In her hand Winsome held Ralph Peden's poem, and in spite of her
determination not to read it, she sat waiting till the dawn should
come. It might be something of great importance. It might only be
a Greek exercise. It was, at all events, necessary to find out, in
order that she might send it back.

It was a marvellous dawning, this one that Winsome waited for.
Dawn is the secret of the universe. It thrills us somehow with a
far-off prophecy of that eternal dawning when the God That Is
shall reveal himself--the dawning which shall brighten into the
more perfect day.

It was just the slack water--the water-shed of the night. So clear
it was this June night that the lingering gold behind the western
ridge of the Orchar Hill, where the sun went down, was neither
brighter nor yet darker than the faint tinge of lucent green, like
the colour of the inner curve of the sea-wave just as it bends to
break, which had begun to glow behind the fir woods to the east.

The birds were waking sleepily. Chaffinches began their clear,
short, natural bursts of song. "CHURR!" said the last barn owl as
he betook himself to bed. The first rook sailed slowly overhead
from Hensol wood. He was seeking the early worm. The green lake in
the east was spreading and taking a roseate tinge just where it
touched the pines on the rugged hillside.

Beneath Winsome's window a blackbird hopped down upon the grass
and took a tentative dab or two at the first slug he came across;
but it was really too early for breakfast for a good hour yet, so
he flew up again into a bush and preened his feathers, which had