taur stretched himself out on the humble couch, which to him seemed
softer than the silken bed of a queen, but on which nevertheless he
could not sleep, for the thoughts and fancies that filled his heart were
too overpowering and bewildering.

The stars still sparkled in the heavens when he sprang from his bed of
skins, lifted Nebsecht on to it, and rushed out into the open air. A
fresh mountain spring flowed close to the hunter's hut. He went to it,
and bathed his face in the ice-cold water, and let it flow over his body
and limbs. He felt as if he must cleanse himself to his very soul,
not only from the dust of many weeks, but from the rebellion and
despondency, the ignominy and bitterness, and the contact with vice and
degradation. When at last he left the spring, and returned to the little
house, he felt clean and fresh as on the morning of a feast-day at
the temple of Seti, when he had bathed and dressed himself in robes of
snow-white linen. He took 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
nea