He found Am-ma, worn out by his night's anxiety, with his head between his knees, fast asleep; leaving the crocodile, at the agony point of an unending yawn, in sole charge of the little circle of flickering lights. Some of them had gone out, the rest looked trumpery in the growing blaze of day. But what matter? Since, half an hour before, Erda Shepherd had come out of the wigwam with a living child, wrapped quite daintily in an orthodox square of new flannel. "It is a son, Am-ma, and I think it is very like you," she had said, with a laugh at the wrinkled, wizened old face peering out at its new world. But Am-ma had grovelled on the ground with tears and cries of blubbering joy. He had been right. The _Huzoors_ were kings. They knew the _Dee-puk-râg_. They were the light-bringers, the life-bringers. He had never asked after his wife, but when Erda had gone inside again, he sat, and in his anxiety to keep the devil from those inside, had twitched away at his string so fiercely that the crocodile's head lost its ferocity in what appeared to be a fit of laughter, until sleep, from sheer relief, overtaking the puller, the laugh had ended in that steady yawn. Am-ma was on his feet, alert in a second, however, at Lance's touch, like a wild beast. "'Tis all right, _Huzoor_" he grinned broadly. "'Tis a son." Then once again the exuberance of his delight made him grovel in the sand at the feet of the Master. "And the Miss-_sahiba?_ Hath she gone?" asked Lance, blushing once more, now that his own self-deception became impossible. "Nay, she remains inside," asserted Am-ma. But a look which he gave in the hut proved him wrong. She must have gone out the other way while he slept, he confessed, sheepishly; but there was nothing wrong. The devil had not won a way in; both mother and son were dozing peacefully. Lance, his hope of walking back with Erda gone, felt inclined to take to the canoe again. Then a savage desire to kill something, at least, suggested the possibility of a snipe in the little swampy bit below the city wall, not far from the mission house; so bidding Am-ma take the canoe up at his leisure, he walked off, feeling, for him, in a very bad temper. He forgot his quarrel with fate, however, in a second, when, the bit of swamp reached, something buzzed up to fall slantwise like a stone; something which, on picking it up, he found to be the rare Sabine snipe, painted, absolutely beautiful, in its delicate harmony of colour. And the luck did not come singly, for from behind a clump of tiger-grass came Erda Shepherd, a trifle alarmed at the possibility of being shot if she did not show herself. Lance walked up to her, swiftly, the dead bird in his hand. "You must be awfully tired, being up all night," he began-- He had a way of rushing things, Erda thought, which was disconcerting when one was anxious to keep on the surface. "And you too, Mr. Carlyon," she interrupted; "did you enjoy the ball?" She felt pleased at this able evasion.