r.

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 looked at the panorama round him. Where was the east which in
Egypt was clearly defined by the long Nile range? Down there where it
was beginning to be light over the oasis. To his right hand lay the
south, the sacred birth-place of the Nile, the home of the Gods of
the Cataracts; but here flowed no mighty stream, and where was there a
shrine for the visible manifestation of Osiris and Isis; of Horns, born
of a lotus flower in a thicket of papyrus; of Rennut, the Goddess of
blessings, and of Zeta? To which of them could he here lift his hands in
prayer?

A faint breeze swept by, the mist vanished like a restless shade at the
word of the exorcist, the many-pointed crown of Sinai stood out in
sharp relief, and below them the winding valleys, and the dark colored
rippling surface of the lake, became distinctly visible.

All was silent, all untouched by the hand of man yet harmonized to
one great and glorious whole, subject to all the laws of the universe,
pervaded and filled by the Divinity.

He would fain have raised his hand in thanksgiving to Apheru, "the Guide
on the way;" but he dared not; and how infinitely small did the Gods
now seem to him, the Gods he had so often glorified to the multitude
in inspired words, the Gods that had no meaning, no dwelling-place, no
dominion but by the Nile.

"To ye," he murmured, "I cannot pray! Here where my eye can pierce the
distance, as if I myself were a god-here I feel the presence of the One,
here He is near me and with m