The light grew until it glowed with the fire of opals; through the tree-tops ran little stirs of wakefulness, and all about him were faint, furtive rustlings and whispers of the new day.

Then in this glorified dusk of the dawn a squirrel loosed his bark of alarm, a crested jay screamed in answer, and he knew his hour of atonement was come.
He pressed forward again toward the desert, eager to be on with it.

The page with the wash of blood across it seemed to take on a new vividness in the stronger light.

Under the stain, the letters of the words were magnified before his mind,--"_And as ye would that men should do to you_--" It seemed to him that the blood through which they came heated the words so that they burned his eyes.
An hour after daybreak the trail led him down out of the hills by a little watercourse to the edge of the desert.

Along the sides of this the chaparral grew thickly, and the spring by which he halted made a little spot of green at the edge of the gray.