When the morning breaks they will charge or they will go." So once again the little party came to a halt.

Hillyard stood listening and wondering if the morning would ever come; and even in that time of tension the habit of his mind reasserted its sway.

This long, silent waiting for the dawn in the depths of an African forest with death at his very elbow--here was another sharp event of life in vivid contrast with all the others which had gone before.

The years in London, the letter-box opposite the Abbey where he had posted his manuscripts at three in the morning and bought a cup of coffee at the stall by the kerb--times so very close to him--the terms at Oxford, the strange hungry days on the quays of Spain, the moonlit wanderings on the footpath over the rustic ridge and up the hill, when he composed poems to the moon and pithy short, great thoughts--here was something fresh to add to them if he didn't go down at daybreak under the hoofs of the herd! Here was yet a further token, that out of the vicissitudes of his life something more, something new, something altogether different and unimagined was to come, as the crown and ultimate reason of all that had gone before.

Once more the shikari's hand touched him and pointed eastwards.