Larrabee stood for a time spellbound, still gazing up into heaven. But winds were astir in the region of the clouds. Heavy purple masses, with here and there flocculent white drifts in their midst, and showing lines of white at their verges, were spreading over the sky; the temperature had fallen suddenly; he was shivering. Vagrant gusts seemed to issue from defiles of the mountain, and he heard the awakening of the pines. Out of sight of the star his flagging energies failed. The definite realization of his fatigue, his hunger, his faintness, pressed upon his aroused senses. He could hardly support his tottering limbs to the door of the Lost Time mine, and drag himself up on the rocks, out of the reach of the water, to rest, as he waited till the clouds should pass, till the sight of the star should be renewed to his longing gaze. Even in its eclipse, in a certain yearning sense of bereavement, in his disappointment, he had a patience and calm acquiescence begotten of confidence. For he should see it again. Was it not his own, his very own, charged with some unimagined significance to him? He shifted his posture once, reckoning upon its position in the sky, that it might not fail his sight the moment the baffling clouds should withdraw. He was conscious of a high degree of happiness despite his tremulous thrills of suspense. He gazed upward, as he reclined on the ledge of rock, with smiling eyes and a heart full of deep content. He had gone far enough within to have an upward view through the jagged portal of rough-hewn rocks. Beyond their edges the sky seemed of lighter tint, so black it was within. He could mark here how the clouds made sail, how swiftly the wind sped them. He watched a section of a branch close at hand sway in sight, and swing back on the wind, and once more wave, nodding, plumelike, into view. He heard the sharp bark of a fox outside in the woods; it roused far-away baying of drowsy hounds, and again all was still, but for the reverberation of the water loud against the echoing walls of the darksome place. The sound affected his nerves; he was dizzy for a moment. Then something cold, clammy, suddenly struck him in the face. His heart seemed to stand still with the recollection of the spectral terrors of the place. The soft chill buffet came again and again, and the air was vaguely fanned about his brow before he recognized the noiseless flight of bats on their way to the outer darkness. He lay back upon the ledge, finding a solace in the mere posture of rest in his extreme fatigue, and once more watched the jagged black portal and the purple clouds with their hoary drifts, as in endless unbroken folds they rolled before the serene white splendors of that wondrous star. Again and again he would lift himself upon his elbow, fancying that the cloud textures waxed thin, and that presently, when they should fall away from before it, he would behold anew the sidereal incandescent glory that meant so much, that should mean