So this is the wild geese arriving! Then beat, heart, and strain, eyes, through the darkness, for this is an exciting moment. Not that there is the remotest chance of a shot at them at present; but it is enough if they alight close at hand and tarry, breakfasting, until daylight doth appear. How close the sound seems in the still air, and yet the birds may be a mile away! I can hear the slow, measured beat of their great wings as they approach, a solid phalanx, conversing quietly at short intervals. Surely they are very close indeed? They are all talking at once now. Perhaps they have seen the water and are excited, knowing that their journey is at an end. The beating of their wings seems almost to brush now the topmost boughs of the _shalashka_. I fancy I can feel a movement in the air, fanned by their big pinions. Thud! There goes the leader; he has alighted. Thud again--and yet again! It is true--they are here; they have come! To judge from the noises which they are making, there must be a considerable number arrived--thirty or forty. They are chattering to one another happily and sociably, and uttering very different tones from those weird, melancholy cries of theirs while on the wing. They are no longer the lost spirits, the poor wandering unbaptized souls, but a party of merry travellers just arrived, so to speak, at the tavern where a comfortable breakfast is spread all ready for them. They are sure to do justice to it, for this is their favourite feeding-ground--all over this marsh, so Ivan says. It is growing lighter. The conglomeration of sounds of life seems to have startled the Night, and reminded her that she must hurry away and attend to her duties in another hemisphere. She is gradually withdrawing her soft wings--those dark and motherly wings which have guarded so well her little ones for many a long silent hour. Go in peace, Mother Night, for the broad Sun will take good care of your bantlings during your absence. He will open upon them his "good gigantic smile," and they shall laugh and sing and be merry. Already I can catch a pale, sickly gleam of light, where the Waters look up to the grey sky and cry, "How long, Sun, how long the gloom and the cold?" Be silent, lake, for soon the bridegroom will arrive, and you shall bedeck your waters with gems, and sparkle and glitter in leagues of dancing delight.