With his shelter approaching completion, Brother Francis ventured back to the hole and stood looking down at it; he was unable to put off the desertdweller’s conviction that wherever a place exists to hide from the sun, something is already hiding in it. Even if the hole was now uninhabited, something would certainly slither into it before tomorrow’s dawn. On the other hand, if something already lived in the hole, Francis thought it safer to make its acquaintance by day than by night. There seemed to be no tracks in the vicinity except his own, the pilgrim’s, and the tracks of the wolves.