nearly midnight
It might as well be Aydelot . '' This from Tasker , a slender young fellow from a Kansas railroad office . So they joked as they tramped along . It was nearly midnight when they pitched camp before the little village of Peit-Tsang beside the Peiho . In the dim dawning of the August morning Little Kemper 's bugle sounded the morning reveille . Thaine was just dreaming of home and he thought the first bugle note was the call for him up the stairway of the Sunflower Inn . His windows looked out on the Aydelot wheatfields and the grove beyond , and every morning the sunrise across the level eastern prairie made a picture only the hand of the Infinite could paint .