more as a salute to the victor than in any hope of slaughter; so, with a laugh, turned homeward. The canoe shot against the stream gaily, but, as he neared the spit, a sudden desire to go home by land assailed him. Am-ma could take the boat back; there might be a chance of a snipe, in that low-lying bit below the mission house, and-- He blushed, even in solitude, at his own moral turpitude. Why not tell the truth; to himself, at least?