A pleasing light shone through the darkness of that nether world into which Hiram had been so suddenly precipitated. The light was broken by soft shadows, as of gently fluttering leaves. The brightness made his eyeballs ache; the shadows soothed them, so that he could endure to look. Great protecting arms were stretched above him. These assumed the shapes of limbs of a terebinth-tree. Had he passed through the gloom of Sheol into some brighter realm of life? Perhaps the Greeks were right in their hope of the Isles of the Blessed, carpeted with perpetual verdure, gemmed with flowers, and canopied with softest skies. To one of these isles had his spirit floated? This could not be, for over him he clearly saw a dead branch of the terebinth, and there could be no decay in that happy world. His illusions chased one another away, and were all gone when, attempting to move, sharp pains tortured him, and inflicted him with full consciousness that he was indeed in the body. He was lying upon a couch, soft with feathery balsam tips, and covered with a wolf's skin. This he could feel beneath his hands. He glanced about him. A low, but long and rambling, black tent of goat's-hair cloth stood by, its nearest end just at the edge of the shadow of the terebinth. The tent poles and cross ropes were so arranged as to form a roof of three gables, answering to the interior division into three compartments. Several rude but substantially built huts were evidently used for storing provisions. A stone enclosure served as a fold for sheep. Without these evidences of more permanent occupation, the tent would have indicated a settlement of those nomads who, with hereditary roving habits, have always lodged in the lands east of the Great Sea; or of those inhabitants of towns who adopt this mode of life during a portion of the year, that they may live among their flocks and herds on the mountain slopes, or cultivate a tract of rich meadow-land far away from their ordinary abodes. Hiram had scarcely taken in so much of his surroundings, when he was aware that a light form moved suddenly and silently away from his side. He caught a glimpse of a white garment--the common dress of both sexes alike among the simple peasants. Had his observation been more alert, he would have detected a pair of most gracefully modelled feet, and limbs bare almost to the knees; a head uncovered, except for the rich mass of jet-black hair that was gathered loosely into a node at the back; a face of exquisite contour, swarthy from exposure, but radiant with health and kindliness. "Father, he has waked!" rang out a sweet child-voice. And Hiram heard it add, subdued by distance and anxious emotion: "Father! He will live again, will he not?" A voice, strong and deep, but kindly even to tenderness, responded: "Jehovah be praised! I will come."