d to show their approval of my scheme,
and to give me opportunity to bind myself to it with a solemn oath and
vow. At that moment from His distant resting-place in the East, our Lord
the Sun leaped up to begin another day. For long enough from where I
stood below the crest of the Mountain, He Himself would be invisible.
But the great light of His glory spread far into the sky, and against it
the Ark of the Mysteries loomed in black outline from the highest crag
where it rested, lonely and terrible.

For anyone unauthorised to go nearer than a thousand paces to this
storehouse of the Highest Mysteries meant instant death. On that day
when I was initiated as one of the Seven, I had been permitted to go
near and once press my lips against its ample curves; and the rank of
my degree gave me the privilege to repeat that salute again once on each
day when a new year was born. But what lay inside its great interior,
and how it was entered, that was hidden from the Seven, even as it was
from the other Priests and the common people in the city below. Only
those who had been raised to the sublime elevation of the Three had a
knowledge of the dreadful powers which were stored within it.

I went down on my knees where I was, and Zaemon knelt beside me, and
together we recited the prayers which had been said by the Priests from
the beginning of time, giving thanks to our great Lord that He has
come to brighten another day. And then, with my eyes fixed on the black
outline of the Ark of Mysteries I vowed that, come what might, I at
least would be true servant of the High Gods to my life's end, and that
my whole strength should be spent in restoring Their worship and glory.

17. NAIS THE REGAINED

Now, from where we stood together just below the crest of the Sacred
Mountain, we could see down into the city, which lay spread out below
us like a map. The harbour and the great estuary gleamed at its
farther side; and the fringe of hills beyond smoked and fumed in their
accustomed fashion; the great stone circle of our Lord the Sun stood
up grim and bare in the middle of the city; and nearer in reared up the
great mass of the royal pyramid, the gold on its sides catching new gold
from the Sun. There, too, in the square before the pyramid stood the
throne of granite, dwarfed by the distance to the size of a mole's hill,
in which these nine years my love had lain sleeping.

Old Zaemon followed my gaze. "Ay," he said with a sigh,