"An uncrowned monarch of a world of song!" responded Heliobas, with a tender inflection in his rich voice. "A genius such as the earth sees but once in a century! But he has been smitten with the disease of unbelief and deprived of hope,--and where there is no hope there is no lasting accomplishment." He paused, and with a touch as gentle as a woman's, rearranged the cushions under Alwyn's heavy head, and laid his hand in grave benediction on the broad white brow shaded by its clustering waves of dark hair. "May the Infinite Love bring him out of danger into peace and safety!" he said solemnly,--then turning away, he took his companion by the arm, and they both left the room, closing the door quietly behind them. The chapel bell went on tolling slowly, slowly, sending muffled echoes through the fog for some minutes--then it ceased, and profound stillness reigned. The monastery was always a very silent habitation,--situated as it was on so lofty and barren a crag, it was far beyond the singing-reach of the smaller sweet-throated birds--now and then an eagle clove the mist with a whirr of wings and a discordant scream on his way toward some distant mountain eyrie--but no other sound of awakening life broke the hush of the slowly widening dawn. An hour passed--and Alwyn still remained in the same position,--as pallidly quiescent as a corpse stretched out for burial. By and by a change begin to thrill mysteriously through the atmosphere, like the flowing of amber wine through crystal--the heavy vapors shuddered together as though suddenly lashed by a whip of flame,--they rose, swayed to and fro, and parted asunder.... then, dissolving into thin, milk-white veils of fleecy film, they floated away, disclosing as they vanished, the giant summits of the encircling mountains, that lifted themselves to the light, one above another, in the form of frozen billows. Over these a delicate pink flush flitted in tremulous wavy lines--long arrows of gold began to pierce the tender shimmering blue of the sky--soft puffs of cloud tinged with vivid crimson and pale green were strewn along the eastern horizon like flowers in the path of an advancing hero,--and then all at once there was a slight cessation of movement in the heavens--an attentive pause as though the whole universe waited for some great splendor as yet unrevealed. That splendor came, in a red blaze of triumph the Sun rose, pouring a shower of beamy brilliancy over the white vastness of the heights covered with perpetual snow,--jagged peaks, sharp as scimetars and sparkling with ice, caught fire, and seemed to melt away in an absorbing sea of radiance, ... the waiting clouds moved on, redecked in deeper hues of royal purple--and the full Morning glory was declared. As the dazzling effulgence streamed through the window and flooded the couch where Alwyn lay, a faint tinge of color returned to his face,--his lips moved,--his broad chest heaved