the hunter's holiday dress, put it on, and went out of
doors again.
The enormous masses of rock lay dimly before him, like storm-clouds, and
over his head spread the blue heavens with their thousand stars.
The soothing sense of freedom and purity raised his soul, and the air
that he breathed was so fresh and light, that he sprang up the path to
the summit of the peak as if he were borne on wings or carried by
invisible hands.
A mountain goat which met him, turned from him, and fled bleating, with
his mate, to a steep peak of rock, but Pentaur said to the frightened
beasts:
"I shall do nothing to you--not I!"
He paused on a little plateau at the foot of the jagged granite peak of
the mountain. Here again he heard the murmur of a spring, the grass under
his feet was damp, and covered with a film of ice, in which were mirrored
the stars, now gradually fading. He looked up at the lights in the sky,
those never-tarrying, and yet motionless wanderers-away, to the mountain
heights around him-down, into the gorge below--and far off, into the
distance.
The dusk slowly grew into light, the mysterious forms of the
mountain-chain took shape and stood up with their shining points, the
light clouds were swept away like smoke. Thin vapors rose from the oasis
and the other valleys at his feet, at first in heavy masses, then they
parted and were wafted, as if in sport, above and beyond him to the sky.
Far below him soared a large eagle, the only living creature far or near.
A solemn and utter silence surrounded him, and when the eagle swooped
down and vanished from his sight, and the mist rolled lower into the
valley, he felt that here, alone, he was high above all other living
beings, and standing nearer to the Divinity.
He drew his breath fully and deeply, he felt as he had felt in the first
hours after his initiation, when for the first time he was admitted to
the holy of holies--and yet quite different.
Instead of the atmosphere loaded with incense, he breathed a light pure
air; and the deep stillness of the mountain solitude possessed his soul
more strongly than the chant of the priests.
Here, it seemed to him, that the Divine being would hear the lightest
murmur of his lips, though indeed his heart was so full of gratitude and
devotion that his impulse was to give expression to his mighty flow of
feelings in jubilant song. But his tongue seemed tied; he knelt down in
silence, to pray and to praise.
Then he
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