two after
midnight
After an hour 's hard riding , he reached it . His impatience bad made that hour seem almost interminable , yet it had not been long enough to furnish him with any clear reason for having come . If , as Mizzoo had declared , he needed sleep , he would surely not think of finding it near the cove from which his companions had been warned under penalty of death . If drawn by longing for another glimpse of the girl of the cove he could not expect to see her an hour or two after midnight . Yet here he was , attracted , and still urged on , by impulses he did not attempt to resist . Earliest dawn found the young man seated composedly upon one of the flattened outcroppings of the bill of stone that lay like an island between the outer plain and the sheltered cove . As yet , there was no sign of life within the cove -- both the dugout and the cabin of cedar logs were as silent and as void of movement as the rocks behind them .