At last a star began to glimmer in this pit,
a star pale and indistinct and a vast distance away. But it crept
steadily up through the eternity of darkness, and the nearer it
came, the less there was of the blackness of night. From a star it
grew into a sun, and with the sun came dawn. In that dawn he heard
the singing of a bird, and the bird was just over his head. When
Carrigan opened his eyes, and understanding came to him, he found
himself under the silver birch that belonged to the wood warbler.
For a space he did not ask himself how he had come there. He was
looking at the river and the white strip of sand. Out there were
the rock and his dunnage pack. Also his rifle. Instinctively his
eyes turned to the balsam ambush farther down. That, too, was in a
blaze of sunlight now. But where he lay, or sat, or stood--he was
not sure what he was doing at that moment--it was shady and
deliciously cool. The green of the cedar and spruce and balsam was
close about him, inset with the silver and gold of the thickly-
leaved birch. He discovered that he was bolstered up partly
against the trunk of this birch and partly against a spruce
sapling.
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